Both of my (still married) parents want to walk me down the aisle but my partner and I are so shy that we want to avoid an aisle all together. How can we, 1) avoid an aisle 2) still somehow start the ceremony off meaningfully? and 3) How can we include both sets of still married parents? —Jessie

To help me answer this question, I decided it was time for another episode of DUELING OFFICIANTS! See, every now and then I pull on the expertise of two wedding officiants — my parents! They’re both Internet-ordained ministers, and between the two of them they’ve married dozens of people, often helping couple craft their ceremonies from scratch. They have different styles of officiating, though, so you’ll get differing views.

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My fiance and I both want a non-traditional wedding ceremony, without the procession. The ceremony and reception will be held at an restaurant in NYC. I’ve read somewhere we could have our guests stand in a circle around us with a small wedding. However, we are inviting about 50+ people and am not sure if this could still work with this many people. Do you have any thoughts on this or any other alternative ideas to a non processional wedding? -Dorothy

As those who’ve read Offbeat Bride know, I loves me some circles, and of course it’s only fitting that I’d be all for couples trading in the aisle approach for circle time. Doing your wedding in the round is a great symbol (you start your wedding inside a ring!) and also a nice way to avoid the hierarchy of rows of seats.

As you can see from the picture here (from Vania’s Island celebration), you can make some pretty big circles with lots of guests. That said, if you’re in a smaller enclosed space, I can imagine it could get kinda of tight. In that case, I would vote for two circles around you — a seated inner circle, and a standing outer circle around the chairs. It still means you have to split your guests into two tiers, but that’s better than rows. Making some of your guests stand wouldn’t work for a long ceremony, but it’s good encouragement to keep things short ‘n’ sweet.

If you want to read more non-processional ideas, here are a few links:

• Circle-Seating With A Twist and Circle Seating Part II
• Different Chair Set-up?
• Get rid of the aisle