From sand to science: 14 unity ceremonies to symbolize your new partnership #Ceremony Advice#anniversary-unity-box#ceremony#salt ceremony#sand ceremony#unity candle#unity ceremony#unity cocktail April 18 2011 | Megan Finley Horowitz meggyfin Behold… the UNITY SANDWICH! Photo by Patty Michels Photography Unity candles, unity sand ceremonies, unity salt ceremonies, unity cocktails, and even the UNITY SANDWICH! Rachel and her groom decided that the ever-popular sammich was the ideal metaphor for their marriage. Unity ceremonies are a great way to symbolize the bringing together of two individuals into one partnership and, at times, the blending of families. Here are a few of my favorite unity ceremony options — a few you've probably seen before, two will require protective eye-gear, and a couple even involve science! Unity candle Unity candles can be good for two or a whole family of people! Emily says, "We decided to light a unity candle to symbolize how our lives were going to burn close together from now on." Salt covenant Centered Ceramics came up with a salt ceremony. It works just like a sand ceremony, but the salt egg can become a fixture in your kitchen and used daily. Sand ceremony When Claudia and Eddie got married, they brought together their children as well. So each family member had a colored sand that represented themselves and they combined them all together. Related Post Glaciers, puzzles, and beermosas: 10 offbeat unity ceremonies we adore Unity cocktails, unity wine boxes, unity candles, unity science projects, and even unity sandwiches -- damn we love us some uniting! We've rounded up a... Read more Your own take on a sand or salt ceremony What about taking the same concept of the sand ceremony but adding a personal spin… Celebrant Jessie Blum explained, "I love all things spiced and spicy — my husband is a salt fiend. So we did our own twist on a sand ceremony and poured white peppercorns and black lava salt!" Bread breaking ceremony Photo by Shannon Michele Photography Nicole and Sean shared a bread breaking ceremony: "The bread was from my favorite local baker, and was sweetened with honey butter I made from local organic honey." Handfasting Handfasting, or tying your hand together to symbolize the joining together in marriage, is very popular on Offbeat Bride. Water ceremony Photo by Whitney Lee Cat and Andrew came up witha science-based ceremony: "Since Andrew is a Chemist, and a big science nerd. His favorite moment was our special version of a candle lighting/unity ceremony. We each poured a vase what looked like plain water into a large pitcher, causing an instant color change from clear to pink. Magic! (I mean… science!) The audience gasped and applauded, and we were beaming." Tree planting ceremony Tribe member Sneff and her husband planted a tree together during their ceremony. Similarly, Mina and Adam planted an Evergreen sapling, as a symbol of their love. Eternity flowers Photo by Maggie Winters We love this flower laying ceremony from Victoria & Jacqueline's wedding. "We loved the idea of incorporating the concept of eternity, and we'd tossed around the idea of a handfasting, but we ended up crafting our own ritual. All the guests came forward, picked flowers out of a vase, and laid them in two conjoined circles around us, making an eternity symbol. We placed this about halfway through the ceremony, so we stood in the circles through the rest." Unity cocktail Unity cocktails are an Offbeat Bride favorite. We have an entire tag devoted to the them. Wine lock box ceremony Sarah and Todd did what they called a wine lock box ceremony. "Instead of a unity candle, we did a wine lock box ceremony. We sealed love letters and a bottle of wine into a box. Our officiant was thrilled to use the 'making of wine' as a metaphor for marriage. I LOVED getting to hammer nails in the middle of the ceremony." The photo above is from Flickr member Dirt2Mud's wine box ceremony. She explains, "The bottle was picked specifically as it should age well and be at its peak around our 5th anniversary when we will open the box. We also bought special break-resistant stemware." Unity painting/art-making A painting ceremony has been brought up by a few of our brides. From a unity finger painting to Tribe member Zombiefrog Bunny's painting of concentric spirals, creating art together is a good way to honor your passions and your new partnership. Welding ceremony Sarah Joy and Joseph are both pipe fitters so they had a welding ceremony. Warning: only to be attempted by trained professionals! Unity volcano Photo by Jon Bolden Kaci and Roy had a unity volcano — you know, that awesome science fair project! We have SO many more ideas for you — pages and pages of them! Thanks to all the amazing offbeat brides who brought us all of these ideas, now to the rest of you… what unity ceremonies did I forget about? 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 Megan Finley Horowitz When Megan's not writing, traveling, and sleeping, she's eating like the fate of the world depends on it. (You're welcome, world!) You can snoop into her personal life over on her website The Dash and Dine! @meggyfin @thedashanddine @meggyfin PREVIOUS Crash weddings around the world without leaving your seat NEXT Emily & Rush's relaxed folksy musical wedding Show/Hide comments [ 103 ] Love these ideas! I'm actually really digging either the water magic or the laying of flowers in an eternity circle. 🙂 Reply Hello! I love love LOVE the idea of Cat and Andrew's science unity experiment (for lack of a better phrase). My fiance Ken is a math teacher and I was a bio major/statistician, and we both love nerdy and fun things. Would anyone know how this magic (science!) happened? I assume some kind of pH indicator, but I would love to snag it for my own ceremony. Thanks! Reply O.o We need to do a color-changing water ceremony. This is a thing that needs to happen. We'll probably do something with kitchen-available stuff, though–from what I can tell, the example used phenolphthalein, and while really fun to type and say, I don't have the hookup to get it cheap. We'll probably just boil some red cabbage to get purple liquid, and combine our purple liquid with a clear base to get a pretty green-blue liquid. I'm weird, and I sometimes just do this when I'm bored and have some red cabbage lying around. Reply Make the "clear liquid" part of your mixture lemon juice or other acidic-spike. This will turn your cabbage juice a lovely pink. Be sure to experiment with different concentrations of acid before hand to zone in on the exact effect you want. Oh, PS – Phenolphthalein will run you about $35 for 100g. Try Fisher Scientific or Restek for suppliers. Reply Okay, really late to this party, but on another indicator note, you can also get clear to blue, but it isn't instantaneous as the clear to pink with phenolphthalein. If you mix iodine with vitamin C, it will turn clear. In the other vase, pour liquid laundry starch (you could also mix corn starch and water, but it will be cloudy). When you pour the two together, the mixture will take a few minutes to turn blue. Also, I typically find Frey to be the cheapest provider of chemicals & supplies (I am a high school science teacher). Reply We used a German Bridal cup. Reply Whats a German Bridal Cup? My fiance is German, I'm Australian, and we're getting married in Vietnam. I keep asking him for ideas on German wedding culture…cause I really want there to be a bit of both of us in our ceremony…but he's a bit hopeless, and doesnt really know any! Reply I just read about a German bridal cup the other day! There is a historical "story" that goes with the tradition. You can find it easy enough in a google search. Long story short fair maidens wealthy nobleman father did not approve of her love beau, a simple goldsmith, and imprisoned him. That did not ebb her love though so he set a challenge that he was sure could not be met. If it was then they could be wed. Of couse the challenge was met! The challenge was "If your goldsmith can make a chalice from which two people can drink at the same time without spilling one single drop, I will free him and you shall become his bride". Inspired by love and with skillful hands, the young goldsmith created a masterpiece. He sculpted a girl with a smile as beautiful as his own true love's. Her skirt was hollowed to serve as a cup. Her raised arms held a bucket that swivels so that it could be filled and then swung towards a second drinker. Reply We're doing this too! We're both Germanists (met in our PhD program) and heritage speakers, and while my other half's family is from Northern Germany, this Southern German tradition is definitely appropriate to my family. We're also sawing a log. 🙂 Reply Thank you for posting! It's really nice to see some of the creative ways other couples are approaching this. Reply We did an hourglass ceremony. It's a take on the sand ceremony except we have a cooler memento and we will turn it on every anniversary. The idea is that when you put each color of sand in the glass they're inseparable but not entwined. As time continues on the colors become so entwined they are impossible to part. So it's a bit like a salt covenant, too. We liked the idea that it also portrayed the growth within marriage as well, since not a lot of unity ceremonies involve that aspect, but we thought it was important to point out that the best was still to come! I'll scrounge up a picture and see if I can stick it in the flickr pool. Reply Holy crap! That is REALLY FREAKING COOL! Yes! Pictures! Reply Done! I, er, forgot to add a description, but I'm OBT member Wowjunkie and the pic is a ridiculously tall man in a monkey suit and a chick in a white ball gown with blue pearls pouring sand into a wooden hourglass. Reply AWESOME: Reply Yup! That be us. Could you let us know where you bought your empty hourglass? Cheers, Deb Reply We got ours from heirloomhourglass.com. We ordered our sand from them as well and I Goodwill'ed the holders. Heirloom hourglass seemed to offer the biggest variety of hourglasses we could find, and more importantly the hourglasses close with caps that are screwed on so we could immediately close it and turn (which was important to us – the first mixing of sand) and most of the others we had found you had to send off to have them recapped. They sell all sorts of different end caps so you could customize. I will warn you they're a bit pricey for my taste but ours is beautiful and it was really important to my husband. Oh, and it's totally possible to make your hourglass an actual hourglass but we decided not to drive ourselves crazy and meter it out. I'm not gonna lie, I got all teary-eyed reading this. I love this idea so much! Reply Omg I'm sorry but I'm stealing it. We did plan on doing just a normal sand ceremony but when I read your post it really touched me. (Plus my fiance has a fascination of watches, and the first little gift he gave me was a bottle of red sand because I said I wanted to go to death valley in Nevada) Then when I found a site with the actual reading I started crying as I read it. I love it, and thank you so much for posting it, because now I feel like we have a ceremony that fits when nothing else was. Reply This is amazing. And brilliant. Thank you for this idea! Reply We will definitely be using this! I've been trying to come up with a good unity ceremony that doesn't involve a candle or alcohol and this is PERFECT. My fiance is black, I'm white, and a lot of our wedding has a theme of the blending of our families and our cultures. The visual representation of the blending is perfect for us. 🙂 Reply there is a middle-eastern honey sharing ritual Reply I read the honey one, where they each place honey on each others lips, but I at one time read a "honey and Water" ceremony and the saying something like, let the sweetness of this drink erase the bitterness of your pass etc HELP, I lost the information Reply I've been toying with the idea of some type of unity ceremony for months but I can't decide what would work best for us and wouldn't be too over the top in our short, simple ceremony (we're already exchanging rings and having a reading on top of vows). They're all cool and fun, which makes picking the right one hard! I like the idea of combining spices, we both like cooking and spicy food but it's not very visually interesting. Or maybe cocktails. We could combine Bailey's and Tia Maria which looks pretty and no one would know but my ex-local bar called it a 'BJ'. 😀 Reply I totally thought the "Bread Breaking Ceremony" said "Breaking Bad Ceremony". I was all like "wuuuuut! Do they make meth!?" Then I re-read it and it sounds NOMMY. Reply hahaha!! breaking bad… id love to see someone do that. just too funny. im so glad you posted what you thought it said. thank you Reply I don't know if this is technically a unity ceremony – but my fiance and I are planning on exchanging love letters that will go in a small bird cage that we'll either open if we come to a point in our marriage where we need to remind each other why we got married, or on our 5th anniversary. (Which ever comes first and hopefully the latter!) Reply the Lakota have a special jug to drink from as part of their weddings – you can get them hand painted to suit you Reply My beau and I are big tea-drinkers, so we're going to have a tea ceremony. We'll mix two types of tea and letting it steep while we read our vows. Then we'll pour a cup for each other. Reply Can't wait to hear how it goes in the ceremony, Angie! Reply Thanks, Jessie – we love that you suggested this for us! :o) Reply I've seen a painting ceremony where the bride had red and the groom blue. They each painted a side of the canvas, then poured the paints together and painted the center purple. Oh, and the groom tied an apron on his bride before painting to protect her dress — very cute. Reply In the Hebrew Bible people would exchange shoes to symbolize a covenant . . . I could see that being really neat for a same gender couple as a way to twist a really ancient Judeo-Christian tradition. It could work for a couple of different gender expressions too, but there are more complications! Not to mention, the issue of shoe size! Reply Usually I find unity ceremonies kind of saccharine and over used. We get it, you're turning two into one that's the whole point of marriage, way to figure it out. That said, I can totally get behind the magic "water" and volcano ceremonies. Not to mention the science flavor is perfect for humanist/atheist ceremonies. Hate to say it, but I might have to jack one of those ideas. Reply For my husband and I, offbeat Christians, in our faith tradition, communion is the ultimate unity ceremony – as it means union both with God and with our fellow participants. At our wedding, there was communion for the whole congregation, and our first act as a married couple was to bring the bread and wine forward, to serve our community. I loved taking part in the ceremony, because it reminded me that my marriage is a part of a larger community, and those people took part in the wedding and pledged to support us in our marriage. Bringing the bread and wine forward – http://carissabyers.com/p971514465/h356eee2e#h356eee2e Reply I LOVE this! I've always known we'd have communion during our ceremony, but I never thought of serving it to our guests as well. What a beautiful picture of Christ. That I'm now stealing 😉 Reply What a good idea to cement the idea of service to the community. I love this. Reply See this is why I'm sometimes jealous of religious couples. So many beautiful, meaningful ceremonies already built in. Reply Yeah, I'm struggling to find how to fill a secular ceremony with things that are meaningful to us. In the Tribe, there's a secular group with lots of ideas how to make a beautiful non-religious ceremony. Reply We had a "rose ceremony." It's pretty similar to the sand ceremony, but using a vase of flowers (roses). Two were already in the vase (us), and four others were on the table the vase was on. Each of our four parents came up and took one from the table, with my parents giving theirs to my husband and his parents to me, then us placing the roses into the vase. It was meant to symbolize not just us starting our own family, but of each of us being welcomed into our existing families. Reply I went to a wedding where the bride and groom soldered together two halves of a copper wire heart, which they later attached to a wooden plaque to hang on their wall. It was adorable, and perfect given the groom has been tinkering around and building electrical stuff since he was a kid. Reply I love this idea! This would be super cute for us Reply We're doing a punch ceremony where each of the moms and each of us will have an ingredient to mix together which will make punch that will then be sipped by each of us out of the same goblet during the ceremony and the remainder served at dinner. It will also be our go-to recipe for punch after that. 🙂 Reply So we are in the process of making a Spin Art Ceremony in which we make a badass spin-art painting. Each of us will use one color and then the paint will spin joyously together like our love. Also, we are both little kids at heart so this is perfect for us. Reply We kind of did the Wine Lock Box Ceremony just minus the wine. Neither of us are big drinkers so the wine part didn't make sense for us. Instead we filled it with mix CDs, copies of toasts that people were going to do at the reception, and then each year on our anniversary we're going to put some pictures in of what we've done in the past year. We've decided not to read the letters until our 15th anniversary. Reply We're both huge beer snobs, so we're having a "beer making" ceremony, where all our attendants (i.e. closest, dearest friends) will contribute handfuls of grains into a giant bowl, then my fella and I will add the last handfuls, stir them all up, and (later) brew a beer from what has been collected to share with all our friends. We're planning on composing something profound about fermentation and maturation being parallels to the growth of our love to be read while people are mixing. Reply I love this idea! You can have all kinds of symbolism for the hops, the malt, and the grain. Great metaphor for life and partnership!! Reply Thanks for sharing these! One of the most common questions I receive from my brides. Reply Hi guys, well we're christian and we found the unity cross ceremony appealed to both of us. The site defines the different parts as being female and male but I disagreed so I think our pastor is going to make it more about us. Its pretty and we're excited to have it be a part of our decor in our home. But I gotta say the hour glass thing is AWESOME. Reply Sheri, I had never heard of the unity cross ceremony until reading your post. After researching it, it's perfect! (Plus, I think my parents – who are a little sad that we aren't getting married in church – will be a fan). Thanks. Reply We're doing a version of the wine box ceremony (I've seen it called the anniversary box, so that's what we're calling it). I love the science experiments though! So tempting, but I think we have enough meaning and enough length to our ceremony as is. Reply I love some of these ideas, y'all are so amazingly creative! The Dude and I are in talks of mixing some of these together into a cool, nerdy unity ceremony. We were thinking of each making a "cocktail" of what makes us individuals and combining them into a mason jar that we'd seal and keep on display in our home. For example, mine would be made of little buttons and beads, bits of thread, some spices and tea leaves. His would be tiny broken microchips, cut-up Magic the Gathering cards, coiled bits of wires and guitar picks. I'm wondering if this would be really symbolic of our vastly different lives coming together as they have in the past (by then) 10 years, or if it would be something dumb that we'd just end up tossing out with other junk. Reply We are planning a Ring Warming ceremony. The rings will be circulated through all of our seated guests starting with my sister (my mother has passed on) and ending with Mr. D's step-mom. It gives an opportunity for everyone to infuse our rings with their prayers, good wishes and positive energy before we say our vows and exchange rings. We sooo appreciate the support of our loved ones! We are having an intimate wedding of 80 guests max – not sure if this would work for a large wedding. Reply We also did a tree planting for unity! We held our wedding at our home so it was easy to just plant the tree where we wanted it to live. (I don't know how to embed a picture, can someone tell me how?) Reply I know I'm spilling the beans, but what the heck. Mi amor and I are actually doing a color blending mini-ceremony. We'll come in wearing accessories in separate colors (him green tie, me blue gloves). After we exchange vows (but before the kiss), we'll swap out our accessories for blue-green items to show that we are united in spirit but will always maintain our own identities since within the right shade of blue-green you can see each color separately. Reply Love the hour glass idea! We're doing a version of the Hindu seven blessings for our vows, where the couple takes seven steps around a sacred fire and a blessing is read for each step. The wording will have to be changed a little as it's very "the man will provide and the woman will care for the home." One of the blessings is for many healthy children, and we're not crazy about having kids so we'll probably change that one too. My hubby-to-be also wants to do some type of candle ceremony so we'll incorporate that in with the fire I think. Reply glad to see folks catching on to what us Celebrants do!!! this is the good stuff. Reply I've always loved the handfasting ceremonies, but also like the idea of the love letter/wine box as something to have years later… would it be weird/too much to have TWO unity ceremonies? or could one be incorporated somewhere else in the proceedings?… Reply I'm thinking about doing a handfasting using multiple wide ribbons – one from each guest – and giving the guests an opportunity to write messages on their ribbon, and maybe weave them all together. This obviously only works for a small group of guests, but the idea is that they have all contributed to who we are, and we're making a commitment to them as well as to each other, and counting on them to support our relationship. Also, we'll have the ribbons to keep – maybe hang something on the ends to make a windchime? Reply we're having two! but not both during the ceremony. we're doing the sand during the ceremony, but then also the wine box. BUT! there's a twist! each table will have a bottle of wine on it and some gold/silver markers that they can use to write messages on the bottle with, like a guest book. there'll be a little station set up where guests can put the bottle in a numbered box (the same number as their table number), seal it up, and we'll open the box on the corresponding anniversary (so we'll drink table 5's on our fifth anniversary, etc.) our table numbers don't go from 1 -10 though, they're just random numbers that have a special meaning for us (e.g. '16' the day in march we met, '29' the street number of our first home together). You only have this day once so may as well do it however you want!! Reply I'm super late to the party on this post, but I just came across it in the archives. My fiance and I are putting our own spin on the sand ceremony. I'm a geologist, so buying some run-of-the-mill random, colored sand won't do…we're going to get some sand from two states that hold a lot of significance for us — Virginia (because I lived there while we did long distance for 2+ years) and Arizona (where we took our first REAL vacation together). The thought of combining two very different types of sand from two very different geologic areas of the country excites me like you wouldn't believe. 🙂 Reply Amazing! We're both geologists but from hardrock regions in Scotland. There will be some rock-ness in there somewhere but for unity ceremony we'll propably use a quaich, and share a dram. Quaichs or friendship cups are used as symbol of trust and friendship. the bride and groom hold the cup while the other drinks. It can then be used toast the couple, with each person making a toast before having a drink before passing it on. I love the idea that this can bring non family members into the centre of the ceremony 🙂 heres some more backstory: http://kiltmakers.co.uk/scottish-drinking-cup Reply Oh man. I wish we would have thought of the bread breaking ceremony. We were stumped, so we didn't do anything. Scott would have been so excited! Bread is his favorite. Reply We had a unity campfire! We met at a summer camp and had the wedding there, and deciding that was the only thing that really fit us. I even had a ceremonial apron to make sure my dress didn't get dirty while we lit the fire. Reply cool idea withe that volcano 🙂 nice tips indeed..congratulations Reply Love the eternity flower idea – very sweet and simple. We had a take on a handfasting as well as a tasting ceremony. The tasting ceremony (I think an African custom…starts with Y..?) was essentially feeding each other or tasting 4 ingredients which represent married life/ relationship. We had these items ready on a platter in little bowls with spoons. also a jug of water and 2 glasses. Vinegar for the sour times, Lemon for the bitter times, Cayenne pepper for the hot /passion times and Honey for the Sweet times. Great photo opportunties and it was fun. Physical reminder of vows. No-one will ever forget the cayenne pepper!!! lol Reply We are having our ceremony outdoors in my dads backyard, and there is a firepit next to where we will be at. We decided that we are going to use two marshmallow roasting sticks together to roast a marshmallow and have a unity smore. Dorky but delicious. Reply Our twist on both the unity cocktail and the tasting ceremony was to do ritual hot chocolate; each ingredient (cream, chocolate, sugar, spices) had a symbolic meaning, we assembled it together as part of our vows, and then we drank it together. Delicious and very meaningful, and now we have an anniversary tradition! Reply My fiance and I are getting married on Jan 18th and we're thinking we're going to do something similar with the Unity Sand, but we're using marbles! lol I'm such a klutz and we figured if somehow I break the vase marbles are easier to clean up then sand Reply We're going to do an hourglass sand ceremony, with the officiant also pouring sand to symbolize God (as we are Christian). When we have kids an the become old enough to understand, we want them to be able to add their own sand to it too 🙂 in this way, it will symbolize our family becoming closer to God and each other over time. Reply What a cool idea!! We're doing a Ring Warming but I secretly want a Unity Volcano!! Reply these are all very cool ideas we are going to be renewing our vowels next july and i want to do something like this when we do it i really like the sand idea thank you for sharing Reply I love the idea of the scientific water ceremony. Can you tell me what the two chemicals are? Reply Phenolphthalein is a pH tester, it turns purpleish pink when a base is present– FH and I are using this one (after we tried luminol and bleach to make a glowing reaction, it's too fast though…it's just a flash of light)and anything basic would work as your other "water" or clear liquid– ammonia is what we're using. You can order it online– we got ours from United Nuclear for just a few dollars. Reply My FH and I are going to do to this ceremony with the phenolphthalein and pH 10 in water. I work in the pharma industry and this is perfect to "wow" our guests. I am struggling with wording for the ceremony though. Does anyone have any suggestions on what our officiant should say? Reply My fiance and I are both chefs. We met in culinary school, so we're doing some kind of unity ingredient. We still haven't decided which to use… salt and pepper, cinnamon and sugar… there are SO MANY TO CHOOSE FROM!!! Reply We are both huge horror movie buffs… especially zombie movies… And we are having a horror movie sort of theme to the wedding. So we are going to slay a zombie together. Paper mache zombie head. Stuffed with red confetti… hopefully his head will pop just right when we hit him so the confettie blows everywhere! I really like the colored water thing tho, that is pretty cool… I am just not patient enough to figure out how to do it! 😀 Reply We are making a sand globe with our guests. We will pass around an empty globe on a tray with a bowl of sand and a bowl of shells. Each person will be asked to add a scoop of sand and a shell into the sand globe as they make a wish for us. We will each add the final sand and shells. Then it will be sealed up later (after wedding) and we will have a beautiful sand globe of wedding wishes for our home. My wedding favors are small (4") sand globes I made. This idea only works for a small wedding but is perfect for my destination wedding in Costa Rica with about 30 guests. Reply I almost hate to share, because it's so special to me and I don't want it to become super popular (did I mention I'm a closet hipster? lol), but in the spirit of OBB… My intended and I are planning to do a unity-wax-sealing. For my 16th birthday, I got a wax sealing kit (for sealing envelopes with your personal "crest", you know?), and every letter I ever wrote to my man was sealed with wax and my stamp. In our courtship, the Celtic eternity knot has come to mean a lot to us. How does this all combine? During the ceremony, we will have a very cool looking piece of paper with our vows printed on it in a very cool font, and we will mingle two colors of wax at the bottom of the page, sealing it with a Celtic eternity knot stamp. Then we can frame it and hang it in our future home as a reminder. (I can't wait for the hypothetical kiddos to ask about it!) Reply I love it! That sounds very special. Reply my husband and i did our own take on the sand ceremony, using soil from our hometowns. Reply Did you have an issue with the soil afterwards (getting moldy or anything)?!? Love this idea! Reply We did a flower ceremony where we had a vase of roses on a table and each of our four parents had an individual rose which they brought up and gave to us (my parents to my husband, his parents to me) to place into the vase. This was meant to symbolize that instead of us leaving our families, we were all joining to become one family. http://www.flickr.com/photos/xstarsprinklesx/4205798752/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/xstarsprinklesx/4205046691/ Reply Haha, I just realized I already replied to this post 2 years ago. Whoops! =) Reply My dude and I are planning on doing a whiskey ceremony. I found a 1-liter white oak barrel (Amazon, $45). Dude and I will both have 1/2 liter bottles of unaged whiskey that we'll pour into the barrel to be drunk on our first anniversary. Because awesome. Reply Thank you! We are going to do the chemistry unity ceremony — what a great idea! 🙂 Reply Read more comments 1 2 › 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. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. 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. Biz owners & wedding bloggers Please just use your real name in your comment, not your business name or blog title. Our comments are not the place to pimp your website. If you want to promote your stuff on Offbeat Bride, join us as an advertiser instead.
Love these ideas! I'm actually really digging either the water magic or the laying of flowers in an eternity circle. 🙂 Reply
Hello! I love love LOVE the idea of Cat and Andrew's science unity experiment (for lack of a better phrase). My fiance Ken is a math teacher and I was a bio major/statistician, and we both love nerdy and fun things. Would anyone know how this magic (science!) happened? I assume some kind of pH indicator, but I would love to snag it for my own ceremony. Thanks! Reply
O.o We need to do a color-changing water ceremony. This is a thing that needs to happen. We'll probably do something with kitchen-available stuff, though–from what I can tell, the example used phenolphthalein, and while really fun to type and say, I don't have the hookup to get it cheap. We'll probably just boil some red cabbage to get purple liquid, and combine our purple liquid with a clear base to get a pretty green-blue liquid. I'm weird, and I sometimes just do this when I'm bored and have some red cabbage lying around. Reply
Make the "clear liquid" part of your mixture lemon juice or other acidic-spike. This will turn your cabbage juice a lovely pink. Be sure to experiment with different concentrations of acid before hand to zone in on the exact effect you want. Oh, PS – Phenolphthalein will run you about $35 for 100g. Try Fisher Scientific or Restek for suppliers. Reply
Okay, really late to this party, but on another indicator note, you can also get clear to blue, but it isn't instantaneous as the clear to pink with phenolphthalein. If you mix iodine with vitamin C, it will turn clear. In the other vase, pour liquid laundry starch (you could also mix corn starch and water, but it will be cloudy). When you pour the two together, the mixture will take a few minutes to turn blue. Also, I typically find Frey to be the cheapest provider of chemicals & supplies (I am a high school science teacher). Reply
Whats a German Bridal Cup? My fiance is German, I'm Australian, and we're getting married in Vietnam. I keep asking him for ideas on German wedding culture…cause I really want there to be a bit of both of us in our ceremony…but he's a bit hopeless, and doesnt really know any! Reply
I just read about a German bridal cup the other day! There is a historical "story" that goes with the tradition. You can find it easy enough in a google search. Long story short fair maidens wealthy nobleman father did not approve of her love beau, a simple goldsmith, and imprisoned him. That did not ebb her love though so he set a challenge that he was sure could not be met. If it was then they could be wed. Of couse the challenge was met! The challenge was "If your goldsmith can make a chalice from which two people can drink at the same time without spilling one single drop, I will free him and you shall become his bride". Inspired by love and with skillful hands, the young goldsmith created a masterpiece. He sculpted a girl with a smile as beautiful as his own true love's. Her skirt was hollowed to serve as a cup. Her raised arms held a bucket that swivels so that it could be filled and then swung towards a second drinker. Reply
We're doing this too! We're both Germanists (met in our PhD program) and heritage speakers, and while my other half's family is from Northern Germany, this Southern German tradition is definitely appropriate to my family. We're also sawing a log. 🙂 Reply
Thank you for posting! It's really nice to see some of the creative ways other couples are approaching this. Reply
We did an hourglass ceremony. It's a take on the sand ceremony except we have a cooler memento and we will turn it on every anniversary. The idea is that when you put each color of sand in the glass they're inseparable but not entwined. As time continues on the colors become so entwined they are impossible to part. So it's a bit like a salt covenant, too. We liked the idea that it also portrayed the growth within marriage as well, since not a lot of unity ceremonies involve that aspect, but we thought it was important to point out that the best was still to come! I'll scrounge up a picture and see if I can stick it in the flickr pool. Reply
Done! I, er, forgot to add a description, but I'm OBT member Wowjunkie and the pic is a ridiculously tall man in a monkey suit and a chick in a white ball gown with blue pearls pouring sand into a wooden hourglass. Reply
We got ours from heirloomhourglass.com. We ordered our sand from them as well and I Goodwill'ed the holders. Heirloom hourglass seemed to offer the biggest variety of hourglasses we could find, and more importantly the hourglasses close with caps that are screwed on so we could immediately close it and turn (which was important to us – the first mixing of sand) and most of the others we had found you had to send off to have them recapped. They sell all sorts of different end caps so you could customize. I will warn you they're a bit pricey for my taste but ours is beautiful and it was really important to my husband. Oh, and it's totally possible to make your hourglass an actual hourglass but we decided not to drive ourselves crazy and meter it out.
Omg I'm sorry but I'm stealing it. We did plan on doing just a normal sand ceremony but when I read your post it really touched me. (Plus my fiance has a fascination of watches, and the first little gift he gave me was a bottle of red sand because I said I wanted to go to death valley in Nevada) Then when I found a site with the actual reading I started crying as I read it. I love it, and thank you so much for posting it, because now I feel like we have a ceremony that fits when nothing else was. Reply
We will definitely be using this! I've been trying to come up with a good unity ceremony that doesn't involve a candle or alcohol and this is PERFECT. My fiance is black, I'm white, and a lot of our wedding has a theme of the blending of our families and our cultures. The visual representation of the blending is perfect for us. 🙂 Reply
I read the honey one, where they each place honey on each others lips, but I at one time read a "honey and Water" ceremony and the saying something like, let the sweetness of this drink erase the bitterness of your pass etc HELP, I lost the information Reply
I've been toying with the idea of some type of unity ceremony for months but I can't decide what would work best for us and wouldn't be too over the top in our short, simple ceremony (we're already exchanging rings and having a reading on top of vows). They're all cool and fun, which makes picking the right one hard! I like the idea of combining spices, we both like cooking and spicy food but it's not very visually interesting. Or maybe cocktails. We could combine Bailey's and Tia Maria which looks pretty and no one would know but my ex-local bar called it a 'BJ'. 😀 Reply
I totally thought the "Bread Breaking Ceremony" said "Breaking Bad Ceremony". I was all like "wuuuuut! Do they make meth!?" Then I re-read it and it sounds NOMMY. Reply
hahaha!! breaking bad… id love to see someone do that. just too funny. im so glad you posted what you thought it said. thank you Reply
I don't know if this is technically a unity ceremony – but my fiance and I are planning on exchanging love letters that will go in a small bird cage that we'll either open if we come to a point in our marriage where we need to remind each other why we got married, or on our 5th anniversary. (Which ever comes first and hopefully the latter!) Reply
the Lakota have a special jug to drink from as part of their weddings – you can get them hand painted to suit you Reply
My beau and I are big tea-drinkers, so we're going to have a tea ceremony. We'll mix two types of tea and letting it steep while we read our vows. Then we'll pour a cup for each other. Reply
I've seen a painting ceremony where the bride had red and the groom blue. They each painted a side of the canvas, then poured the paints together and painted the center purple. Oh, and the groom tied an apron on his bride before painting to protect her dress — very cute. Reply
In the Hebrew Bible people would exchange shoes to symbolize a covenant . . . I could see that being really neat for a same gender couple as a way to twist a really ancient Judeo-Christian tradition. It could work for a couple of different gender expressions too, but there are more complications! Not to mention, the issue of shoe size! Reply
Usually I find unity ceremonies kind of saccharine and over used. We get it, you're turning two into one that's the whole point of marriage, way to figure it out. That said, I can totally get behind the magic "water" and volcano ceremonies. Not to mention the science flavor is perfect for humanist/atheist ceremonies. Hate to say it, but I might have to jack one of those ideas. Reply
For my husband and I, offbeat Christians, in our faith tradition, communion is the ultimate unity ceremony – as it means union both with God and with our fellow participants. At our wedding, there was communion for the whole congregation, and our first act as a married couple was to bring the bread and wine forward, to serve our community. I loved taking part in the ceremony, because it reminded me that my marriage is a part of a larger community, and those people took part in the wedding and pledged to support us in our marriage. Bringing the bread and wine forward – http://carissabyers.com/p971514465/h356eee2e#h356eee2e Reply
I LOVE this! I've always known we'd have communion during our ceremony, but I never thought of serving it to our guests as well. What a beautiful picture of Christ. That I'm now stealing 😉 Reply
See this is why I'm sometimes jealous of religious couples. So many beautiful, meaningful ceremonies already built in. Reply
Yeah, I'm struggling to find how to fill a secular ceremony with things that are meaningful to us. In the Tribe, there's a secular group with lots of ideas how to make a beautiful non-religious ceremony. Reply
We had a "rose ceremony." It's pretty similar to the sand ceremony, but using a vase of flowers (roses). Two were already in the vase (us), and four others were on the table the vase was on. Each of our four parents came up and took one from the table, with my parents giving theirs to my husband and his parents to me, then us placing the roses into the vase. It was meant to symbolize not just us starting our own family, but of each of us being welcomed into our existing families. Reply
I went to a wedding where the bride and groom soldered together two halves of a copper wire heart, which they later attached to a wooden plaque to hang on their wall. It was adorable, and perfect given the groom has been tinkering around and building electrical stuff since he was a kid. Reply
We're doing a punch ceremony where each of the moms and each of us will have an ingredient to mix together which will make punch that will then be sipped by each of us out of the same goblet during the ceremony and the remainder served at dinner. It will also be our go-to recipe for punch after that. 🙂 Reply
So we are in the process of making a Spin Art Ceremony in which we make a badass spin-art painting. Each of us will use one color and then the paint will spin joyously together like our love. Also, we are both little kids at heart so this is perfect for us. Reply
We kind of did the Wine Lock Box Ceremony just minus the wine. Neither of us are big drinkers so the wine part didn't make sense for us. Instead we filled it with mix CDs, copies of toasts that people were going to do at the reception, and then each year on our anniversary we're going to put some pictures in of what we've done in the past year. We've decided not to read the letters until our 15th anniversary. Reply
We're both huge beer snobs, so we're having a "beer making" ceremony, where all our attendants (i.e. closest, dearest friends) will contribute handfuls of grains into a giant bowl, then my fella and I will add the last handfuls, stir them all up, and (later) brew a beer from what has been collected to share with all our friends. We're planning on composing something profound about fermentation and maturation being parallels to the growth of our love to be read while people are mixing. Reply
I love this idea! You can have all kinds of symbolism for the hops, the malt, and the grain. Great metaphor for life and partnership!! Reply
Hi guys, well we're christian and we found the unity cross ceremony appealed to both of us. The site defines the different parts as being female and male but I disagreed so I think our pastor is going to make it more about us. Its pretty and we're excited to have it be a part of our decor in our home. But I gotta say the hour glass thing is AWESOME. Reply
Sheri, I had never heard of the unity cross ceremony until reading your post. After researching it, it's perfect! (Plus, I think my parents – who are a little sad that we aren't getting married in church – will be a fan). Thanks. Reply
We're doing a version of the wine box ceremony (I've seen it called the anniversary box, so that's what we're calling it). I love the science experiments though! So tempting, but I think we have enough meaning and enough length to our ceremony as is. Reply
I love some of these ideas, y'all are so amazingly creative! The Dude and I are in talks of mixing some of these together into a cool, nerdy unity ceremony. We were thinking of each making a "cocktail" of what makes us individuals and combining them into a mason jar that we'd seal and keep on display in our home. For example, mine would be made of little buttons and beads, bits of thread, some spices and tea leaves. His would be tiny broken microchips, cut-up Magic the Gathering cards, coiled bits of wires and guitar picks. I'm wondering if this would be really symbolic of our vastly different lives coming together as they have in the past (by then) 10 years, or if it would be something dumb that we'd just end up tossing out with other junk. Reply
We are planning a Ring Warming ceremony. The rings will be circulated through all of our seated guests starting with my sister (my mother has passed on) and ending with Mr. D's step-mom. It gives an opportunity for everyone to infuse our rings with their prayers, good wishes and positive energy before we say our vows and exchange rings. We sooo appreciate the support of our loved ones! We are having an intimate wedding of 80 guests max – not sure if this would work for a large wedding. Reply
We also did a tree planting for unity! We held our wedding at our home so it was easy to just plant the tree where we wanted it to live. (I don't know how to embed a picture, can someone tell me how?) Reply
I know I'm spilling the beans, but what the heck. Mi amor and I are actually doing a color blending mini-ceremony. We'll come in wearing accessories in separate colors (him green tie, me blue gloves). After we exchange vows (but before the kiss), we'll swap out our accessories for blue-green items to show that we are united in spirit but will always maintain our own identities since within the right shade of blue-green you can see each color separately. Reply
Love the hour glass idea! We're doing a version of the Hindu seven blessings for our vows, where the couple takes seven steps around a sacred fire and a blessing is read for each step. The wording will have to be changed a little as it's very "the man will provide and the woman will care for the home." One of the blessings is for many healthy children, and we're not crazy about having kids so we'll probably change that one too. My hubby-to-be also wants to do some type of candle ceremony so we'll incorporate that in with the fire I think. Reply
I've always loved the handfasting ceremonies, but also like the idea of the love letter/wine box as something to have years later… would it be weird/too much to have TWO unity ceremonies? or could one be incorporated somewhere else in the proceedings?… Reply
I'm thinking about doing a handfasting using multiple wide ribbons – one from each guest – and giving the guests an opportunity to write messages on their ribbon, and maybe weave them all together. This obviously only works for a small group of guests, but the idea is that they have all contributed to who we are, and we're making a commitment to them as well as to each other, and counting on them to support our relationship. Also, we'll have the ribbons to keep – maybe hang something on the ends to make a windchime? Reply
we're having two! but not both during the ceremony. we're doing the sand during the ceremony, but then also the wine box. BUT! there's a twist! each table will have a bottle of wine on it and some gold/silver markers that they can use to write messages on the bottle with, like a guest book. there'll be a little station set up where guests can put the bottle in a numbered box (the same number as their table number), seal it up, and we'll open the box on the corresponding anniversary (so we'll drink table 5's on our fifth anniversary, etc.) our table numbers don't go from 1 -10 though, they're just random numbers that have a special meaning for us (e.g. '16' the day in march we met, '29' the street number of our first home together). You only have this day once so may as well do it however you want!! Reply
I'm super late to the party on this post, but I just came across it in the archives. My fiance and I are putting our own spin on the sand ceremony. I'm a geologist, so buying some run-of-the-mill random, colored sand won't do…we're going to get some sand from two states that hold a lot of significance for us — Virginia (because I lived there while we did long distance for 2+ years) and Arizona (where we took our first REAL vacation together). The thought of combining two very different types of sand from two very different geologic areas of the country excites me like you wouldn't believe. 🙂 Reply
Amazing! We're both geologists but from hardrock regions in Scotland. There will be some rock-ness in there somewhere but for unity ceremony we'll propably use a quaich, and share a dram. Quaichs or friendship cups are used as symbol of trust and friendship. the bride and groom hold the cup while the other drinks. It can then be used toast the couple, with each person making a toast before having a drink before passing it on. I love the idea that this can bring non family members into the centre of the ceremony 🙂 heres some more backstory: http://kiltmakers.co.uk/scottish-drinking-cup Reply
Oh man. I wish we would have thought of the bread breaking ceremony. We were stumped, so we didn't do anything. Scott would have been so excited! Bread is his favorite. Reply
We had a unity campfire! We met at a summer camp and had the wedding there, and deciding that was the only thing that really fit us. I even had a ceremonial apron to make sure my dress didn't get dirty while we lit the fire. Reply
Love the eternity flower idea – very sweet and simple. We had a take on a handfasting as well as a tasting ceremony. The tasting ceremony (I think an African custom…starts with Y..?) was essentially feeding each other or tasting 4 ingredients which represent married life/ relationship. We had these items ready on a platter in little bowls with spoons. also a jug of water and 2 glasses. Vinegar for the sour times, Lemon for the bitter times, Cayenne pepper for the hot /passion times and Honey for the Sweet times. Great photo opportunties and it was fun. Physical reminder of vows. No-one will ever forget the cayenne pepper!!! lol Reply
We are having our ceremony outdoors in my dads backyard, and there is a firepit next to where we will be at. We decided that we are going to use two marshmallow roasting sticks together to roast a marshmallow and have a unity smore. Dorky but delicious. Reply
Our twist on both the unity cocktail and the tasting ceremony was to do ritual hot chocolate; each ingredient (cream, chocolate, sugar, spices) had a symbolic meaning, we assembled it together as part of our vows, and then we drank it together. Delicious and very meaningful, and now we have an anniversary tradition! Reply
My fiance and I are getting married on Jan 18th and we're thinking we're going to do something similar with the Unity Sand, but we're using marbles! lol I'm such a klutz and we figured if somehow I break the vase marbles are easier to clean up then sand Reply
We're going to do an hourglass sand ceremony, with the officiant also pouring sand to symbolize God (as we are Christian). When we have kids an the become old enough to understand, we want them to be able to add their own sand to it too 🙂 in this way, it will symbolize our family becoming closer to God and each other over time. Reply
these are all very cool ideas we are going to be renewing our vowels next july and i want to do something like this when we do it i really like the sand idea thank you for sharing Reply
Phenolphthalein is a pH tester, it turns purpleish pink when a base is present– FH and I are using this one (after we tried luminol and bleach to make a glowing reaction, it's too fast though…it's just a flash of light)and anything basic would work as your other "water" or clear liquid– ammonia is what we're using. You can order it online– we got ours from United Nuclear for just a few dollars. Reply
My FH and I are going to do to this ceremony with the phenolphthalein and pH 10 in water. I work in the pharma industry and this is perfect to "wow" our guests. I am struggling with wording for the ceremony though. Does anyone have any suggestions on what our officiant should say? Reply
My fiance and I are both chefs. We met in culinary school, so we're doing some kind of unity ingredient. We still haven't decided which to use… salt and pepper, cinnamon and sugar… there are SO MANY TO CHOOSE FROM!!! Reply
We are both huge horror movie buffs… especially zombie movies… And we are having a horror movie sort of theme to the wedding. So we are going to slay a zombie together. Paper mache zombie head. Stuffed with red confetti… hopefully his head will pop just right when we hit him so the confettie blows everywhere! I really like the colored water thing tho, that is pretty cool… I am just not patient enough to figure out how to do it! 😀 Reply
We are making a sand globe with our guests. We will pass around an empty globe on a tray with a bowl of sand and a bowl of shells. Each person will be asked to add a scoop of sand and a shell into the sand globe as they make a wish for us. We will each add the final sand and shells. Then it will be sealed up later (after wedding) and we will have a beautiful sand globe of wedding wishes for our home. My wedding favors are small (4") sand globes I made. This idea only works for a small wedding but is perfect for my destination wedding in Costa Rica with about 30 guests. Reply
I almost hate to share, because it's so special to me and I don't want it to become super popular (did I mention I'm a closet hipster? lol), but in the spirit of OBB… My intended and I are planning to do a unity-wax-sealing. For my 16th birthday, I got a wax sealing kit (for sealing envelopes with your personal "crest", you know?), and every letter I ever wrote to my man was sealed with wax and my stamp. In our courtship, the Celtic eternity knot has come to mean a lot to us. How does this all combine? During the ceremony, we will have a very cool looking piece of paper with our vows printed on it in a very cool font, and we will mingle two colors of wax at the bottom of the page, sealing it with a Celtic eternity knot stamp. Then we can frame it and hang it in our future home as a reminder. (I can't wait for the hypothetical kiddos to ask about it!) Reply
We did a flower ceremony where we had a vase of roses on a table and each of our four parents had an individual rose which they brought up and gave to us (my parents to my husband, his parents to me) to place into the vase. This was meant to symbolize that instead of us leaving our families, we were all joining to become one family. http://www.flickr.com/photos/xstarsprinklesx/4205798752/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/xstarsprinklesx/4205046691/ Reply
My dude and I are planning on doing a whiskey ceremony. I found a 1-liter white oak barrel (Amazon, $45). Dude and I will both have 1/2 liter bottles of unaged whiskey that we'll pour into the barrel to be drunk on our first anniversary. Because awesome. Reply