DIY wedding ceremony - where to start?

[NarcissistsEyebrows]

DP and I are getting married in June. We're actually doing the legal bit with 8 people in a tiny registry office but we're having a big party / fake wedding etc in a proper venue a few days later.

The latter event is 'the wedding' to us and our guests, it just so happens it won't include a legally binding bit. However we want to approximate the legal bit with a couple of our friends doing the ceremony for us.

Has anyone else done this? Does anyone know of a resource to point us towards to get us started on putting together some ceremony wording?

We've somehow ended up doing the entire wedding DIY and we're exhausted so looking for a bit of help with this bit, creative juices are running dry...

We have done the exact same and designed the ceremony ourselves (it hasn't happened yet though!)

The first thing you need to do is to understand the main elements that are included in a wedding ceremony. So you have your entrance, some words of welcome, a few words about marriage, readings (can be done by the celebrant or your family/ friends), your vows, ring exchange, and some closing words, and confetti if you're doing it.

Sometimes people have some kind of unity ceremony as well if it's a humanist wedding, and if you're having children at the wedding you might want to think about whether some of them can be involved e.g. as ring bearers, flower girls etc.

We wrote out these elements in a bullet list and then started brainstorming ideas of what we could do for each, until we had a rough plan which we shared with the celebrant (our friend). He then added his thoughts and will also do a bit of freestyling on the day so it's not too rigid.

The internet and wedding forums can help when looking for readings. Or you might want your celebrant to choose some for you - if it's feeling a bit overwhelming, you should definitely get them involved :)

Good luck!