Let’s be real — not everyone can clap on the twos and fours. For your friends and family who are rhythmically challenged, save your money on a DJ and build a different experience that’s fun for them, and for you, too. Here are 7 alternatives to dancing that can take your wedding from status quo to status whooooa.

You might be used to seeing couples light a unity candle or blend sand together in a jar, but there are lots of other meaningful unity ceremonies you can choose from for your wedding. There are plenty of unity rites with religious ties such as the lazo, or Catholic wedding cord, but here are nine great non-traditional alternatives you can incorporate into your ceremony regardless of your faith or religion.

People love this stuff! And there is no shortage of vendors and ways that you can incorporate cannabis into your wedding. That said, being at an event about enjoying cannabis filled with mainly white faces in stark juxtaposition to the black and brown ones filling prisons for doing the same thing left me feeling a way.

We’ve talked about toxic parents, now it’s time to talk about...well, you. Sometimes the toxicity you need to avoid to enjoy your wedding planning is coming from you. This is a guide for how to check-in with yourself and also check yourself to avoid turning into a flesh-eating zombie.

The stress to perform and pull off a wedding flawlessly can make anyone crack, but add in the pressure of complicated family dynamics and, baby, you’ve got the perfect recipe for a volatile soufflé on the edge of collapse.

There’s a rule I give to all my clients beginning their guest list. It’s very simple. “Are you actually going to talk to them?”

I’d like to add a new middle tier between Bridezillas and Bridechillas. I call them “Anxillas.”

Whether we want to admit it or not, we have family with all kinds of political stripes and strife. How do you plan an event with them in mind? Welcome to your official guide on planning an interpolitical wedding!

We know our Catalyst readers are some of the most progressive couples out there, and the struggle to “stay woke” while navigating this super traditional wedding industry is REAL. Thankfully, one of the easiest ways to have a woke wedding is to book inclusive vendors. But how do you get started? We’ve outlined some steps that can help.

Whether the ring is 20 carats or $25, if you’re not the one rocking it, keep your two cents to yourself.

To make it even worse, the large majority of men who’ve hit on me at weddings are married. Physical safety aside, there is an emotional cost to working so hard to plan a celebration of marriage and then witness someone else shit all over theirs. What is it about weddings that emboldens guests to act like they aren’t married? Is it the desire to feel in control? Or to assert power over a woman? Especially a woman of color?  Is it simply because they’re A-holes?

Why does a wedding planner want to talk about politics and identity? As a Texas-based business owner, you can imagine how often I get asked that question. But the answer is always the same: because politics and identity affect everything I do: my choice of hairstyle, who I work with, the very fact that I’m a black-owned business that loves working with same-sex couples in a state that makes its position on that very well-known. I could go on. But ultimately, do you know why? Because people are politics.

I was definitely sipping the Kool-Aid growing up, thinking somehow I was an exception to the rule. That changed a few years ago after a horrible experience with some police officers. It was the October before the Mike Brown shooting. I thought a middle class upbringing, pearls, and dresses were going to save me. But I learned that to some people, all I ever will be is black and a problem. I hated it. I hated the microaggressions I denied were problems. It was really an unlearning of a bunch of different things. It was being honest about how I felt as a black woman in a world that hates black women. It grew into advocating for everyone else who gets sidelined into the margins. I learned to listen and I learned to speak up and out.