He's asked and you've said "I Do". Now comes the hard part... planning your wedding. When deciding on a wedding theme, most couples tend to lean toward the more popular ones: beach, western, butterfly, etc. However, by turning your attention toward an ethnic theme wedding is a wonderful way to incorporate your heritage and personalize your wedding day.
Your wedding guests will also appreciate experiencing some of your wonderful cultural traditions.
Just as in any traditional wedding theme planning, you need to look at each aspect of your bridal plans and decide how and what cultural traditions could be included. From colors to bridal attire to accent decorations, there's much to choose from.
The following suggestions should help you with how you can go about adding ethnic items and traditions to highlight your theme.
Choosing Your Wedding Colors
In most cases, you can interject certain colors into your color scheme. For example, those with a Scottish background could use the colors of their tartans in their table decorations, wedding flowers and bridal attire. Couples who are planning an Asian wedding would look at including reds and yellows, perhaps. However, don't go overboard with this or your decorations could become garish and tacky. Accents of colors work best.
Wedding Attire
The bride, groom, parents, bridemaids and groomsmen should all wear bridal attire that is customary for the culture. The guests will certainly love this, especially those who don't know much about your culture.
Wedding Favors
Look about your home for ethnic house decorations that you might have to provide you with some inspiration. Items such as artwork could lead to handing out low-cost small framed posters or art work featuring your native country.
Bookmarks or music CD's from your homeland would also make great wedding favors. Practically every country sells tourist souvenirs... these items would also make interesting favors.
Ethnic Wedding Decorations
Choose wedding flowers and arrangements that would be popular for your culture. For example, orchids are widely used in Hawaiian cultures, while lotus blossoms are popular for Chinese weddings. Daisies and zinnias are suitable for a Mexican wedding.
Use decorating accents and props strategically placed through out the reception area that are appropriate to your culture to help bring the "feel" of the theme to your guests. Fringed table runners in deep colors would enhance an Arab or East-Indian theme, while colorfully small-beaded coasters would look lovely on tables for an American Indian wedding (these could also double as favors). Small African masks could be used as decorating accents in a variety of areas for an African-American wedding.
Additional Theme Ideas
It goes without saying that music from your native country is a must. Hire a musician for the ceremony to play a traditional musical instrument. Play some of this type of music during key parts of your reception (however, don't play it throughout the whole night… a small sampling is best in this case).
If there are dances that are special to your culture, hire some dancers to entertain guests during dinner or to start off the reception.
Plan to have a small part of the ceremony done in your native tongue (preferably with a translator for those that don't speak the language so they don't miss anything).
For entertainment, include any interesting or simple games, if appropriate, during the reception.
The above should help you with generating some of your own ideas on what you can use for your ethnic wedding theme. Search the Internet for websites that are focused on selling products specific to your culture and you're sure to find items and even more ideas on what you can do to highlight your ethnic background at your wedding.