Est. 2012 | Colorado Springs, Colorado and Charlottesville, Virginia wedding & family photographer

Ian and Jessi met with me a month prior to their wedding to discuss their final details so I know exactly what to expect for their wedding day. One thing they mentioned to me that caught my attention off the batt was the “salt ceremony”. I’ve never heard of this before so it sparked my interest. Jessi is a FABULOUS writer, so it all came from her vision when writing the salt ceremony they would perform at their very own ceremony. How special is that?! One of the things I loved about them was how unique and personal their wedding was! After photographing and hearing the salt ceremony, I had to ask Jessi if she would like to be featured on my blog because it is so inspiring and I love sharing inspiration with not just my brides, but with everyone!

Thank you Jessi for taking your time to write this for my blog! The meaning and thoughtfulness of this “piece” is worth sharing to the world! xoxo

Bringing in Salt: Designing a Ceremony
by Jessi Hare

My now-husband and I got married on May 24^th of this year, and I spent about a year and a half beforehand prepping. We were going for a simple ceremony on my parent’s farm with a tented reception and pretty views of the Blue Ridge. What I couldn’t visualize was our ceremony—how it should work and what message we wanted to pass on. That’s something that most bridal books do not help you with. Modern wedding culture is all about what flowers you’ll choose, what details you’ll have, your choice of a cocktail or ways for you to save money by cutting back on all of these elements. For most people, it’s assumed that ceremony tradition is already in place. For us, there were actually too many options to choose from.

The list is massive: In Virginia, where I’m from, there are lots of vineyards, so they have their own wine-aging and blending ceremonies. There’s the Celtic knot ceremony, which sounds like it can be beautiful and meaningful for those Irish-heritage couples out there. You have the unity candle, the sand pouring, the planting of a tree, the couple passing flowers to their mothers, etc. I guess, what I wanted in our ceremony, though, was something I hadn’t necessarily witnessed before.

This is a troublesome goal. Weddings have been happening for centuries, so why go out and change it all? Especially when you’re busy ordering flowers and hot gluing things to other things. I was pretty stubborn about this, though, and despite the oncoming panic of preparation, I chose to write part of the ceremony so that it was entirely ours.

I did this by considering a couple things.

1. I looked at our Chaplain’s sample of a ceremony and tried to match his tone and wording. He was a subtle guy, so my addition couldn’t be overly dramatic or it would sound out of place among his words.
2. I focused on something my husband and I loved to do together. Cooking came to mind since I have burnt some brownies and made some amazing curry with him working right along with me.
3. I tried to apply the ceremony as best as I could to our backgrounds. Because our families were immigrants, our traditions were lost a couple generations ago. I want to include our families in this in as many ways as I could.
4. I went searching for a source that could boost the writing—if I wasn’t going to be applying biblical passages, then what could I apply?

If found my source in a book I’d been meaning to read: Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky. This would inspire my idea for a salt ceremony and give me some historical facts.

On the day of the wedding, my bridesmaids set up the salt ceremony table with a gold tablecloth my future mother-in-law had once given me, little jars that had acted as the candy gift jars at my wedding shower, a mortar and pestle for a mixing bowl, two mini burlap bags, an old spoon from my parent’s kitchen drawer, and some very bright seasonings the audience could see from afar: sea salt, black pepper corns, paprika, turmeric and garlic powder.

The weather was unbelievably perfect. We got through the ceremony entrances. I walked in to the tune of “It’s a Wonderful World,” there were a few introductory statements, and then the salt ceremony started: Salt is an important element of our sustenance, and thus an important element of culture. It is the element of maintenance and purity—that which can preserve our food, swim through our bodies and land on the beaches in ocean waves.

Then our backgrounds came into play. The facts came from Kurlansky’s work: In traditional French culture, the groom carried salt in his pocket during the ceremony for luck. In Germany and Austria, it was once common for the bride to sprinkle salt on her shoes for luck as well. In Great Britain, it was once tradition to gift salt to those in a new home. To honor these traditions of their ancestors, this couple will first pour the salt into the mixing bowl. The bowl is the great opportunity of their coming life together—the flavor of their days of marriage.

I designed it so that each ingredient that was added had a tag line that told my then-fiancé and I what to do. This way, we didn’t have to memorize anything, just follow instructions from the officiant. So, we then added each spice to the salt with justification behind each one: Jessi will pour the garlic and paprika. The focus here is on zest and produce—garlic and peppers. These are spices to keep their life together exciting and youthful, no matter their age.

At the end of the piece, we really needed justification for this ceremony. Note that this is really important in all wedding ceremony pieces. Your audience really has to understand the purpose of what they are watching: For the next year, this couple shall sprinkle this salt into their cooking. Sustenance will then taste of their love for each other, of the vows they have made, and of the kindness and caring that comes with cooking for each other and their future family. There is nothing more kind, and more devoted, than the creation of a meal for a spouse.

And then, we brought in that family element: To symbolize the sharing of such love, a spoonful of salt is placed in each of two bags, to be shared with the families of the bride and groom.

In the end, I had lots of our guests ask me about it and where we found the script for it. The fact that I wrote it made it all that more meaningful, and generally our guests were surprised to hear of that kind of effort in a ceremony design. It was worth it.

I’m placing pieces of the ceremony here so that you can borrow the idea if you so desire, but it’s not the whole thing. I recommend that you make it your own—write your own additions, choose your own spices, or choose a theme that is completely different yet equally yours. That is what I will remember about our ceremony: The fact that it felt like it belonged to us.