Motorcycle Wedding Ideas and Advice

If you love bikes the way my new husband and I do and want to incorporate that love into a motorcycle theme wedding then I may be able to help. I looked for months for advice and tips on how to have a great wedding and still use the bikes.

First things first... Keep in mind the time of year when you set the date as far as the weather goes. Nobody likes to ride in the rain or sleet. For those who are lucky enough to live in the southern states remember hurricane season. For those out west consider an evening wedding so that the heat doesn't melt you or your guests. This is good advice if alot of your guests will be riding.

Okay now you have the date set. Where will the ceremony take place? If your entire ceremony will take place outdoors consider your local resources. For instance city, state and national parks are great because they are usually well maintained. Not to mention the parking. Most of these places charge a small fee or deposit. With the beautiful outdoors as your backdrop you will need little or no decorations. BIG money saver! We had our wedding at te local city park that sits along the river and the shelters had these huge hanging ferns along the sides. A duck pond on the other side. We saw no reason to spend a ton of money on decorations. If you do want some type of decorations visit your local craft store for ideas and things that you can use in or around your home like trellises or big potted plants like peace lilies etc.

If alot of your friends are going to be riding their bikes to your ceremony concider having someone there to have people park their bikes in two rows running paralell to each other to make a aisle for you to walk or ride down through. A friend told of a wedding she attended that when the bride to be walked down the aisle of bikes as she passed each bike the rider gave it some throttle. At our cerremony we had my husbands bike and the best mans bike on either side of the preacher and rode down through the bikes as we left the park and led the other bikes like a "run" to the reception.

If you are going to this type of thing ask your local law enforcement for an escort or have your road guards ready and in place. Which means you will have to ride the route and take notes of stop lights etc.

Invitations....these can be really pricey. I did the whole ebay thing and saw one I really liked until I found out 100 invitations (just the invitations, no inner or outer envelope or rsvp cards) was going to run over $200. I don't know about you but to me that's insane. We made our invitations ourselves for well under that. You don't have to be super crafty. If you feel you don't have the time or skills consider asking a few friends to come over and help if you are going to do your own. Ours were made of 2 different colors cardstock and both different sizes laid one on the other and glued. We bought vellum paper at the craft store for cheap and took it to a print shop in town to have our wording put on. The printer cut the vellum paper into four squares of equal size to be attached to the cardstock. For a custom touch the craft store had a DIY stamp kit that we used and made a bar and shield stamp out of and stamped the cardstock that laid under the vellum paper. Instead of using RSVP which would have been an extra expense to us and our guests we simply put please rsvp to thewedding@yahoo.com. at the bottom of the invitation. I set up an email account for free just for people to rsvp to it was super easy to do and in this Internet age and this economy several people commented that they thought it was really clever.

If you are not into doing your own invitations be prepared to spend some time on the internet and the phone. Keep in mind that out of all the invitations you send out very few people will keep them. Do you really need an inner and outer envelope? Do you need the RSVP cards? If you buy the invitations from a company you can still use the the RSVP email trick. I could only find about 4 or 5 different designs that were motorcycle themed.

My new hubby and I aren't the champagne types by any means. So instead of buying the his and her glasses we decided to kill two birds with one stone and had custom made shot glasses made. When the best man gave the toast we gave everyone the heads up and they got heir shots and we all had a shot together instead of sipping champagne. So now not only did our guests toast with us but they also had their wedding favor. We had 100 of them made for under $70. On each shot glass was the bar and shield but instead of the usual writing we had our names on them and the date in the middle. Very cool looking.

The dress...no one pick out your dress or knows your style but the most important thing to remember is this. Can you get on the bike with that dress on? I scoured ebay and finally found one I liked but the length was all wrong. No problem I simply took the dress to a seamstress and had it cut and hemmed. There are alot of brides maids dresses that are absolutely gorgeous too. There are several things you can do to keep the cost to a minimum. Ebay for one. Read the listings carefully. Prom shops after prom season are great as well as the classifieds. Believe it or not a friend found her daughters wedding dress at Goodwill. Consignment shops are also a good way to find a dress for a steal. Some of you may choose just to wear jeans and there is nothing wrong with that either, some opt for white leather. I saw a dress that was gorgeous and functional in that once the ceremony was over she took the skirt off and under were her jeans. She was ready to ride and didn't have to worry about the bottom of her dress. The top was a corset style bodice that was really sexy looking. But alas I didn't or rather wasn't going to pay $500 for it.

Garters...I love ebay if you can't tell by now. So again I went there and found a garter set for $10. They were white with a HD bar and shield charm attached to each one.

The hubby and best man wore leather vests with black sleeveless shirts, jeans and boots. They were quite good looking too I must say.

Flowers....First thing you need to figure out is do want live flowers which can be pretty evpensive or silk flowers. Again keep in mind that if you are riding your own bike or on the back of one live ones will not fair well. I found a place onliine to order my flowers from that was not only inexpensive but the bouquets were ready made and beautiful. To put that motorcycle twist on them there are a couple of things you can do. Instead of the traditional bouquet holder put them in a habdlebar grip or instead of ribbon being tied to them wrap a leather ponytail holder on them . If you like you can even use leather lacing that hangs down from them.

I was going to have a flower girl until we found out she didn't like bikes. At all. Had she done it though she was going to wear a little leather vest and jeans and instead of throwing petals from a basket she was going to use a helmet.

The Cake....We had a awesome cake! It was 3 tiered, white with sliver flames, leather ribbon at the bottom of each tier with chain swag at the top of each tier and HD bar and shields here and there. The topper which again can be a bit pricey depending on what you want was custom made. Not expensive though. Here is what we did. I went on ebay and ordered a 1:18 scale madel of our bike for $7. The cakemaker then took the bike and put it on a base and decorated it with a flower arch and tulle. You have to see it to believe it. It was great and there was a lot of compliments about that. We went to a scrap yard and found some diamond cut steel that had not been used in anyway and sanitized it and cut it so that the cake had a base to sit on. We had went to Lowes but they wanted $40 for a piece the size of we eventually got for $10.

Our cake knife and server were ordered from ebay for $12. They were simple in that they were plain until seller got ahold of them. When she was done I had a set that was decoratd with white ribbon and a HD bar and shield on each handle.

Our minister was a friend of ours that was ordained. We couldnt have asked for a better one. We had a nice ceremony without a lot of religion thrown in and he rode his bike. Instead of using a bible to place the piece of paper on which the vows were written in he put it in a HD History Of Motorcycles book. It's the little things that can make a difference. and

The Guest Book...Okay I did something a little different instead of buying a HD addorned book and pen we bought a leather vest. That's right a leather vest. It cost $30. Less than what I would have spent on a book and pen set. The reason we did this was simple. Why buy a book that would be put away somewhere and seen rarely if ever. We took the vest and bought a huge shadow box to put it in along with other momentos from the wedding like the invitation,shot glass, a few of our fav pics and so on and hung it on our wall. Now it is there for everyone to see. If you decide to do this make sure to buy a paint pen from the craft store that will show up on y0our leather. If you use white leather most any color will do. We used a black vest and silver paint pen.

I have alot more on where you can find motorcycle themed favors and decorations if you want. No matter what you choose to do though I wish you many years of happiness with your new spouse.