Ideas to Prioritize Mindfulness in Your Wedding Ceremony

Here are a few ideas we incorporated and our personal wedding script excerpts that featured these concepts in action.

1. Unplugged Ceremony and Social Media Moment

I know what you’re thinking. Unplugged ceremony in 2023? Groundbreaking. But this was just step one in creating a distraction-free zone. Instead of having an “unplugged ceremony” sign on display while guests are trickling in, we opted to have our officiant make the request at the top of the ceremony, but with a caveat. Before asking everyone to silence and put away their phones, our officiant called for a ‘social media moment’ where Ryan and I posed for photos and videos taken by our guests. This helped the rest of the ceremony remain unplugged and distraction-free because everyone had gotten that itch out of the way early! And it helped break the ice for us to get comfortable with some laughs and smiles after Ryan and I were sobbing our way down the aisle. Win-win. 

Did this tactic stop my dad from recording the entire ceremony on his phone from the front row? No, but it was a solid try. Dads will be dads.

Officiant: Thank you all for being here today to witness these two beautiful humans and their union together. We’re gonna begin this with a few orders of business.

First I’d like to call for an insta moment. If you’d like to have a photo on your phone of this wonderful couple on the brink of marriage please do so now. Because after this moment I’d like us to refrain from having our phones out and instead focus on us being here, with all these lovely people around us. 

Don’t worry we’ll make sure they do a little pose for you.

*After posing for a few seconds and giving time for guests to get photos*

Ok great I think we nailed it. Anyone here need a take two?

No? Great. Now we can put our phones away and be present with each other.

2. Mindful Moment

Simple, yet underutilized: a mindful moment. As a society, we tend to rush from one thing to the next, so it’s not a surprise weddings can be a blur. It can be as easy as taking just 30 seconds to slow down, take deep breaths and look around in silence. Not only will this reduce any stress or nerves, but the simple act of looking intentionally at your partner, your friends, your bridal party, your family, your venue, and everything that has gone into that day sets such a beautiful, meaningful tone for the ceremony.

You’re not up there for long, so take it all in while you can! 

Officiant: As some of you are aware, I’m a sound guy. And after every scene we do something called room tone. It’s a moment of pure silence where everyone has to stop what they’re doing for 30 seconds to capture the sound of the room. This is done for editing purposes, but it’s also a beautiful moment of mindfulness where everyone stays still and takes in their surroundings. 

So I’d like to start this off with something similar, for our sake we’ll call it GROOM TONE. There’s a lot of planning and running around that goes into a wedding and with all that hussle it can be easy to forget where you are. Here at a wedding! 

So let’s all take in this moment. Please stand with me now, take a relaxed breath and be still for the next 30 seconds as we all take in the fact that we are here, surrounded by people we love, to celebrate these two amazing individuals.

*20-30 seconds*

And cut on groom tone. Wow, thank you all.