Why not? Love it. and one of them was the officiant!

I just hope the bride walked in with something other than Wagner!

That was fun, but boy you have to have nerve! It's usually enough going on to make the wedding party nervous without having to perform too!

My cousin just got married and he's a music teacher. When it came time for the vows he wrote to her, the best man gave him his ukulele and he started singing them, then the whole groomsmen & woman joined in in the chorus. It was fabulous! But it made a hard act for her to follow!

I think it's awful. All dressed up forgetting what the day is about. Sorry mockery of what should be a solemn serious event doesn't sit right with me. they are all now sweaty and tired to top it off. Hard PASS. This would have been better at the reception but not the ceremony.

Solemnity and joyfulness can co-exist, for goodness sakes. My guess is you have never been to a black church.

arcy, why am I not surprised at your comment...

It looked to me like it was not in a church so probably not a religious ceremony.

You only get married (for the first time) once, so why not have fun with it...for the guests as well who seemed to really enjoy it.

“I think it's awful. All dressed up forgetting what the day is about.”

Looks like their day is about starting a joyous life together.

I wonder if there are any stats on whether marriages last longer if the couple wears long, somber faces. 😔

If I'm being critical though, I'll admit I can't listen to that riff without singing along. Not particularly weddingish.

I personally do not care for that kind of display at a wedding, — he’s showing off IMO. Then again I don’t care for the traditional wedding custom of a woman being given by her father to a husband either 😎

That said, weddings are for the people getting married, so people should do whatever they want. Many (if not most) marriages today are not regarded as religious sacraments, which gives the couple more creative scope to express themselves.

For our generation, weddings had a very tightly defined playbook. rooted in religion and then-current law, festooned with cultural traditions. What Arcy is lamenting is a departure from this.

According to Pew Research, one in three teens do not identify with any religion at all, and one in five marriages are inter-faith. Obviously those two factors upend some of the standards from our era. Moreover, since the 1950s, the median age at first marriage has gone from 20 to 27 for women. These are not blushing coquettish brides, they are adult women.

Today, a marriage is a celebration of love in a very open-ended form. What curmudgeon could give that a "hard PASS?" I too have my own (simpler) tastes and preferences in such celebrations, but I can enjoy and appreciate couples who want to express something different.

THAT was fun! I would loved to have been there joining in! Woo Hooo....!

“Moreover, the median age at first marriage has gone from 20 to 27 for women. These are not blushing coquettish brides, they are adult women.”

Yes, women who have had jobs and careers and supported themselves…..which makes rhe man handing a woman to another man even more perplexing!

Well, I had my Dad escort me down the aisle, and we stopped and handed a rose to my Mom and he kissed me before I went up to the 'altar'. I think it's quaint and touching. I think it's a way of honoring the role my parents played in raising me to get me to that milestone.

being that he seems to be some sort of dancer, i get it, but a little over the top for me.....

and i cherished the moment when my husband walked our DD up the aisle. very moving and loving. i don't feel it takes away from her being a strong woman on her own, she has her Doctorate for goodness sake, no 'strong men only' in our family! we raised very strong daughters and my DH would have it no other way.... i guess it all depends on how & why you view it in that regard....

There’s walking someone down the aisle (similar to how the ushers assisted other guests), and then there the “who gives this woman” foolishness. Guess where I land on that tradition. 😆

My father escorted me down the aisle, which helped relieve my stress of being the focus of attention, said something charming and funny at the start and the end that made me laugh, and then sat down. He didn’t give me away or make any declarations. I would have preferred no walk down the aisle at all, but weddings are compromises and my husband was/is more traditional and needed a church wedding. It worked for us.

eta: I suggested elopement, he nixed that idea but the week before the actual wedding he said he wished he would have listened to me. Not the first or that last time he said that 😆

it was a bit too long for me.

But yes these surprise add on can be a lot of fun for the guests.

I think the walking down the aisle and giving away of the bride is a lovely, sweet part of the ceremony, that is usually cherished by most fathers and daughters. I don't think it has anything to do with the age of the bride or how independent she is, it's about the relationship between a father and daughter. If that part of the ceremony is now considered "foolish" and "unnecessary" then we've lost something precious.

I thought what the groom and groomsmen did was fun, but I would hope the actual ceremony was a bit more solemn. There's nothing wrong with having some fun in a wedding, and it's better than being a nervous wreck.

“That was fun, but boy you have to have nerve! It's usually enough going on to make the wedding party nervous without having to perform too!”

LOL, Annie, so true!

This was the very first ”wedding entrance dance” video I saw…many years ago!

https://youtu.be/4-94JhLEiN0

My DD and SIL walked in to their historic venue together to a chorus of her friends (all professional singers) singing the humming song from Madame Butterfly. We were already there and just kept out of the way and enjoyed seeing them arrive as a partnership.

I loved walking down the aisle with my dad. I had already been out on my own for several years. I had been nervous and he kept me grounded.

I like the groomsmen walking in like the video. It's cute. The guys get to be more a part of the show instead of everything being about the bride and her girls.

I really just posted it for a laugh. My soon to be son-in-law has a great sense of humor but is not a dancer! I thought it was cute that for a little bit of the wedding, the groom and his groomsmen got to be the focus. I doubt that it took anything away from the actual ceremony. My husband and I fell apart laughing during our vows because when we rehearsed them, we always added in goofy parts so when the time came, the silly memories came back. No one cared and it didn't make our wedding any less special. We've been married for 35 years.

In the words of the Bette Middler: F*** 'em if they can't take a joke!

I love it! Any idea how the bride made her entrance? I hope it wasn't anticlimactic.

I have never thought of a wedding as a "somber, serious" event. My goodness. Unless of course, its one of those horrible forced marriages. One of my brothers and his wife went with a full on Catholic ceremony, mass and all. And it was still a joyous affair. Weddings, though not my favorite event to waste a whole day on, are meant to be celebratory events.

Tell me, are the bride and groom allowed to crack a smile in the world of somber weddings? Or should they be contemplating the doom and despair that awaits them in the years ahead? Yeesh.

I thought the video was cute and most likely exactly what their family and friends would expect of them.

I loved this so much! All I could think of was where he found so many friends who were willing to do this AND were great dancers! I did feel sad that the bride likely wasn’t able to see it in real time, tho. How fun will this be to show to their kids someday?!

This reminded me of the Glee episode with the parents who got married and everyone danced down the aisle to Bruno Mars. I'm always up for a "flash mob" type unexpected dancing video.

I loved that scene

How fun! Love this.

Some of the best parties I've been to have been weddings. The male procession in the linked video is a bit tacky to me but it takes a killjoy to suggest that a wedding should be a solemn occasion. It should be whatever the couple concerned (and not their parents) want it to be.

Edit to add - the majority of weddings I've been to over the last few decades have been conducted by an officiant at a public venue, not a religious person in a house of worship. For a variety of reasons, mostly different in each case.

Lin Manuel Miranda's wedding

Omigosh!! That is way, way, way too much fun!!! I don't know if her father is an entertainer, but he has a great voice!

The LMM wedding is truly iconic! Genius….of course.

There are often decent bands at fun weddings and if one doesn't get sweaty and tired, that means you failed to dance enough.

Dancing at the wedding, yes. I was responding to the comment about the groom's entry. That shouldn't cause the sweat and tiredness that Arcy mentioned.

I don’t care for the traditional wedding custom of a woman being given by her father to a husband either

In my religion (Judaism), both parents walk the bride down the aisle. That always made more sense to me. Why is the mom excluded from this walk down the aisle? Also, the groom is walked down the aisle by both his parents as well.

There's also no giving away of the bride. Just mom and dad of bride and groom being involved in the ceremony. Both sets of parents also stand under the chuppah during the ceremony.

My husband and I will both walk with my daughter down the aisle. Just going to escort her and give her a kiss on the cheek, then sit down. Not "giving her away." My Dad walked me down the aisle, joined by my Mom at the front and when the minister said "who gives this woman/" my Dad said "her mother and I do." That was our choice at the time, but I like my daughter's take on it too.