Toward the end of her 2022 summer solstice wedding to Daniel Byrne, Malia Carvalho and a friend put on light-up fairy wings and danced beneath the stars to express their connection to the spirit realm.
Ms. Carvalho and Mr. Byrne’s 77 guests had already witnessed a “ceremony facilitator,” as they called her, legally marry them in Topanga, Calif. Slices of their “snake cake” — which represented Kundalini energy, chakras and masculine and feminine unity — had been served.
Other touches also veered from the conventional, including a harpist playing “medicine music.” But Ms. Carvalho, 38, and Mr. Byrne, 41, who run Harmala Temple, a spiritual establishment in Los Angeles, said they wouldn’t have felt they were being true to themselves if they had hired a minister and capped the day with dance floor hits.
“It was important to us to honor our love and spiritual connection in an authentic way,” said Ms. Carvalho, who lives in Torrance. “We don’t really follow the mainstream.”
As the 2025 wedding landscape takes shape, it’s clear that other couples don’t, either.
Some brides and grooms use numerologists to determine the best wedding date. Some arrange to be married by a spirit guide in what they consider a fifth dimension. Others, like the couple who came to Tara McMullen-King last summer for help orchestrating a ceremony centered around inyeon, a Korean concept of fate and eternal love, hope to convey that their love transcends lifetimes.
Ms. McMullen-King, the founder of Witchy Woman Weddings in Salem, Mass., helps couples create celebrations that reflect their personal belief systems. “Salem is a hotbed for spiritual seekers,” she said. “Almost all the ceremonies I write and officiate include some element of uniting the couple energetically and spiritually.” (Wedding packages start at $600.)
She hadn’t heard of inyeon when she agreed to officiate a wedding that would familiarize guests with the philosophy. But as a practicing witch, she was familiar with some of inyeon’s principles, like interconnectedness and manifesting things through energy, she said. These, she added, are also central to witchcraft.
Apart from handfasting ceremonies, in which the bride and groom’s hands are bound with a cord to symbolize the union of their souls physically and spiritually, Ms. McMullen-King said most of the weddings she officiates don’t look particularly out of the ordinary. But appearances are rarely the point at weddings that invoke the cosmos.
The absence of a white wedding dress may be the only visual departure from tradition at the upcoming June 20 wedding of Matt Monson, 46, and Brooklyn Ottens, 35, at the Escalante National Monument in Boulder, Utah. The couple, who are from Salt Lake City, are artists. “Matt and I wear head-to-toe black a lot, so thinking about wearing white gives me anxiety,” Ms. Ottens said.
Guests at their summer solstice wedding will get a sense of the couple’s own brand of spirituality. Both grew up in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but as adults are drawing their spirituality from nature.
Before the ceremony, they will do a Reiki healing session and smudge sage to clear the space of negative energy. A friend who is a philosopher will marry them. They are planning readings from a Native American teaching, “to show we’re honoring the earth and sky and our ancestors,” Ms. Ottens said. “We would also like to be barefoot for our ceremony to further our connection to the earth.”
Jamie Nicole Dubin, the founder of Harmonic Holistics in San Luis Obispo, Calif., has lately been busy performing sound baths — in which a healer uses sacred sound bowls to produce therapeutic vibrations — before and during weddings. She attributes a recent rise in requests to a heightened awareness of mental health.
“There’s a lot of excitement on your wedding day,” she said. “That can make it a little hard to sit still and be in this potent state of awareness.”
Those who enlist Jaechon Anderson to be part of their wedding festivities are also aiming to reach a heightened state of awareness. Ms. Anderson, of Springdale, Utah, offers a form of yoga she calls cosmic flow.
“It’s a moving meditation that gives people space to drop out of the chaos of the world and tune into the wisdom of their hearts,” she said. Offered in or around Utah’s Zion National Park, cosmic flow involves the use of seven crystal alchemy singing bowls, each corresponding to a major chakra, or energy center in the body. It’s become a hit at bachelorette parties.
Some alternative wedding practices are more mystical. Lip print readings have become a popular form of entertainment at bridal showers, wedding receptions and bachelorette parties. Anna Snodgrass, a “lipsologist” who goes by Ariana Lightningstorm professionally, said the practice, where lipstick-wearing guests kiss a paper card for insights into their lives, is “super fun.”
Ms. Snodgrass, whose Bowie, Md., business is called Lip Messages, charges $300 an hour. “Through shape, size, color and intensity, I can look at what’s going on with a person,” she said. “I can see their style of interacting, what they might need in a relationship.” People who don’t usually wear lipstick, including men, take part (“Men will definitely put some on to make a print,” she said). It’s “a way to learn about yourself.”
And self-knowledge is ultimately what couples who put on nontraditional weddings are demonstrating, said Ms. McMullen-King of Witchy Woman Weddings. “These more spiritual ceremonies,” she said, “are an opportunity to incorporate rituals, symbols and language that reflect who you are.”
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