The concept of weddings came from exchanging your daughter with a dowry for status, land or livestock. As time passed, the focus of weddings shifted to lifelong love and the strengthening of a partnership.

While a growing demographic of couples aren’t getting married, others still see a wedding as the pinnacle of declaring your love for your partner.

With the world becoming ever more attached to social media, weddings are becoming a commodity for planners to sell. The perfect bouquet and a perfect venue become more important than the reason for the wedding itself.

Image Credit: SLAB Jewellery

Fortunately, the alternative wedding scene is growing, and it isn’t luring couples into the trap of debt for the perfect day.

Alternative weddings further diverge from the patriarchal idea of marriage and open this ceremony to people who want to celebrate differently.

The Clothing

Wedding dresses were not always white. In medieval times, for example, brides would wear their nicest dress or their only dress on their wedding day. Back then, it was impractical to make a dress that you would only wear once. Especially one that would get dirty so easily.

Dresses stayed in practical colours and styles until Queen Victoria married Prince Albert in 1840, wearing a lacy white dress. As the queen of the British Empire, her wedding was widely publicised, which started the trend of a white wedding dress.

White wedding dresses also symbolised the bride’s virginal purity.

Despite attitudes towards virginity and premarital sex changing, wedding dresses are still white due to their iconicity and deep-rooted tradition.

Image Credit: Rock My Wedding

Alternative weddings have been moving away from this, giving spouses the choice to wear what they desire. The go-to dress for alternative weddings is black, but it doesn’t end there. Dresses with gradients or florals are becoming a regular occurence, with many seeing them as beautiful and imaginative.

Spouses who don’t want to wear dresses aren’t pigeonholed into wearing a suit. A steampunk outfit can look formal and unique to make your wedding your own, or a leather jacket and dress trousers – whatever makes you feel powerful.

The Venue

As society becomes less religious, church weddings are not everyone’s first choice for a venue.

Image Credit: IZO Photography / Offbeat Wed

Gothic castles tick all the boxes for an alternative wedding. The architecture, atmosphere and location create an eerie but welcoming feeling for those in attendance.

However, non-traditional venues give more freedom with decor. Cave, barn and boat weddings are appearing on the radar and with good reason.

The ‘Wedding March’ no longer needs to play when walking down the aisle. Some couples have chosen instrumentals from video game soundtracks, Elvis tracks and even the Jurassic Park theme.

Themes

Have you ever seen a wedding that was inspired by The Shining?

Spouses Mindy and David got married in The Stanley Hotel, which inspired Stephen King’s famous novel. Their centrepieces focused on blood red roses, silver candelabras and black goblets.

Image Credit: Matt Alberts Photography

The venue and theme of a wedding go hand in hand. With a gothic castle, a theme revolving around gothic literature or horror stories fits perfectly.

For a cave wedding, themes like subterranean flora and fauna or the Greek underworld match the jagged walls and low light.

What Weddings Can Be

The wedding industry is arguably becoming more focused on “Instagrammable” moments than the love and connection within a relationship.

Influencers and trends have been pushing people to overspend on a wedding that they didn’t want in the first place.

The alternative scene has thrived on embracing your true self and not conforming to popular aesthetics because of expectations from others. People who live alternative lifestyles don’t follow the herd and have a big white wedding; they go by their own rules and make their wedding their own. That is the true beauty of alternative weddings.

Featured Image Credit: Vicki Clayson Photography