8 of our favorite alternative unity ceremonies including one that nets you a permanent piece of art #Sponsors#ceremony#gifts#sand ceremony#unity candle#unity ceremony Updated Oct 12 2015 (Posted Apr 7 2015) Catherine Clark bijouxandbits This business paid a fee to be listed on Offbeat Bride because they feel their products and services are a great fit with offbeat philosophies… and we agree. Learn more about our ads. Photo by The Adventures Of If you're angling to have some kind of unity ceremony at your wedding, you're probably seeing a lot about salt covenants, sand ceremonies, and unity candles, amirite? We've talked about lots of alternative unity ceremonies before, but we've got even more we wanted to collect and share with you to get your brain buzzing. This time around, we're talking about a glow stick ceremony, a baking ceremony, a Beetlejuice sandworm ceremony, a honey ceremony, and even a lightsaber candle ceremony. Then we're going to show you a particularly awesome ceremony that gives you a super shmancy physical piece of evidence of the day to keep on display from our sponsor Unity in Glass. Let's jam about unity ceremonies, people! Glow stick ceremony Photo by The Adventures Of Jodi and Kim used the magic goo inside a glow stick to make their ceremony pop with fluorescent color. Baking ingredients ceremony Photo by Jess Jackson Photography You'll want to see the ingredients that Alicia and Andrew used in their baking-themed ceremony to symbolize all the tenets of their love. Plus, it just looks delicious. Unity tiki torches Photo by Danny Fulgencio Andrea and Patrick asked their parents to help them light UNITY TIKI TORCHES! So much kitschy radness. Honey tasting ceremony Photo by Leah Moyers Photography Liz and Onyx took turns feeding each other a nip of honey for their unifying treat. I'm digging this food trend. Remember the unity sandwich?! Beer brewing ceremony Photo by Port City Photography Speaking of nom-ables, SarahKat & Ryan used their love of beer brewing to craft up this beer-themed ceremony complete with hops. Sand ceremony featuring a sandworm Photo by Alen Fetahi Beth and Brian channeled their Beetlejuice love into their ceremony by including a sandworm. Lightsaber candle ceremony Photo by Sharyn Frenkel Photography Giovanna and Jonathan got their geek on with a twist on a candle lighting ceremony by using lightsaber candles. Colored glass ceremony that creates a permanent piece of art Aria Series Wedding Vase from Unity in Glass Unity in Glass is also featured in our Offbeat Vendors guide! While we go bananas over these unity ceremonies, one of our favorites has to be from our awesome sponsor, Unity in Glass. The biggest difference between a normal unity ceremony and Unity in Glass is that after the ceremony, you end up with one of the most beautiful sculptures ever to commemorate the day and keep on display. In a nutshell, you order colored glass crystals in your wedding colors, combine them in your own way during your unity ceremony, send them back to Unity in Glass, and they create a sculptural piece using your unique colored glass that lasts forever. Unity in Glass can also make additional items (ornaments, paperweights, fluted bowls, infinity bowls, inventions pulled from your imagination), and create additional pieces from your remaining crystals for gifts to parents, children, or close friends. It's customizable and pants-droppingly gorgeous. Related Post A unity ceremony with glass and 2100 degrees of heat: you're going to want to see this What if I told you that you can take a unity ceremony to a seriously higher level by crafting up your own custom, totally unique,... Read more Here's the scoop on how this whole process works. Spoiler: it involves 2100 degrees of HEAT. Oooh, and here's a video documenting the process and the background to how artist and owner Lee Ware got it all going: Custom ornaments from Unity in Glass Go take a peek at what Unity in Glass can do, and then let us know what you end up doing for your own ceremony. Reporter Name * Reporter Email * Original text Enter the original text here. Edited text* Enter your suggested copyedit here. Notes You can add a note for the editor here. * Required information. Fix Typo Catherine Clark Catherine Clark loiters at her local library, makes art, watches movies en masse, plays video and tabletop games, poorly cooks healthy things, cuddles with her feline fur babies, and blogs at BijouxandBits.com. @enidjcoleslaw @bijouxandbits @bijouxandbits PREVIOUS Embrace the "Pura Vida" lifestyle on your honeymoon in Nosara, Costa Rica NEXT Kimmy & Brent get "Carrie-d" at their Evil Dead-themed wedding Show/Hide comments [ 14 ] We had a candy sand ceremony. We plan to eat the sand on our first anniversary. Reply I need to hear more about this! Candy sand?!? Sounds awesome!! Reply It was much like a sand ceremony, but edible! And with references to sticking together during the sweet and sour times. We also had plastic test tubes and extra sand that our guests could fill and take home, but it didn't go over too well, sadly (only like 7 out of 50 got used). Oh and by the way, candy sand doesn't play nice with humidity. It gummed up inside our pouring vessels and took a lot of "encouragement" to pour. Here's a photo of me struggling to pour my sand (his fared a bit better), with the test tubes off to the right in the background. https://www.dropbox.com/s/w9igd1xinxejw0z/LIZLUI-140621-125048-CanonEOS5DMarkIIIEF35mmf-1-EX2.4LUSM-1-400secatf-3.5-262.jpg?dl=0 Reply We had a Tea Ceremony at our mad hatters wedding. Our bridesmaids carried teapots full of "Tea" (blue for boys and pink fir girls 😉 ) and left them on a plant-urn-turned-table about halfway down our aisle. We poured the Tea into a tall vase to make purple (theme colour, kinda) Tea. Was cute and the guests thought it was sweet! Reply Hourglass – like a sand ceremony, but you pour the sands into an hourglass, twist the caps on, and you have a timepiece/display art. And the glass is looking pretty enough to give that a go … Reply We did a rose ceremony for ours and used gold plated roses that are now sitting on display in our house. https://allseasonsweddings.com/wedding-ceremonies-readings/rose-ceremonies Reply Offbeat Bride reads my mind! For the longest time I have tried to come up with an idea for our ceremony and this is it!! I am so happy I stumbled across this post! Reply We are big board game geeks and we used board games in our unity ceremony. One of the games we used is called "Ticket to Ride". Link here: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/9209/ticket-ride. It involves connecting different cities together and getting points. We had the version with the US map and part of the unity ceremony was to connect his hometown (Montreal, Canada) with my hometown (the closest to Richmond, VA on the map was Washington DC so we just did that) with the train game pieces. We did a similar process with two other European Style Board Games (Stone Age and Carcassone) Reply I so wish Unity in Glass would sell the ornaments and/or heart paperweights separately! Our wedding is long over, but I would still love to have a small piece crafted like this to celebrate an anniversary. Reply We had a Unity in Glass ceremony as well and I love the sculpture that came out of it! Fair warning, it was hard to find good vessels for the ceremony as there wasn't a lot of each color of glass. We used a thin vase but still didn't fill it up as much as we wanted. Also we didn't practice (re-separating sand sounded messy) which led to a lot of giggles during the ceremony as we tried to figure out what we were doing. We enjoyed it though 🙂 I second Jacqueline, I wish they sold smaller pieces separately, I'd love to get another one done but can't manage the addition of another vase or bowl at this point. Reply Those are all fantastic! The best I saw was at my friends' Rachel and Chris' wedding. They had a chunk of home-baked bread, and the officiant put sea salt on one end, that they both took a bite of, to represent the challenging times; then she put honey on the other end, that they both took a bit of, to represent the sweet times. It was such a simple, perfect metaphor for the fact that, as a basic part of life, they'll be going through good and bad together. As for my ceremony, I think we'd only do a unity ceremony if it could involve chocolate or coffee (two things we're passionate about). 😀 Reply Your unity ceremony could involve chocolate or coffee, or even both! Ours involved chocolate as well as cheese. Reply Wow! Love the glass beads and sculpture idea. Beautiful! Reply My husband and I did a Lego Heart unity ceremony. We premade each side before hand, so we just had to stick them together. It was very quick but very us. Reply Join the conversation Cancel Reply Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *Comment Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Sign me up for your offbeat awesomeness newsletter! No-drama comment policy Part of what makes the Offbeat Empire different is our commitment to civil, constructive commenting. Make sure you're familiar with our no-drama comment policy. 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It was much like a sand ceremony, but edible! And with references to sticking together during the sweet and sour times. We also had plastic test tubes and extra sand that our guests could fill and take home, but it didn't go over too well, sadly (only like 7 out of 50 got used). Oh and by the way, candy sand doesn't play nice with humidity. It gummed up inside our pouring vessels and took a lot of "encouragement" to pour. Here's a photo of me struggling to pour my sand (his fared a bit better), with the test tubes off to the right in the background. https://www.dropbox.com/s/w9igd1xinxejw0z/LIZLUI-140621-125048-CanonEOS5DMarkIIIEF35mmf-1-EX2.4LUSM-1-400secatf-3.5-262.jpg?dl=0 Reply
We had a Tea Ceremony at our mad hatters wedding. Our bridesmaids carried teapots full of "Tea" (blue for boys and pink fir girls 😉 ) and left them on a plant-urn-turned-table about halfway down our aisle. We poured the Tea into a tall vase to make purple (theme colour, kinda) Tea. Was cute and the guests thought it was sweet! Reply
Hourglass – like a sand ceremony, but you pour the sands into an hourglass, twist the caps on, and you have a timepiece/display art. And the glass is looking pretty enough to give that a go … Reply
We did a rose ceremony for ours and used gold plated roses that are now sitting on display in our house. https://allseasonsweddings.com/wedding-ceremonies-readings/rose-ceremonies Reply
Offbeat Bride reads my mind! For the longest time I have tried to come up with an idea for our ceremony and this is it!! I am so happy I stumbled across this post! Reply
We are big board game geeks and we used board games in our unity ceremony. One of the games we used is called "Ticket to Ride". Link here: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/9209/ticket-ride. It involves connecting different cities together and getting points. We had the version with the US map and part of the unity ceremony was to connect his hometown (Montreal, Canada) with my hometown (the closest to Richmond, VA on the map was Washington DC so we just did that) with the train game pieces. We did a similar process with two other European Style Board Games (Stone Age and Carcassone) Reply
I so wish Unity in Glass would sell the ornaments and/or heart paperweights separately! Our wedding is long over, but I would still love to have a small piece crafted like this to celebrate an anniversary. Reply
We had a Unity in Glass ceremony as well and I love the sculpture that came out of it! Fair warning, it was hard to find good vessels for the ceremony as there wasn't a lot of each color of glass. We used a thin vase but still didn't fill it up as much as we wanted. Also we didn't practice (re-separating sand sounded messy) which led to a lot of giggles during the ceremony as we tried to figure out what we were doing. We enjoyed it though 🙂 I second Jacqueline, I wish they sold smaller pieces separately, I'd love to get another one done but can't manage the addition of another vase or bowl at this point. Reply
Those are all fantastic! The best I saw was at my friends' Rachel and Chris' wedding. They had a chunk of home-baked bread, and the officiant put sea salt on one end, that they both took a bite of, to represent the challenging times; then she put honey on the other end, that they both took a bit of, to represent the sweet times. It was such a simple, perfect metaphor for the fact that, as a basic part of life, they'll be going through good and bad together. As for my ceremony, I think we'd only do a unity ceremony if it could involve chocolate or coffee (two things we're passionate about). 😀 Reply
Your unity ceremony could involve chocolate or coffee, or even both! Ours involved chocolate as well as cheese. Reply
My husband and I did a Lego Heart unity ceremony. We premade each side before hand, so we just had to stick them together. It was very quick but very us. Reply