https://hollycollingsphotography.com HOT TOPIC ur experts answer your wedding-related questions THE PERFECT BLEND How do we celebrate the creation of a new blended family and how do we incorporate our stepchildren into our wedding ceremony? Meet the expert: Sabine Smith is a wedding celebrant who creates bespoke ceremonies in Cornwall and Devon, working with couples to ensure their celebration is exactly how they want it to be. Sabine says: In the UK, about 16% of dependent children are living in blended families where a household has stepparents and stepsiblings. For a modern blended family, working with a wedding celebrant can be instrumental in ensuring that each member of the family feels valued, enabling them to build strong bonds for the future. Your wedding ceremony is at the heart of your special day so here are my top tips to ensure that every member of the family feels included: A Sand Ceremony is a beautiful way of demonstrating the coming together of the individual members of the family to celebrate a new blended one. It not only symbolises the unity of the couple, but also the unity of their children. By joining together the different coloured sands in a vessel of choice, it symbolises that everybody has significance. As each grain of sand is poured, it instantly blends, signifying that you’ll never be able to separate them again; the family will be united and joined together as one blended family. My personal favourite! What could be more sustainable and in touch with nature than planting a tree together? This is a favourite idea for outdoor and nature-loving couples and their children. The tree can be planted at the wedding venue or the family home and together, you can nurture and care for it, watching it grow over the years as a family. Everyone loves hearing words of appreciation and love. Couples can create personal vows and promises for each other and lovingly involve the children who are adapting to being part of a new blended family, along with a personal gift or a piece of bespoke jewellery. I love it when I see a thank you or a love you note hand-written to one another and placed into a memory box. A hand-fasting ceremony is a perfect way to symbolise the coming together of the different family members to tie the knot on the special day. Each person places a different coloured ribbon over joined hands during the ceremony. With the help of the celebrant, couples will create a lasting visual keepsake and memory to treasure in the future. This is a joy-filled and colourful way to celebrate which will make everyone feel included. If you and your blended family members are the creative types, why not make a painting together on the day using your favourite colours and textures? A little bit like the sand ceremony mentioned earlier, the result will be colourful and give a visual symbol of the blended family that you have created which can involve everyone. A Fingerprint Tree is a symbolic ritual that I recently used to show the commitment of the entire family towards the newly formed, blended one. Everyone places their name and a print of their thumb on to the family tree as an everlasting keepsake of the day and the ceremony. This can be replicated and sent to close family members as a loving memory of this special moment. Children love having a special and important job during the wedding ceremony of their parents whether it be the job of page boy or flowergirl. Another idea can be to allow the children to sign the commitment certificate after the ceremony. I believe the most important responsibility for a child of a blended family is being the ring-bearer. Taking care of the beautiful bands which symbolise eternity and which remind the couple every day of the love they possess for one another will make them very proud and give them the feeling of being part of this unity and love. Sabine Smith | Perfect Day Ceremonies Events | 07977 561 450 | www.perfectdayceremonies.co.uk https://lyraandmoth.co.uk 62
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTA0NTE=