The most prominent issue for me in regards to the military wedding was the color scheme. The problem is that US military uniforms are not just plain black suits/tuxes. For the Air Force for example, they are navy blue. Really, they look great, but the question becomes: what do all the other wedding party members wear? This was a very stressful issue for me! I cannot stand the thought of navy blue mixing with black- they are far too similar but different enough that they would just clash. So that eliminated tuxes for the guys, as they pretty much come in black. Next, we considered navy blue to match with the groom, but that made it tough to match the shade of navy blue to his uniform. Navy blue is tricky! I had already planned to wear white, and I decided on purple for the girls (which looks great with navy blue), and silver accents for the wedding, so the problem was just the boys! Eventually, we came across these beautiful grey suits which looked great with the rest of the color scheme. In the end, I love how the look came out with me standing out amongst the girls in purple and my husband standing out in his blue amongst the guys in grey. Of course purple looks good with blue, grey, or black, but I liked how we had a pretty unique style using all of these colors for the whole bridal party! Check us out:
The next thing you must have for a great military wedding is the Sabre Arch. This is so classic and so fun! I won't share all the details, but basically right after the end of the ceremony or entering the reception, you and your new husband walk under the arch made by the military members in formation. You kiss at the end, and everyone cheers. It is a lot of fun and makes your wedding really special. Talk to your service member spouse-to-be about getting this set up. You can have your military friends serve for you, or ask a local base or detachment to supply volunteers to come serve. Oh, and make sure you get the sabres (usually from a local base). Typically there are 6 or 8 of them in uniform to make the best arch. Check out the pictures from our wedding:
There are a few more traditions that you can use, but the other one that we chose to use was incorporating a prayer/acknowledgement of military service members into our ceremony. We had a traditional Lutheran ceremony, which included a time for prayers, and we wrote one specially dedicated to military service members. We also included a little blurb in our programs.
Like I said, there are more ways that you can include your military traditions into your wedding day, but these were the ones that worked for us. Military couples should incorporate as much or as little military traditions as they want, and remember- you can still have your own fun and exciting ideas in there as well!
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