Unity Candle for Marriage Ceremony
Personalize Your Wedding With a Candle to Symbolize Your Union.
Unity candles are a custom at many weddings. Make your own to suite the theme and colours of your wedding.
Unity Candles are used in many wedding ceremonies as a symbol of the two people becoming one. The bride and groom each take a lighted candle and together light the one large unity candle and blow out their individual ones.
They are available for purchase in generic designs just about anywhere. But why buy generic when you can make your own and personalize it to your wedding?
The unity candle is not meant to be burned beyond the first couple of inches used in the wedding ceremony itself. This allows for a lot of leeway. Normally when we decorate a candle we need to consider the flamability of the elements. The unity candle is a memento after the wedding. Since it is normally displayed or put away in a box in the attic after the ceremony, we don't need to worry about what is below the top two inches.
Because of the freedom this allows we can use any number of ideas. Feel free to use the colors, materials and elements of your own wedding.
For our sample we will be using the following materials:
- Unity candle or any candle that measures 18" in height by 3" in width
- String of pearl beads
- Ribbon 1/4 inch thick in our wedding color
- A wedding invitation
- Hot glue gun
- Glue sticks
- Scissors
- Straight pins
- Measure tape
- Pencil
Instructions:
- Measure two and a half inches from the top of the candle all the way around. Mark with the pencil lightly.
- Using the scissors, cut the message part off of the invitation and trim it into an oval shape. Set it aside.
- Lay the candle on its side. Cut two pieces of ribbon about two and a half feet long each. Pin the end of each piece into opposite sides at the bottom of the candle. Bring them up and crisscross them in front of you. Continue with both sides opposite and work your way up the candle, crisscrossing it as you go. You should have a low front cross, a middle back cross and an upper front cross. Remember not to go above the two-and-a-half-inch mark. Hot-glue the top and bottom of each of the two pieces of ribbon.
- Take an additional piece of ribbon and, beginning in the back at the bottom, hot-glue the end. Wrap the ribbon around the bottom, covering any ribbon ends as you go. Hot-glue in several places for security. Continue all the way around to where you began. Hot-glue and snip off. Repeat at the two-and-a-half-inch mark on top.
- In the front center of your candle, hot-glue the oval you cut from your invitation. Glue a piece of strung pearls all the way around the ovals edge.
- You can add pearls to the upper or lower ribbon if you choose. Add any special symbols from your own relationship. The only limit is the top two and a half inches. If you intend to have a very long ceremony, make that number larger to accomodate the burn time.
