What language will you/did you do the ceremony and such in?

[Alle1770]

Now, I'm nowhere near to getting married yet, but like most girls it has crossed my mind many times over the years. Since I'm now in an LDR with an Argentinian man, the question has come up regarding what language to use during a possible wedding. My native language is Swedish, his is Spanish, and we speak English with each other.

I was thinking of just having everything in English, but most of his family and friends (except his brother and two of his friends) don't speak a word of English and it would be weird for them not to understand anything. Can't do it in Spanish because none of my family and friends except me speak Spanish, and can't do it in Swedish for the same reason but for his side.

So the question is, how do/did/will you decide what language to have during the whole wedding-thing? Will you mix languages? Have one language and have everything translated on a paper to give to the ones that don't speak that language? As said I'm not getting married anytime soon, but it would be nice to hear some thoughts and ideas that I can keep in the back of my head for whenever/if it happens!

[wayoutofhere]

I think I'd mix it... do both, estonian and english. A bigger problem for us is having a place where everyone could come. I don't really see either of our families travel that far. Too expensive ew!

[snow]

For us it is probably going to be english. He doesn't speak german nor polish and I do speak english My parents don't speak english, but they won't be there, so it doesn't really matter.

[milaya]

We had our wedding in Japanese.
It's the only language my SO and his family speaks. I speak Japanese. My family don't, but they weren't there. (Our wedding wasn't a big thing)

[Dziubka]

Being a linguist and all, I've of course thought about that quite a lot.

My SO and I speak mostly Polish together. We have some bilingual friends, but our families don't speak each others' language or any other common language.

For the religious ceremony I want to get something like subtitles. Ask the priest if he can give us or one of our friends the text of what he's going to say, so we can translate it and make a power point presentation or something and then show it during the ceremony.
As an alternative you can write it down and hand it out to the people who don't understand the language.

We're going to have the legal ceremony in Germany and decided against having it translated. I'm preparing a bi-lingual speech for the dinner later on.

[mllebamako]

Weddings here in Mali are done at the mayor's office and they are done in French and Bambara. So we listened to all of the marriage code and agreed to uphold the vows in French and Bambara. Then, we kind of whispered "I do" in English to each other since that is our main language of communication.

[kittyo9]

My SO's family only speaks Spanish and mine only speaks English, but we speak English together and are there is a 95% chance that we will be married in the states, so it is extremely likely that our wedding will be held in full English. His family is not really that interested in traveling for his wedding, so the only person who might have to come from his side would be his mom, and for her I think we would just provide a pamphlet with the translation of the ceremony (just the important, translatable bits) on it.

[TwoThree]

It was both in Finnish and English. In Finland you can request that the magistrate includes English to the ceremony, so he would say the words in Finnish and then repeat them to me in English. My SO said "I do" in Finnish and I said it in English.

[ChrissyAl]

Since she's from England, and most of my family understand the basics of English (except my grandma but she's getting so old I don't even know if she'll be able to be there), I think we're gonna do it in English. She doesn't even understand a word of Norwegian so what would the point of that be, haha.
For my grandma there is always the option of printing it on an own paper for her, or maybe recording it onto an iPod for her to listen or something. We're in the age of electronics and globalizing, so I think we'll work something out

[lucybelle]

Most of it was in English. I read something to my SO in Spanish and he read something to me in English. We made up two programs for the families, one that translated all the English into Spanish (so Spanish speakers could follow along) and another that translated the Spanish to English (so English-onlies could follow, although most of my family likes to pretend they're fluent in Spanish )

And my SO's family, most of whom speak zero English, really loved our wedding. Granted the ceremony was about 7 minutes or so, so they didn't have enough time to feel lost or left out before it was over.

[Alle1770]

Thanks everyone for your input and shared stories, some really neat ideas out there I must say I will have to get back to you all with whatever happens at a possible future wedding myself!

[Dziubka]

Ok, now that I'm actually married:

Our ceremony was in German and one of our friends translated to Polish for my husband's family. We sort of asked here there and then (she could hardly say no...) and I felt a bit sorry for her, but she did a great job

[teachernicole]

I'm having the legal ceremony in English and the Catholic ceremony in Portuguese my SO's parents can't travel so we are splitting up the celebrations!

[I&A]

I think this might sounds selfish, but for me my wedding will be in english, so we can both understand what's going on. His family and friends don't speak english, as for my family, just two of my brothers, but all my friends speak english. I don't care who doesn't understand a word of english, because my wedding is going to be for him and for me, the rest of the people will be like support.

[differentcountries]

I think it would be fair to keep some bits in each language, or maybe repeat larger parts in the other language. Depends a bit on where it is held and who will be present. I heard of a Norwegian/Scottish wedding (my husband's coworker, he went to the ceremony) where they had two ministers who each led the ceremony in their language. Think they through went through some of the cereomony twice due to this. Anyway, they had both Scottish bag pipes and Norwegian harding fiddle as ceremonial music!