Hi. Toronto wedding photographer here. Today I'm going to be talking about wedding trends that are absolutely okay to skip at your wedding the reason that I'm making this video is because I see so many brides and grooms hesitant to cut something from their wedding that they don't want to do but that they're worried everybody will be upset by or offended by or judge them for cutting out of the wedding and my message has always been you do you make your wedding your own and people will love it regardless of what you do or do not do so that's my philosophy and if there's a trend in here that you want to keep by all means keep it but this video is made to really make people feel more confident in their decision to skip a lot of the wedding customs that I commonly see people asking about whether or not it's okay to skip them I think the most common thing that I see are wedding favors now I'm not sure if I've done a whole video on wedding favors skipping or not but I definitely have a blog post on it and I'm gonna say that guests are not going to miss favors nobody's gonna go home and say you know what there weren't any favors there tonight I didn't see anything how awful no one's gonna notice if there's no favors we did not have favors at our wedding because we chose to save that money and also because we knew that people really weren't gonna want anything either I find at least at my weddings these days that favors are quite rare I usually don't see them unless there's some sort of edible or drinkable favor in which case people do typically use them but in my experience a lot of little trinkets and things and little items usually get left behind by a decent amount of people now of course that's not for every wedding but that's for a lot of the weddings I've seen but again these days I rarely see favors at my weddings no one ever mentions them no one asked about them and I want to say that the average cost of favors is typically around $300 for an average sized wedding that's money you can save either towards just your savings in general or putting it towards something else in your wedding that's more important to you but yes it is absolutely okay to skip favors if you want to do favors do favors but if you're wondering about whether you have to do them no you do not have to do them no one will notice now the next one is having a flower girl or ring bearer if you are not somebody who wants to have that but you think you should because there's kids in your family if you don't want to do it and you're on the fence about it I'm gonna say no gonna miss either I don't think anybody's going to care if you find that that person's like that kids parents are gonna be upset about them just let them know hey we're just gonna have like a kid-free ceremony type thing whether you want to have that for your whole wedding is kid free or just like kid attendant it's not a part of the wedding then that's fine you say I just want them to be able to relax and enjoy the day and not worry about having all the pressure walking down the aisle because for some kids it feels really scary I would say half the time but I see kids being a part of the wedding ceremony there is someone crying or someone who does not want to go down the aisle runs in the opposite way and while that's really cute it might be really stressful for the child depending on what their personality is like but you do not have to have child attendance in your wedding unless you want to but again you're probably watching this video and there's something that you don't want to do and if this is it you absolutely do not have to do it you can always include the kids in another way later if that's something that's important to you or somebody else is pressuring you but they don't have to be a part of the ceremony you can definitely skip it now another one that I see is the bouquet and garter toss especially the garter toss because these are things that were not always part of the wedding tradition like for hundreds of years they are somewhat more of a new word tradition but I find that these days and a lot of my weddings are stopping the garter toss absolutely and entirely and then they might do the bouquet but a lot of my weddings these days have none of the tosses and they just don't find the need to pull their single friends on the dance floor some groups just really don't want to be out there they don't want to be called out for being single they don't want to jump over a bouquet or over a garter and it just might make them uncomfortable to be there at the weddings that I do have that actually have bouquet tosses they always play single ladies as this song and then either a lot of people are really excited about it or at some weddings they're not excited and no one wants to be out there and then it's just awkward for everybody because then the deejay is like alright come on I know there's single ladies here and then the bride's sometimes has to like physically go find her single friends and ask them to come on the dance floor so it's either a mix of reluctant or it's excitement and so if you were thinking about skipping it know that I don't think anybody is gonna miss it but if you are going to do it at least know your crowd if a lot of the women who are there who are single do not want to be called out for being single or it's just not their thing to like jump over a bouquet then please don't do it out of respect for their feelings and I know I say you do you but this is actually making some people go out there who might not want to be out there because maybe they feel really bad about being single so it is just more of a sensitive subject normally I say do whatever you want but in this case it might actually be making people feel very uncomfortable now on the flip side for the garter toss this is something that I'm seeing way less of these days I personally just find them uncomfortable because like they can get really raunchy I've seen some grooms basically hump the bride on the dance floor crawl up her dress pull it off with his teeth and it's just a lot for the family members to be witnessing and if that is your personality that's great but it's something that can absolutely be skipped I think there on the out I think that people have realized that they're not always the best thing to do for whatever reason maybe your grandma doesn't want to see that happening or maybe it makes you feel uncomfortable to have that happen to you when people are watching but it's definitely something that can be skipped so the tosses can absolutely be a tradition that gets tossed out for your wedding if that is what you are wanting to do another tradition that I see people kind of wanting to skip sometimes is the cake-cutting whether it's they just don't want to cut a cake at all maybe they just want a little dessert bar or they don't want to fool with having to do some sort of thing or skipping the tradition of having all of their guests and gather around for their cake cutting so if you are somebody who likes the idea of cutting the cake but you don't want it to be this big production then do what I call a silent cake cutting or an unannounced cake cutting which is where you and your photographer and your parents if you want them there are just two of you in your wedding photographer and videographer will just quietly go over to the cake they'll let you know how to cut it nice and pretty for the photos you cut it you take your pictures then you go back out I also think that can be really nice because a lot of the times for cake cutting unless it's put into the timeline and a really great flow of things you're usually having to take people off of the dance floor to come over to see the cake so it really kills the vibes on the dance floor whereas if you do a silent one the mood of the evening is still going people are still on that dance floor you go off and cut the cake and you come right back to the party that you left so it can have a lot of benefits to do that now one last tradition that I want to talk about is the tradition of not seeing each other until you're at the ceremony and on the aisles and I want to explain the origin behind this because I know a lot of people love tradition and that's totally fine I'm not big on tradition I do things if I want to do them not because they've been done but some people love tradition but sometimes knowing the actual origin of this tradition is very eye-opening so in olden times there were a lot of arranged marriages there are still some today but in olden times they were extremely common it was almost the only way you could get married and what would happen is that the families would not want the groom to see the bride before the wedding in case he didn't like the way she looked and he ran off while he still had time that's horrible that's like the worst thing ever okay once he's like seeing her on the aisle then apparently it's too late for him to run away if he doesn't like the way she looks so that is why in tradition they did not have the couple see each other until the ceremony okay personally I find that to be a very off-putting tradition now you might just like the idea of waiting to see each other till the aisle because you like it but if you were liking it because it's tradition then maybe knowing that tradition will make you feel like you don't want to do it anymore but that is absolutely a tradition you can skip and a lot of people are skipping these days because they're wanting to do a first look which is something that I think is a really great thing to do you get your photos done before the ceremony and you just have a private moment with yourselves you're able to talk to each other it calms the nerves and its really lovely because it gives you a lot more time to do photos and again this is all personal preference but if you are thinking about skipping it and you're nervous that like people are gonna be upset about it or bla bla bla don't be it's something that you do not have to do I mean really for a weddings it all comes down to what you want to do and you shouldn't have to do anything that you don't want to at your wedding but these are some of the more common traditions that I see that people sometimes are wanting to skip but are unsure of whether they can skip it so again you do you I hope that if you were thinking of skipping these things and you wanted to do that but we're nervous that this has now given you the confidence to shape your wedding in a way that's going to make the two of you happy and be more authentic to who you are and just be exactly how you want it to be now again if you saw this and you want to do some of these things that's great but I say you do you in the end make yourselves happy make sure that you guys are both super excited about the wet the way this your wedding day is unfolding and I promise that we'll make you the happiest with how your wedding was and you will always love looking back on the memories because you made it true to who you are if you guys did enjoy this video please be sure to leave a like if there's any other traditional things that I left out feel free to ask about them in the comments but you probably already know what I'm going to say which is probably yeah go ahead and skip it if you don't want to do it don't do it that is gonna be it for today's video I will see you guys next time bye.