White Jade Design Int'l

Theme me Up, My Lady!

by Laurel A. Rockefeller

from April, 2000 Newsletter

You're engaged and planning your wedding. Now that it's your turn to plan, you think about all the weddings you've been to, looking for ideas. Then it occurs to you: most of the ones you've been to are not terribly original. In fact you can recite the main elements, except for the sermons, word for word with a liturgical chant that, when you think about it, WASN'T the way you dreamed your wedding would be. Liturgy is nice...you even want some...but the idea of making your wedding a cookie cutter wedding...well, let's not take it THAT far!

You want balance. Balance between tradition and something original. You want to reflect your interests and personality without reinventing the wheel. But how?

One of the best ways is through a distinctive theme. Now let us be clear to start EVERY WEDDING AND EVENT HAS A THEME. One of those is "strictly traditional" in which every detail you include is already pre-written. Themes can be specific or general and a single event can carry a main theme and several subordinate ones.

Color schemes are also a form of theme. So when you decide on blue and gold for your colors, you have already chosen one theme. Likewise, when you choose a graphic to be printed on your matchbook favors or anything else you order for your wedding, you are working within a theme.

With that in mind, let's examine the major types of themes you can use for your wedding/special event:

Time:

Time-based themes can be general or specific. A time can be a season, an event, a holiday, or a period. They can combine with geography-based themes to be more specific. For example a 17th century period wedding theme can be fused with a geographic theme of France to create a specific theme of French Renaissance or French Court of Louis XIV theme.

Anytime you set your wedding in the past, you are setting it as a time-based theme. American Civil War, Medieval/Renaissance, and futuristic weddings are popular choices. Time based weddings are often done by people with history related hobbies and can be the most fun of all themes. Inviting/encouraging guests to dress in period attire, period related entertainment such as special musicians or clowns/jugglers, and a period feast all make time-specific events fun for everyone.

On a more general level, a season makes a great theme. The Bounty of Summer is a great theme with lots of live plants, fruits/vegetables, and other summer time fun. Holidays are also of this sort. Halloween, Christmas, and Valentines Day are favorites here. Create a winter wonderland full of carols, decorated trees, and the warmth of the hearth and you have the perfect winter day. In fact, wedding invitation companies are increasingly playing to time based themes. Now it is popular to see a invite featuring a knight in shining armor on a horse, riding to a castle--there are even matching cake toppers for it! Christmas tress and holly are also increasing in numbers in the invitation books as more and more people go off the traditional wedding season and marry in winter.

Whatever time you choose, research is key to success. If you want your theme to work, you should indicate how general or specific you wish to me or risk having everything fall apart. When Keith (last names omited to protect privacy) married Marlene in 1995, they set an American Civil War theme for their wedding, complete with union and confederate uniforms. but they neglected authenticity in the ladies' attire while specifically stating on the wedding program that the year was 1862. The bride wore a gown more or less accurate, but the attendants wore something dated to the turn of the 20th century--which is NOT accurate for an 1862 specified wedding and did not fit in with the rest of the event. It was a glaring error that was easily corrected and easy to avoid, especially since the bride and groom here were civil war reenactors.

When you do a period wedding, especially one that is very well known and especially if you are very specific about when, it is important to get the details accurate and right. There is latitude and a lot of it, but saying a specific year and place paints you into a corner. If you say "medieval" you are allowing yourself to choose anything from 600-1400 CE and can mix things up a little here and there, not everything has to be from precisely the same time and place. That's very different than saying 1180 England because in that case, you force yourself to be razor accurate--nothing can be different than exactly it was.

Of course your guests may not be as educated as you are about it and that's helpful, but the point remains that the more accurate you are, the more authentic and the nicer the event is. And for those who do know your time and place, the accurately done event will be all the more enjoyable just as the inaccurately done event will be less enjoyable.

Location:

Location, culture, ethnicity, geography...there are many ways to phrase this category of theme. Location themes focus on WHERE AND WHO more than when. Traditional wedding forms for different cultures are right here. When you say "I want an Irish/Celtic theme" or "reflect my African heritage" this is your theme. Location and time combine a great deal...rarely do you set a time without also a place. but a cultural background can be contemporary and therefore not need the extensive research.

Like time, location can be general or specific. Chinese wedding and Beijing style Chinese wedding are two different examples. You can also do a blended culture theme: Asian-American, Catholic-Jewish, Latin-African, Manchu-Miao, etc.

What makes this your theme is how extensively you use it. Is the cultural/location element the main thing that shapes how and what you use and do during the event? If so, that's your theme.

The nice thing about location themes is that you can do them without the research precision needed for the time based. when location/culture are general, they can be very general and not require much effort to implement. On the other hand, you can fine tune it to be very specific and do a masterpiece recreation of a particular locale. Some of the nicest location themes are achieved by renting a historical home or holding the wedding at a historical site such as a castle, a monument, or a particular temple.

Location themes are carried out through not only cultural practices, but decorations, food, and music. A little salsa music at dinner complete with authentic Mexican/Puerto Rican/etc. foods and a traditional dance as entertainment can bring the fire and excitement of Latin heritage to life. Make the first dance to a Marc Anthony or other hot Latin star's music and you're all set!

Music is one of the best ways to carry out a location theme. The sound of the erhu and Chinese pop, the aforementioned scenario above, a polka, bagpipes, a chant in Hebrew, or the traditional drummings of a pow wow really bring these events to life.

So have fun with it and enjoy, optimize your location and your cultural knowledge!

Color and Motif Themes:

Colors and motifs are the final category we'll discuss here. These are standards that are in every wedding, regardless of your above choices (if any). Remember that there will always be multiple themes in every wedding because every wedding is set in some time, some place, in some culture, and with some colors/motifs. The absence of any of these is still a choice made. It is impossible to conduct a wedding without blending these things together.

Color and motifs can be the dominant theme and in contemporary American weddings, it is safe to say that most themes are either color or motif based. By motif we mean the objects/icons that recur throughout the wedding. Roses or other flowers, a religion, or a "style" are your motifs. If you say a "Christian" wedding...this is a motif because a "Christian" theme wedding means that certain symbols will recur. Certain prayers and liturgy will be said, certain rituals done, and certain vocabulary used. Couples decide to what extent they want to develop this, how dominant this theme will be, but it is still a theme.

Likewise, wedding colors. Why chose 2-3 colors? because you need a color theme in order to organize the material objects in the wedding. A major element of design is "unity/variety"...you need to balance this dimension. Using a combination of two colors as main colors is the easiest way to do it because no matter what you buy, there is a color element to each item. Nothing is without a color.

Color and motif themes can be carried as far or little as you want. It's for you to decide how important color will be. Likewise, if you have roses as the main flower in your bouquet, you have to decide how many and which things you want to feature roses. Maybe roses aren't that important to the whole event and you want them only in your bouquet. Or maybe you want them on the invitations, throughout the ceremony site, on the cake, in the centerpieces, and every other prominent place.