Beyond the beautiful linen and lush floral, beyond the sparkling champagne and towering cake, beyond all the flash and finery, your wedding provides you and your beloved the unique opportunity to share your inimitable spirits and unique personalities with all those who have gathered to witness your blessed union. If that sounds like a tall order, take comfort. The best wedding planners are experts in translating culture, ethnicity, background and individual style into a wedding experience that is both beautiful and deeply personal.

Q & A
The first stop on the sentimental journey toward creating a truly personalized wedding is the question and answer period. Planners note that the best way to make sure their betrothed clients get the wedding of their dreams is to delve deep into a couple’s unique life experiences and backgrounds.

Robyn Martin, PBC, of Edmond, Okla.-based The Wedding Belle, calls this intimate get-together with her client couple the “blueprint” meeting. “I ask the couple how they met and became engaged. This tells me a great deal about their personalities—if they are romantic, whimsical, traditional or unconventional.” She then inquires about what the couple may have in mind in terms of concepts for their overall wedding look and feel. “Some clients have a hard time expressing their ideas,” she adds, “so I use color wheels, fabric and paper swatches, and other tools to help the bride define her color, texture and design preferences.”

Since the price of all those personally selected details can add up, Martin makes sure she keeps cost control front and center as well. “We discuss priorities so I am sure that I am grasping the appropriate distribution of budget categories,” she says. “I constantly confirm with the clients that I am moving in the right direction and providing them with ideas and concepts that are in line with what they have in mind.”

You can help your coordinator get a better understanding of your tastes, preferences and personal leanings by preparing for your consultation ahead of time, and by bringing visual aids with you when you meet. Clippings from your favorite fashion, home decorating, lifestyle and even pop culture magazines; scrapbooks; a list of your favorite restaurants, or, better yet, menus from them; photo albums; excerpts of scripture or books about your culture, ethnicity or religious faith—all of these can be of enormous value in revealing the essence of “you” (this goes for your betrothed, too, of course) to the person responsible for planning your perfect wedding.

Something Old
Once she has established the basics such as “religious preferences, cultural backgrounds and educational and professional status,” Karen Brown of Karen For Your Memories gets personal. The Houston-based planner likes to bring items of sentimental or heirloom value into the bride’s attire in order to create a sense of generational continuity. In addition to sending brides down the aisle in their mothers’ or grandmothers’ wedding gowns, or recreations of heirloom gowns custom made for the bride, Brown has taken parts of family gowns or veils and incorporated them into the bride’s dress. She notes that, “One bride wore the gown that her grandmother had worn, her aunt had worn and her cousin had worn.” Each family member had modified the gown in some way and worn a unique veil or headpiece. “At the reception,” Brown recounts, “we created a montage of wedding pictures showing the gown in each form, including a bridal portrait of the current bride wearing her version.”

Images find their way into Brown’s custom wedding designs in other forms, too. She likes to use framed family pictures as part of the reception decor, and show video presentations at rehearsal dinners and during the time between ceremony and reception. “Another personal touch,” she adds, “is the old-fashioned photo booth.” After getting their pictures snapped—a perfect take-home memento—guests “leave a photo in a book for the bride and groom with a note to the couple.” How sweet!

Wedding planner Pam Rapp of Houston’s “I Do” Weddings & Events reminds brides that sometimes it’s best to go your own way when it comes to bridal style. She recounts how one of her brides decided to forgo the latest bridal fashion trends in favor of a hand-beaded jacket and an heirloom ring-bearer pillow, both handed down by her mother. Not only did these elements represent a family tradition that had started generations earlier, and bring priceless sentimental meaning to the wedding proceedings, but, as a bonus, they did so at a minimal cost: “If these items were bought in the store today, they would sell for hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars,” Rapp notes.

Seeking out family keepsakes to use in your wedding can be a joyful and moving experience in itself. If you’re fortunate enough to have extended family living in Houston, you might opt to get together with mothers, grandmothers, aunts and great-aunts, or other family members, for a special lunch at a relative’s home to go through keepsake collections, select heirlooms and share memories in the months or weeks before your wedding. You may just come across a special token or trinket you didn’t even know existed, or unearth a relative’s wedding memory that inspires some element for your own special day. No matter what, it’s a great excuse to take time out and relax, laugh, recollect and gossip with family members—your own and your fiancé’s—during what will certainly be a very busy time in your life.

Past, Present & Culture
After the ritual and formality of the wedding ceremony, there’s nothing like a little dancing to help everyone—newlyweds and guests alike—relax and transition into celebration mode. But dancing doesn’t just have to mean shaking a tail feather to pop hits of yore, or shedding all semblance of maturity to dive into the “chicken dance.”

Deborah Elias of Houston’s own Elias Events explains that, especially among clients of African heritage, the entrance dance is a cultural touchstone and a great way for newlyweds to connect with guests and with tradition. “For Ethiopian and Eritrean weddings, the entrance dance is highlighted by beautiful palm fronds and pounding drum rituals, which are powerful and moving,” the coordinator notes.

For couples of Ukrainian, Polish, Mexican and Filipino descent, among others, some form of the nuptial “money dance” is a cherished and high-spirited wedding element. Depending on the couple’s culture and family tradition, guests typically either pin money to the bride’s gown or veil, deposit money into the bride’s shoes or hand cash to the groom for safekeeping. The money dance isn’t just a wonderful way to raise a wedding’s energy level—it’s also a great way for the newly married couple to raise money: Elias notes that she planned a wedding for one couple who received “more than $20,000 in fives, tens and twenties from this dance!”

Perhaps instead of a specific cultural tradition, it is your own personal history that holds a sentimental place in your heart. Elias says that a couple’s past can provide a touching touch of personalization to any wedding. Her most memorable example? “I had a fabulous couple who wanted something unique for their centerpieces. Instead of flowers, they had bought games that they loved to play when they were children and had them turned into centerpieces,” she recounts. “It was really a great reflection on their style, and for many guests quite nostalgic. The DJ played all ’80s tunes, which was another reminder of their childhood.”

For Nikki Khan of Westlake Village, Calif.’s Exquisite Events, serving her clients means satisfying their deepest desires for a totally unique, truly personal wedding experience—whether it’s an authentic representation of the couple’s culture and history, or a beloved fantasy theme. An expert in ethnic—primarily Indian—weddings, Khan frequently brings traditional textiles, jewelry and rituals into the wedding plan, often with considerable hands-on help from the wedding couple and their family. Clients with larger budgets, she notes, have been known to “fly their musicians from India to create a very festive and traditional environment and ambiance.” For one multi-day wedding she produced this summer, “The bride’s parents made multiple trips to India to import the canopy fabric, drapery fabric, napkin rings and other props.”

But no matter what the budget, Khan says, “I always tell my clients that it is their event and I am there to coach and guide them, but ultimately it should reflect their personality and who they are as a couple.” Examples from her own experience abound: “There is a couple who prided themselves as coffee aficionados and named all their tables for various coffees; favors were little burlap bags with gourmet coffee beans,” for one. At another, a Moroccan-theme wedding titled “Rock the Casbah,” guests were greeted by valets in traditional fezes, and entered a room done up in Moroccan poufs, jewel toned linens, ornate pillows, where they enjoyed Moroccan tea and belly dancing.

A Matter of Taste
JoAnn Schwartz-Woodward of Houston’s Schwartz & Woodward reminds wedding couples that even small personal touches can make a big impact on their wedding day. She recounts one groom of Italian descent she worked with who had a grandmother who had always baked traditional wedding cookies for every wedding that had taken place in their family. Keeping with tradition, “Grandma Pizzonia baked her Italian cookies for all 170 guests at her grandson’s wedding,” Schwartz-Woodward recalls. “What a special moment for both the groom and his grandma.” Julie Nunn Martin, founder of Houston-based I DO!, also is a big fan of personally significant food as part of the wedding experience. For an I DO! wedding recently featured on WEtv’s Platinum Weddings, the restaurateur groom catered the food himself. Says Martin, “They had varieties of food from the bride’s Indian heritage and the groom’s Persian background, including some local treats.” Also included were local shellfish and more than 10 varieties of homemade bread. Even veteran wedding expert Martin was wowed: “It was the most amazing buffet I have ever seen. It even put the Four Seasons’ buffet to shame!”

Elias adds: “I don’t know of a venue that would not allow the bride to bring in an outside caterer to help enhance or to totally do the entire menu for the reception. While in normal circumstances many venues may not allow food to be brought in, when it is a culturally specific food and one that the onsite chef would not be able to undertake, the venues are very open to doing so.”

Don’t be shy about introducing your own family recipes or food favorites into your wedding—even if they’re somewhat more humble than fine-dining fare. There’s nothing wrong with cheeseburgers on a midnight buffet or a pepperoni pizza hors d’oeuvre. And who says you shouldn’t serve Snickerdoodles along with wedding cake for dessert, or your dad’s famous five-alarm chili as a treat for bold guests?

Odds and Ends
For some wedding couples, the personal touch veers into the somewhat unusual, even zany—and that’s O.K., say planners, as long as that touch is applied with taste, and with consideration for guests’ enjoyment. Martin recalls her “strangest” request as one that came from a wedding couple who “couldn’t see themselves in a limo or classic car, nor a horse and carriage” for their departure from the wedding. Instead, the couple left on a pair of Segways, their guests blowing party blowers instead of tossing rice.

Whether you lean toward the wacky or the tame, Martin has one last suggestion for the bride who wants to leave her bridesmaids with a special personal reminder of the wedding day: custom perfume created from the scents of the flowers used in the bridal bouquet. Martin directs brides to Edmond, Okla.-based www.weddingdaybouquet.com, where they can select flowers from an extensive alphabetical list, then choose from a selection of products including perfume, lotion and shower gel. “Even men love the hand lotion,” Martin says, “and the packaging is over-the-top beautiful.” Lovely to look at, beautiful to smell, instantly evoking the magic of the big day months after the celebration ends—there couldn’t be a more perfect personal touch for any bride’s wedding.