Your wedding day is a momentous occasion, a celebration of your unique love story and the life you’re building together. For couples choosing a humanist wedding, the beauty lies in its freedom – the opportunity to craft a personalised wedding that truly reflects your values and personalities, without religious doctrine. This doesn’t mean you have to forgo all traditions! In fact, a humanist wedding offers a wonderful canvas to thoughtfully incorporate meaningful traditions and symbolic rituals, giving them new life and personal significance.
At Humanist Ceremonies, our celebrants are experts in helping you create a non-religious ceremony that is both authentic and deeply moving. We believe in celebrating love in a way that feels genuine to you, and that includes exploring how traditions can be adapted and embraced within a humanist framework.
The Role of Rituals
Rituals, in their essence, are acts that hold symbolic meaning. They can connect us to our past, represent our present commitments, and signify our hopes for the future. In a humanist wedding, you have the exciting opportunity to choose rituals that resonate with your personal story, cultural backgrounds, and shared values, or even create your own, which totally reflect the two of you! Your humanist wedding celebrant will work closely with you to understand what’s important to you and help you weave these elements seamlessly into your ceremony.
Here are some popular traditions and rituals that can be beautifully incorporated into a humanist wedding ceremony:
Handfasting: Tying the Knot
Handfasting is an ancient custom, dating back to Celtic traditions, where the couple’s hands are tied together with ribbons or cords. Historically, it was used for many kinds of legal commitment, and is where the term ‘binding agreement’ comes from. Modern weddings, however, it beautifully and very visually symbolises the joining of two lives, intentions, and futures.
How to Include a Handfasting: Your celebrant can guide you through the handfasting during the ceremony, explaining the symbolism, why you may have chosen different coloured ribbons perhaps to represent specific qualities of your relationship.
Family members or close friends can also participate by presenting and tying a ribbon, each offering their hopes for your union. You can also choose to keep the tied ribbons as a keepsake of your special day.
Walking Down the Aisle: Starting Your Journey Together
The tradition of walking down the aisle is often seen as symbolic of the journey towards marriage. However, traditional interpretations can feel exclusionary. In a humanist wedding, you have the freedom to approach this moment in a way that feels most authentic and inclusive:
- Walking Together, symbolising your equal partnership and the journey you are embarking on as a united front.
- Walking with Both Parents (or Chosen Family), honouring the support and love you have received from all those who have shaped your lives.
- Walking Solo, representing your individuality and strength as you step forward into this new chapter.
Your celebrant can help you choreograph this moment to reflect your values and relationships.
Sand Blending: Creating a Lasting Symbol of Unity
The sand blending ceremony is a visually beautiful ritual that represents the joining of two individuals into one unified entity. Each partner pours sand of a different colour into a single vessel, creating a unique and irreversible layered blend. Family and friends can also be included.
Make it Personal:
- Include Children: If you have children, you can involve them in the sand blending to symbolise the blending of two families, or the cementing of your family unit.
- Choose Meaningful Colours: Select sand colours that hold personal significance, perhaps representing your favourite colours or elements of your shared history.
- A Keepsake: The finished vessel becomes a beautiful keepsake, a visual reminder of your wedding day and the blending of your lives.
Chinese Tea Ceremony: Celebrating Family and Heritage
The Chinese Tea Ceremony is a ritual that traditionally involves the couple serving tea to their elders, symbolising respect, gratitude, and the formal introduction of the families.
A tea ceremony can be seamlessly integrated into a humanist ceremony, focusing on the love and respect between families without religious connotations. As seen in Tasha and Raef’s humanist wedding ceremony, their celebrant helped them honour this tradition in a way that felt authentic to them, both as individuals and as a couple committed to equality.
Photographer: Amy Faith Photography
Other Ideas to Personalise Your Ceremony:
- Tree Planting: Symbolising growth and your shared future, this can also be a nod to the shared values of care for the natural world.
- Jumping the Broom The practice of “broomstick weddings” is recorded in parts of Wales and England during the 18th century, when couples would jump over a branch of flowering broom, either together, or one by one – first the groom followed by the bride – to signify their commitment to each other. It’s also documented as a wedding ritual amongst enslaved people in the United States during the mid 1800s when they were often denied the possibility of a legal marriage. Today, couples choose jumping the broom for its links to their heritage and histories. Mercedes jumped the broom during her wedding to Nurkanat. Read their story here.
Your humanist celebrant will be on hand to help you create a ceremony that is truly yours. They’ll listen to your ideas, offer suggestions, and help you include rituals that feel authentic and meaningful to you.
To understand more about what to expect, you can read our blog post: What is a humanist wedding?
Your wedding ceremony is a reflection of your love and commitment. By thoughtfully including traditions and rituals that resonate with you, guided by your humanist wedding celebrant, you can create a personalised wedding that is both deeply meaningful and uniquely yours.
Click here to find a celebrant near you.
Image of handfasting: Sawyer and Sawyer Photography
