If you’re considering a nontraditional wedding, you’ve probably gone through the list of supposed-to-dos and feel more obligated than excited.
You can love weddings and still reach a point in planning where you start wondering who decided they needed so many requirements. Maybe you’ve always pictured walking down an aisle lined with roses or already know exactly what song you want for your first dance. Those choices usually come easily because they already mean something to you.
The harder ones are the traditions you keep adding to the plan because everyone is telling you you’ll regret not having them. Suddenly, you’re researching matching getting-ready pajamas and wondering when you became a person with opinions about coordinated sleepwear.
Start with the parts you already know you care about. The things you want to do without anyone convincing you to care. The dinner you keep talking about, seeing each other at the aisle, the white dress, your sister giving a speech. Whatever those things are, protect them first.
What Does “Nontraditional Wedding” Even Mean?
A nontraditional wedding has less to do with how unusual the day looks and more to do with the reasoning behind the choices.
You can keep a ceremony, have first dances, serve a formal dinner, and follow traditions that have been part of weddings forever. None of those choices make the day less personal. They belong because you chose them on purpose.
The same goes for the things you decide to change. Maybe the usual version of a tradition doesn’t fit the way you want the day to move, or you’ve found a version that feels more natural for the two of you.
That’s where I think a nontraditional wedding can get really fun.
They leave room for a wedding to have its own logic. The schedule can make sense for the way you want to spend your time, and the traditions can reflect the relationships they’re connected to. Even the choices that surprise people at first make perfect sense once they know you.
I love walking into a wedding and thinking, “Oh, of course they did it this way, that’s so them.” That feeling tells me far more about a couple than how unconventional the wedding looks from the outside.
A Nontraditional Wedding Starts With What You Care About
Before wedding planning starts filling every open inch of your calendar, figure out which parts of a traditional wedding you care about enough to protect. For my couple, Cathryn and Jake, they knew photography was their priority. Photography was never going to be another box they checked off the wedding list.
We talked about a fashion-forward point of view. Cathryn wanted the photographs to feel connected, like each one belonged to the same story. She also wanted enough breathing room for me to follow an idea when something interesting happened or spend a little longer making a photograph. Because we knew that early, we could leave room for it instead of trying to squeeze creativity into whatever minutes were left.
Film was part of that priority too. Cathryn wanted it mixed throughout the gallery because she loved the softer, slightly imperfect way it holds a moment. It gave us another way to photograph the day that felt a little more textured and a little less polished in the best way.
Once you know what you care about most, a lot of the smaller decisions get easier. Start with the parts you already have opinions about. What are you already excited to experience?
If you already know dinner is the part of the night you’ll want to linger over, don’t build a timeline that keeps pulling you away from it. If you’ve been thinking about your wedding look since before you booked a venue, give yourself enough time to enjoy wearing it. Start protecting those pieces first.
See more of my film photography on my portfolio!
Before You Add It to the Timeline, Ask Why
Wedding planning sometimes makes certain choices sound mandatory once you’ve seen them repeated enough times. Getting-ready photos, formal dances, or cutting the cake can quietly make their way onto the timeline before you’ve stopped to think about whether you care about doing them at all.
Before you add another tradition to the timeline, picture what that part of the day would actually feel like. Who do you want around while you’re getting ready? What do you want it to feel like when you see each other for the first time? That usually tells you more than a checklist ever will.
You may end up following the tradition exactly as you’ve always pictured. You may also find that changing the format fits you much better.
Small choices like these can change the entire rhythm of a wedding. These are a few I think are worth questioning before they become automatic.
Getting Ready Photos
If matching pajamas with your girlfriends sounds fun to you, please wear the matching pajamas! I can’t wait to see them!
What I don’t want is for your wedding morning to turn into a collection of scenes everyone feels like they’re supposed to recreate for the camera. You don’t need to redo your lipstick because I walked in five minutes late or organize a champagne toast nobody was planning to have.
Think about how you’d spend that morning if there weren’t photographs to check off. If there’s a tradition you’re excited about, keep it. If you’re only doing it because you think I need the photo, I probably don’t.
A Wedding Party
Cathryn and Jake skipped a formal wedding party, but their closest friends were still woven into the morning. Jake got ready with his friends around him, which gave those hours the same easy energy they would’ve had any other day they were all together.
Cathryn kept her morning quieter. Because photography mattered so much to her, we left room after she was ready to make portraits without rushing through them. We had time to play with the light and make portraits that felt very her.
When you’re deciding whether you want a wedding party, think less about how many people should stand beside you and more about how you want the morning to feel. Who do you want in the room while you’re getting dressed? Do you picture a full room and a lot of energy, or something slower with only a few people?
Your friends don’t need a formal title to be part of the wedding. They can still get ready with you, be a part of portraits, give a speech, or show up throughout the day in ways that feel natural to your relationships.
A Formal First Look
Cathryn and Jake knew they wanted the first time they saw each other to be at opposite ends of the aisle. They had been picturing that moment, so we planned their portraits for during cocktail hour and built the timeline around that choice from the beginning.
Full-day coverage and a second photographer gave us plenty of flexibility. We had time to photograph the two of them together, then they headed back to cocktail hour with most of it left to spend with their guests.
A first look can be wonderful if you want that first moment to be between only the two of you, or if you want a quiet moment together before your ceremony. Whatever you want that first moment to feel like, tell your photographer early. We can build portraits around the light and your coverage so that first moment still happens the way you pictured it.
Having a Cake
Dessert doesn’t have to come with its own formal moment, and it definitely doesn’t have to be cake.
Maybe you want ice cream because that’s what you got on your first date, or donuts from the place you stop at every Sunday morning. Pick something you actually love eating, or that already has a place in your relationship.
If that happens to be a giant wedding cake, perfect. If nobody would choose cake on any other night of your life, I don’t think your wedding needs to be the exception.
A First Dance or Parent Dances
A first dance can be sweet. It can also be two minutes of feeling as awkward as possible because it doesn’t feel like you.
You don’t have to do one just because it’s usually the thing that happens after dinner. Maybe you’d rather have everyone come straight onto the dance floor with you, or skip the formal dances altogether and get the party moving.
Parent dances can be the same way. If dancing with your dad is a moment you’ve been thinking about for years, obviously I want you to have it. If standing in the middle of the room for a formal dance doesn’t feel anything like your relationship, there’s no reason to manufacture the moment.
Some people will keep every dance. Others will keep one. Some will skip the whole thing. I care way more that the reception feels like yours than whether we checked off the traditional order.
The Grand Exit
Instead of a sparkler-lined aisle and jumping into a vintage car at the end of the night, Cathryn and Jake ended their reception with one giant group photo. Everyone who had filled the dance floor crowded together for one last frame, which felt like a very fitting way to wrap up the evening.
I loved that the final moment involved the people who had been part of the celebration from beginning to end. By that point, everyone had been dancing for hours, and nobody was concerned with standing perfectly for the camera. The photograph has the kind of energy you only get at the end of a really good night.
When you think about how your own reception will end, picture the moment you’d be excited to experience after the last song. Maybe you want a sparkler exit or everyone throwing flower petals as you wave goodbye. A quieter ending might mean staying behind for one last dance as husband and wife once the room has emptied. Pick the ending you’d actually be excited to experience, not only the one you’ve seen photographed a hundred times.
A Nontraditional Wedding Can Have a Different Timeline, Too
Once you’ve decided which traditions belong in the day, you can look at the order they’re happening in too.
Your ceremony doesn’t have to be followed by an hour of portraits because that’s where portraits usually go. Maybe you want to take them later when the light gets golden so you can spend most of cocktail hour with your guests. You could share private vows earlier in the day, have cocktails waiting before the ceremony, or let dinner stretch a little longer before anyone picks up a microphone.
I care less about whether your timeline looks traditional on paper and more about what it lets you experience once you’re actually living it.
If you keep getting to one part of the schedule and thinking, but I don’t want to leave dinner for that, or I’d rather be at cocktail hour, pay attention to that. We can usually move things around.
You don’t need to rearrange the day just to make it different. Change it when the new version sounds more like a wedding you’d actually want to be at.
Nontraditional Wedding Ideas Work Best When They Make Sense for You
The unique wedding ideas I remember most make complete sense for the couple behind them. You don’t need to search for something nobody has ever done before. Look at your own life and the things you already care about. That’s usually where the ideas with the most personality are hiding.
Cathryn and Jake made choices throughout the day that could only really belong to them. None of it came across like they were trying to make the day different just for the sake of being different. Everything fit naturally once you understood who they were and what they wanted their guests to experience.
That specificity gives the wedding its own point of view.
When you’re planning, pay attention to the ideas that give you butterflies or make your friends say, that makes so much sense. Those reactions are worth listening to, and they usually point toward something that already belongs in your world.
Get Married Somewhere That Already Means Something
Cathryn and Jake got married on property that had been in Cathryn’s family for decades. Their guests already knew the land. There were memories there long before anyone set up chairs for a ceremony.
I got to walk through the property before the wedding, which I loved. My brain starts looking for photos pretty quickly when I’m somewhere new, so I paid attention to how the light moved and started clocking spots I wanted to come back to with them later.
A place with history gives the day a layer you don’t have to manufacture. Maybe that’s family property, or maybe it’s somewhere you’ve returned to enough times that it already feels like yours.
You can feel that familiarity in the photographs because nobody has to make the place mean something. It already does. Years from now, you’ll recognize more than the backdrop. You’ll remember why that particular place mattered enough to gather everyone there.
Lean Into the Place Without Turning It Into a Theme
Since Cathryn and Jake lived on the East Coast, a lot of their guests traveled to Austin from outside Texas for their destination wedding, so they brought beer burros into the cocktail hour. It gave everyone a very Texas welcome without asking the whole wedding to suddenly become a theme.
The burros wandered through the party carrying drinks while guests stopped to pet them, which was obviously a hit. I mean, a donkey delivering beer at cocktail hour is going to get people’s attention.
When you’re thinking about your own location, look at what you already love about the place and borrow from that. Something your guests can actually experience will usually stick with them more than another decorative nod to where you are.
You only need a few details that feel intentional. Cathryn and Jake didn’t need cowboy hats on every chair for everyone to remember they spent the weekend in Texas. I’m pretty sure the beer-carrying donkey handled that part just fine.
Get the Classic Portraits, Then Leave Room to Play
Cathryn cared a lot about having photos that felt like more than just documentation at her nontraditional wedding. She showed me the kind of work she was drawn to, then trusted me enough to follow an idea when I saw one.
That didn’t mean we skipped the photographs everyone expects, though. I want the family portrait your parents will frame, or the two of you looking at the camera with perfect lighting.
Then I want you to trust me to do what you hired me for.
Sometimes that means I notice a weird patch of light across the room and pull you away for five minutes because I already have a photograph forming in my head. Other times, something starts happening on its own, and the best thing I can do is leave it alone.
The classic photographs and the one-of-a-kind ones can live in the same gallery. We will have time for both, so let your photographer notice the things you never would’ve known to put on a shot list.
Hire Vendors You Trust Enough to Let Them Work
From my first call with Cathryn and her mom, we clicked. They understood how I saw nontraditional weddings, and I understood the feeling Cathryn wanted the day to have. By the time the wedding arrived, there was already enough trust between us that she wasn’t spending the day wondering what I was photographing.
That kind of connection matters so, so much.
Your photographer is around for some weirdly intimate hours of your life. You should be able to forget they’re working without ever wondering whether they’re paying attention.
For Cathryn, that meant I had room to notice when the light changed or follow something happening nearby that caught my eye. She knew I understood what mattered to her, so photography wasn’t another part of the wedding she needed to keep checking on.
That’s the feeling I’d look for when you’re hiring the people responsible for the parts of the day you care about most. Pay attention to whether you feel understood or like you’re being walked through someone else’s usual process.
Trust gives good vendors room to notice the things you couldn’t have planned for.
Questions to Ask Yourself Before Following a Tradition for Your Nontraditional Wedding
When a tradition starts taking up time, money, or space in your plans, I think it’s worth figuring out why you want it there. Maybe you’ve pictured that moment for years, or maybe it matters because of someone you love. Those are both very good reasons to make room for it.
Here are the questions I’d use to cut through the noise:
- Would I choose this if I’d never seen another couple do it?
- Does this tradition mean something to either of us?
- How do I want to feel while this is happening?
- Am I excited to give part of the wedding day to this?
- Would I miss experiencing this, or only miss having the photo?
If you’ve imagined having photos of your dad seeing you in your wedding dress for years, I already understand why that moment matters. If your family has been talking about one tradition since the engagement, that carries weight too.
The ones you’re already emotionally invested in become pretty easy to recognize once you stop treating every wedding tradition as if it arrived with mandatory paperwork.
The wedding gets a lot easier to shape when you know which moments you’d be genuinely sad to miss.
What to Look for in a Nontraditional Wedding Photographer
If you’re planning a nontraditional wedding, look for a photographer who is curious about why you’re making the choices you are, not someone waiting to fit your day into the timeline they use every Saturday.
Start by looking through full galleries. You want to know they can photograph the portraits you’ll want framed years from now, but pay attention to everything happening around those photographs too. What are the guests doing? Do the reception images still feel considered once the lights go down? Are there strange little frames you wouldn’t have thought to ask for but suddenly can’t stop looking at?
I’d also ask how much direction they give. Documentary wedding photography doesn’t mean your photographer disappears into a corner and hopes something good happens. There are moments when I’m going to step in, move you toward better light, or give you enough direction to get us into a flow. Then there are moments when whatever is happening in front of me is far more interesting than anything I could set up.
Most importantly, pay attention to whether you feel understood. If you tell a photographer you’re skipping a wedding party, saving your first look for the aisle, or leaving extra time in the day because photography matters to you, their job shouldn’t be to convince you back into their usual formula.
Your wedding may not look like the last one they photographed. It shouldn’t have to.
Find someone whose work you already trust and whose approach gives your plans room to stay yours. Then, when the wedding comes around, you can stop wondering whether every moment made it onto a shot list and go be in it.
Hire a Photographer Who Understands Your Version of a Nontraditional Wedding
By the time your wedding arrives, you’ve probably made a lot of decisions about what you want to keep, what you want to change, and what you want to make completely your own. Your photographer should understand why those choices matter to you.
I want to know which traditions you’ve been excited about for years and where you decided to do things differently. It tells me where to pay attention and when to leave a moment alone.
Once the day starts, I don’t want you thinking about whether I got the photo or wondering what I’m doing across the room. You’ve already told me what matters and hired me because you trust the way I see things. At that point, I want you experiencing everything you spent all this time planning.
A nontraditional wedding can look a hundred different ways. Yours should feel recognizable to the people who know you best.
If you’re creating the kind of wedding that already has your friends saying, of course you two are doing that, I’d love to hear what you’re planning.
Vendors
Photographer: Colette Elyse Photography
Planner: Valerie Miller Events
Hair & Makeup: Bonita Brides
Dress: Danielle Frankle Studio
Ring Designer: Serpentine Jewels
Band: Royal Dukes Band
Cake: Waxler Cake Co.
