Weddingbee Boards Topic: Skipping the unity candle/sand/etc?

Corgi on "Skipping the unity candle/sand/etc?"

Corgi — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 12:03:19 +0000

Coming from an event coordinator's assistant, feel free to skip candles, sand, etc. The guests get you are getting married... no need to spend 5 minutes attempting to light candles and mixing sand without creating a mess. Trust me, most of the time the guests get completely bored and distracted unless things go very quickly during these non-religous rituals. I have found that religious and cultural rituals are the only things that keep guest's attention because they are something they may have not seen before or that have certain significance to those family members/friends. If anyone finds that one of these rituals are something important and signifying for your relationship, go for it... but just remember to practice some pre-mixing with ALL of the necessary materials in the rehearsal and if anyone's thinking of doing unity candles i recommend pre-burning all wicks so that they catch quickly!

Ms. Pink Scrubs on "Skipping the unity candle/sand/etc?"

Ms. Pink Scrubs — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 13:48:53 +0000

<a href="#post-1271644">@Allyser:</a> Ahhh!!! Love that! Did you each give the other's mom a rose or your own mom? I think I would really like to honor my FI's mom that way, since she raised such a great guy.

Allyser on "Skipping the unity candle/sand/etc?"

Allyser — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 13:40:11 +0000

We didn't do it. We did a flower exchange instead.. were we walked over and gave each of our mothers a rose. It was really sweet.

Ember78 on "Skipping the unity candle/sand/etc?"

Ember78 — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 13:37:20 +0000

Countless weddings skip the unity candle, wine ceremony, sand ceremony, etc. The ceremony itself is about unity so the mini-ceremonies are redundant in a way. I've been to a ton of weddings in my life and have only seen any of the above listed mini-ceremonies (a unity candle) in real life once and that was a the beginning of this year. I'm not personally a fan of any of them, and FH is slightly weirded out by them and hasn't seen them in real life either. But we may have a toned down handfasting, if anything. Undecided at the moment on that one.

Rgeddy on "Skipping the unity candle/sand/etc?"

Rgeddy — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 11:42:37 +0000

seemed to use like a new age hippy thing so we did not!  I have no clue what you would do with it afterwards besides let it sit on a shelf and settle down to a nice mixed brown colored bottle of sand.  Can you preserve that cool mix you do on the day?  How do you even get that? We didnt even have a table where our ceremony was held so we had nothing besides vows and rings.

SHESCOUNTRY on "Skipping the unity candle/sand/etc?"

SHESCOUNTRY — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 11:11:39 +0000

SKIPPED IT! There are 3 things that come to my mind when I hear unity "Unity Candle" 1)My friend that used hers for target practice last year. 2) The church that burned down because of one. 3) It's something that we would try to keep safe, but eventually it will fall off a shelf, break, and I'll be devestated. I asked our minister if we had to have it.  He said "absolutely NOT".  So we skipped it!

Kelwin on "Skipping the unity candle/sand/etc?"

Kelwin — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 11:04:14 +0000

Im skipping the whole traditional Unity Candle thing too and replacing it with the love letter and wine box ceremony. You place your favorite bottle of wine (champagne) , 2 wine glasses, (or anything you want) and you write each other a love letter and instead of lighting a "Unity candle" you quickly place your love letters in the box and close/lock it then on OUR 1st anniversary we celebrate by reading our love letters for the 1st time since the wedding over a glass of wine. tada!! done!   Im just looking for a box now!! lol

Misstnt on "Skipping the unity candle/sand/etc?"

Misstnt — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 07:20:23 +0000

We don't want to do either the candle or the sand.  But I feel like I need something to spice up the ceremony a little, since we're not having any readings or songs.  FMIL suggested that each mom have a rose and they put it in a vase with our rose...but that would take like 2 seconds and just seems anti-climatic.  I love the above idea about the bouquet of life flowers from the parents and WP, but I'm wondering if it would take too much time for the officiate to explain why all those people are meaningful to us??  Any ideas?

espinaca on "Skipping the unity candle/sand/etc?"

espinaca — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 06:22:10 +0000

Apparently I've been at a bunch of weddings with Unity Candles and never noticed them.  So I doubt anyone will notice or care if I skip it at mine!  We're already vowing to stay together with our words, so I just don't know what fire or sand would really add.

Baileyh on "Skipping the unity candle/sand/etc?"

Baileyh — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 20:43:15 +0000

We didnt do either. Its old and over done, we just wanted to keep it short and sweet.