How Do You Handle An Uneven Wedding Party?

Q: Hello! My partner and I are in the midst of planning our 2022 wedding and we are utterly stumped by what to do to be authentic to our divergent (non)wedding party desires and have unsuccessfully scoured the internets for creative/inclusive ceremony ideas.

I have wonderful friends from many seasons of life and do not feel comfortable elevating some over others to form a wedding party. If it were just up to me, I would have only us be up there during the ceremony, or us and our siblings, or even us and our immediate families. My partner has a core group of close friends and it would not feel right to him to not have those people alongside us. He does, however, feel weird with the uneven party idea—if I just had my sibling and he had his two siblings and three friends.

There have got to be some folks out there who have done something nontraditional and wonderful to honor their close friends and reconcile different wedding party priorities/proximities…

—Anon

It’s safe to say that a good amount of APW readers are in the midst of planning a wedding with some nontraditional elements and wedding parties are no exception. y’all are a creative bunch of people, so let’s help Anon out. Give us your two cents on nontraditional and wonderful ideas to honor your nearest and dearest. We’re all ears. See you in the comments!