Alternative Altars, Where's Your Ceremony Taking Place?

Alternative Altars, Where’s Your Ceremony Taking Place?

You’ve chosen the venue but do you know where exactly you will be married?

Couple Kissing on Mountain Top with White Altar — Regardless of where you set up your altar, the important thing to remember is the symbolic meaning behind the ceremony.

Whether you’re having an outdoor wedding or an indoor wedding there will be a specific location where the actual wedding ceremony takes place. Your venue could be a park, a museum or a church but you will probably want some significant spot where you can say your vows. One very popular option is to locate or build an altar of some kind. Altar is a word that certainly has religious connotations but as much as wedding ceremonies and vows themselves have been disassociated with religion, so has the word altar. It also has a more tangible meaning which is that it is a structure intended for ceremonial use. Sounds perfect for a wedding!

An outdoor wedding can lead to a lot of different kinds of altars, depending on the location. If you are choosing a venue that is known and designed to be for weddings the venue may already have an altar set up or mechanisms for assembling one. If you are getting married in a more adventurous location such as in the woods or in a garden, a natural altar of trees might be set up or easily made. When it comes to making altars, the possibilities are endless. You could use tree branches to form a very rustic and natural looking altar or you could interlace flowers to create a beautiful and romantic altar that smells sweet and fresh. The key to building an altar is to remember that it just has to be solid enough for you to stand under. An altar can be really small, giving you only enough room for the person performing your ceremony or it can be big enough to encompass your entire wedding party. If you are creating your own altar it might be easier to create a smaller one but you also have no limitations if you wanted to take on the task of creating an enormous altar. If you are getting married indoors you can still create your own altar, and in fact bringing some of the rustic look or samples of nature might be a big hit! It would be like having the best of both worlds! Many indoor wedding venues will have some kind of altar set-up. If you’re getting married in a church or cathedral, there is most likely to be an altar set-up although its use might vary depending on the religion and the institution. Another popular altar design is to use fabric.