Tips on sharing your love story with wedding guests

This information was submitted by Ellen Braunstein.

Your wedding day will be all about "happily ever after." But how did you get to that point? There are joyful and significant moments you may want to share with your wedding guests, the special times that led to "I Do."

Preserving your courtship story can revitalize the magic and memories of those special times. You and your groom will bond more as you crystallize the reasons you fell in love by creating a story booklet or video to share with your guests. Your story is the beginnings of your family history. It will be read or watched by you and your children generations from now. Many wedding guests want to know how you met and got engaged. Often, one family knows the groom, the other knows the bride. By learning your story, they will know "us."

Here are some ways to preserve your story to share with loved ones.

• Have your videographer produce a love story to be projected on a large screen at the reception. You and your groom are interviewed separately in a place of your choice. It might be where you met. The video can be edited so you alternate telling your story in a running dialogue. The videographer often incorporates music and a montage of photos going back to your childhood.
  
• A journalist can write your love story by interviewing you separately. The text of the story can be printed in a ceremony program or designed in a magazine style booklet with your engagement photos and favorite snapshots. Guests will be surprised and delighted when they discover this unusual keepsake at their table.
  
• Another option for sharing your story is to have a DJ interview you live during the reception.

You can write your own story. Try alternating passages so both of you are telling the story. Carefully edit your story, and keep it family friendly. Focus on the first meeting and the proposal. In between, stick with significant events in your courtship that moved you closer. Have a wall of photos of you and your groom from childhood to the present. Showcase your engagement portraits. Have cartoon sketches commissioned that tell your courtship story. Guests can see the series in the wedding program.

Ellen is the writer and creative director of Courtship Stories. She writes the magazine style stories of how couples met and got engaged for their wedding guests.