Your wedding should feel like an extension of your life—not a performance of what a wedding is supposed to be.
I never expected to have slacklining at one of my events. And yet, there we were.
Near the end of the planning process, my couple mentioned that they were planning to have slacklining and juggling at their wedding. I’ll admit: I was hesitant. It wasn’t something I had any personal experience with and it’s certainly not something I would consider a typical wedding activity. My first mental image was of people trying to balance on a line after a beer or two while I stood nearby wondering how many ways this could go wrong. Part of my job as a planner is to consider any and all safety implications so naturally my that’s where I went.
What I didn’t know yet was that nearly a third of their guests were slackliners themselves. This wasn’t a random activity the couple had found online because they wanted their wedding to feel “unique.” Slacklining and juggling were part of their lives. They were things these friends did together, as a community, long before there was a wedding.
And once I understood that, everything changed.
It didn't feel like an activity that had been added to fill a gap in the timeline. It felt like their people being their people. The bride had even hand-painted flowers onto the anchors. A detail that could have seemed completely random in another wedding was suddenly beautiful and deeply meaningful because it belonged to them.
Meaningful doesn't always look traditional.
Sometimes it looks like a beautifully set dinner table. Sometimes it looks like a family recipe or a song your dad has played for twenty years. And sometimes it looks like a bunch of your friends balancing on a piece of webbing in the middle of your wedding reception.
You don't have to make your wedding meaningful by adding more personalized details just for the sake of personalization. You can start by looking at the life you already have.
What do you and your friends/family do together? What communities are you part of? What makes your people light up? What would feel completely normal at a Saturday afternoon with your closest friends, even if it feels completely out of place on a traditional wedding inspiration board?
Those are the things worth making room for. Because the goal isn't to have the most unique wedding.
It's to stop trying to have a normal one.
