Wedding Ceremony: Unplugged

With digital photography exploding over the past few years and almost everyone and their mom now having a camera on their phones, everyone likes to think that they’re a photographer. Even though most of them are not. When attending a wedding, we now see way too many guests snapping away the whole time on their cameras. Their faces staring into their LCD screens and many with their heads turned down. Sure, they are smiling, but they are all looking at these silly little screens. Have we reached a point where weddings have become over documented?



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This is something that Drew and I have thought a lot about and have talked through extensively. We have a fabulous photographer who will be documenting not only our wedding ceremony, but the whole 5 wedding days with our guests on Maui. Do we really need or even want every guest taking pictures with their cameras, phones and posting everything about the ceremony on their Facebooks while in the middle of our ceremony? Not really.  



Please, no camera.
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With having a small private destination wedding on the beach, we want our guests to be present with us and to leave the photography to the professional. When we look around our guests surrounding us, we want to be able to see their faces, not the top of their heads. When we look through our wedding photos we want to see everyone enjoying the moment, not all looking at their cameras. With this in mind, we have decided to inform guests that our ceremony will be unplugged and individual cameras and phones will not be allowed.

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We are asking our guests to please turn off and put away all of their devices. Instead, be a part of our wedding ceremony, feel the sun on your faces, smell the ocean air and just be in the now. It’s not going to hurt to put your phones and cameras away for a bit. We promise, our ceremony is going to be short and we’d like to be able to connect with each of you during that time. We want for you to be a true participant at our wedding day, not just an observer. We ask you to create memories of our wedding day in your minds, not on your computers. Besides, our photographer will catch all of the moments for us and we will provide copies of the photographs to all of our guests.

With the decision to have an unplugged wedding ceremony in mind, we included a card in our invitation enclosures letting guests know that we had opted for no cameras during the wedding ceremony. On our photo share card we let guests know that we would love for them to share any pictures they took during our five wedding days or at our Portland Wedding celebration and instructions on how to share them, but to please not take any photos during our wedding ceremony.

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We will also have my daughter, Amanda and our Maid of Honor's daughter, Mykie reminding guests before the ceremony to please turn off their devices. As well as, have our kahuna (Hawaiian priest) make an announcement to remind everyone one more time to not take any personal photos during the ceremony. We truly hope everyone will respect our wishes and enjoy being an active part of our wedding ceremony. 

What do you think about unplugged wedding ceremonies? Is this something you've ever considered before?