Little, Meaningful Details To Personalize Your Wedding and Tell Your Love Story (13 Examples)
It is so darn easy to get caught up in all the wedding day details! Do these flowers go with those linens? What signs do I need to put up? What dress will match the color scheme? All these details are important but many times, the details that tell your love story are overlooked.
Your wedding should tell your love story - whether it's a virtual, small or big wedding. Let it be special for both you and your fiancé. It's not the easiest to figure out how to portray who you are as a couple, so where do you start? Ask yourselves questions like, "What are our favorite hobbies? What do we like to do together? Do we collect anything? What's our song? Who are we as a couple?" These types of questions will help guide some of the tiniest details that can enhance your wedding day!
In this blog post, I'll go through how my husband and I incorporated details to tell our love story throughout our wedding to inspire you with ideas and examples. To listen us talk about it in full detail, check out the wedding podcast by clicking here. Please subscribe and rate when you can! I super appreciate it!
1. My husband loves Marvel (Avengers specifically) and comic books.
To pay tribute to his nerdy love for Marvel Avengers, I paid a friend to sketch a comic strip of our love story from when we first met all the way to our wedding day. It was a simple snapshot and we changed out a few of the Marvel words like "Infinity War" to "Infinity Love" and he absolutely loved it! After he opened it as his day-of gift, we displayed it at the reception.
2. Our song was "Fall 5.0" by Brian McKnight because this was the song Brian McKnight closed with on the night my husband asked me to be his girlfriend. We asked our friend to play it on the keys as I walked down the aisle. It had us flashing back to when we first become officially boyfriend and girlfriend. Do you both have a song that someone can play instrumentally as you walk down the aisle?
3. Our ceremony location was the first church we attended as a couple. After the ceremony, we decided to replace the traditional "rice toss" with lavender instead because I love the smell of lavender and it's eco-friendly!
4. For our reception entrance songs, we chose songs that meant something to us rather than what was trending.
Song for our sponsors and parents entering: "Let's Groove" by Earth, Wind, & Fire. We grew up listening to this song at family parties and our parents love it!
Song for our bridal party entering: "Feelin' Myself" by Mac Dre. We love the hyphy culture (our hash tag was #HyphylyEverHernandez and if you don't know, hyphy is a Bay Area thing) so this song was hella fitting
Song for us enterting: "Who Do You Love?" by YG - definitely not because of the lyrics hahaha, but this was a song that we always danced to during our party days
5. We added a little flair to our welcome sign. We changed the language to "Hafa Adai" which in Chamorro means "hello". It's equivalent to saying "Aloha". I was born and raised in Guam so it was important for me to incorporate a touch of Guam somehow.
6. My husband loves playing Halo. But how could we add it to the wedding without being tacky? Enter: Wedding Cake Topper. I found this one on Etsy so we were able to customize it to the tiniest detail like having the artist paint his favorite beer on there: Samuel Adams Boston Lager. It was so fitting about us as a couple and how I try to take him away from his video games. =P
7. My husband's favorite sweets are gummy bears and Sour Patch Kids watermelon flavor and my favorite are s'mores and Meiji Chocorooms. We decided to add these to our seating cards which doubled as favors. In this box that you see below, we circled the Matt or Ame depending on whose favorite it was. It almost acted like a mystery treat box for our guests!
8. We both love to dance and go hyphy in the club, in the kitchen, in the car... pretty much wherever. We decided to do a groomsmen vs bridesmaids dance battle with songs that consisted of early 00's to today's hits that has dance trends associated with them. Some songs were "Right Thurr" by Chingy to "Tell Me When to Go" by E-40 to "Boy" by P-Lo. It was insane!
9. We surprised our guests with fireworks, but in the background, we made it extra special for us by playing our song, "Fall 5.0" by Brian McKnight as mentioned previously. It felt like a dream for us tying everything altogether.
10. I surprised my husband with a fully choreographed Beyoncé set with my dance team. I love Bey and my closest friends know I've always been a huge fan! When I was in my teen years, I always imagined doing a whole Beyonce set for my husband to be. I ended up dancing this set with my dance team from Oakland and I am forever appreciative for them helping me execute this vision!
11. Our favorite part was writing individual notes for our guests. We wrote a total of 225 personalized notes. As you can see below, these weren't simple thank you notes, but more detailed messages. So many guests loved the personal touch for them and making them feel special. It's always been important for us to make our loved ones feel cared for. Our hands cramped and it took days, but it was so worth it!
12. We wanted to make sure that we included our family and friends who have passed away. We've lost some really close friends and family throughout our journey (two of them within the three months before the wedding) and it was important for us to honor them somehow. We created this frame and displayed it at the ceremony and reception.
13. We opted out of the traditional garter and bouquet toss, and asked married couples to slow dance instead. We played, "Marry Me" by Train and watched all married couples dance. Our emcee would call out, "If you've been married for a year or less, please sit down...2 years or less... 5 years or less...10 years or less..." until the last married couple standing is the couple who has been married the longest. The last couple standing were my in-laws so I gave my new mother-in-law my bouquet and my father-in-law shared insider tips on how to last as long as they did! We had married couples coming up to us tearing up because they haven't slow danced like that in a while. It was super sweet and meaningful.
We received a ton of feedback from our family and friends saying, "That wedding was so you guys!" "I was happy to see the classy side of both of you, but also the hyphy side." "I really felt like I learned more about your love story as a couple." We loved hearing all of this because that was so important to us! We wanted our guests to feel our love and our story.
Whether you are hosting a virtual, big or small wedding, you can always personalize it in different ways to make it your own. Some guests may overlook these details, but if it's meaningful to the both of you, you both will feel it on your wedding day and that's what matters! Take what you both love as individuals and as a couple and tie them altogether on your special day. Happy planning, party people!
Please feel free to share this with anyone you know is getting married and tune into my podcast episode to hear more. :)
With love & confetti,
Ame
