If you are planning a two-bride wedding, you have already had the moment I am talking about. You are reading a checklist somebody wrote a decade ago, and it says the bride does this and the groom does that, and there are two brides at your kitchen table and neither one of you is the groom. So the checklist just stops working, usually somewhere around item 4.

Here is what nobody says out loud: almost every one of those traditions is optional, and it always was. The rules were never rules. They were a script, written for a cast of two that does not match your cast of two. That is not a problem you have to solve. That is a permission slip!

However, "do whatever you want" is genuinely unhelpful advice when you are 7 months out and your mother has opinions. So I sorted the big ones into 3 piles instead. Steal, change, ignore.

Pile 1: Steal these (they work with zero edits)

1. Something old, new, borrowed, and blue. With two brides you do not get 4 slots, you get 8. That is 8 chances to put a person you love into what you are wearing. My favorite version of this: each of you secretly assembles the other one's four. You will find out what she chose about 20 minutes before the ceremony, which is exactly when you want to be crying anyway.

2. The first look. This one is not just fine, it is BETTER with two brides. You are both getting ready. You both have a room full of people and a dress or a suit or both and somebody doing your hair. A traditional first look has one person waiting and one person arriving. Yours has two people arriving. If you only steal one thing off this entire list, steal this one.

3. Vows you wrote yourself. The standard liturgical scripts assume a husband and a wife, so you were going to have to edit them regardless. Do not treat that as a chore. Treat it as the reason your ceremony will not sound like everyone else's.

4. The exit. Sparklers, bubbles, rice, a tunnel of people making noise at you. There is nothing gendered in it at all, it photographs beautifully, and it solves the awkward "is it over?" problem that flattens the end of a lot of receptions.

5. Whatever your own family or culture actually does. If your grandmother has a thing, do the thing. This is different from shopping other people's heritage for a ceremony aesthetic — jumping the broom, for instance, carries a specific history in Black American weddings and is not a cute add-on for a couple with no connection to it. Borrow from your own line. It will mean more and it will cost you nothing.

Pile 2: Change these (good bones, wrong assumptions)

6. Who walks you down the aisle. The original version is a father handing over property, which is a rough origin story even for the couples it was designed for. The modern useful version is simply: who do you want beside you in the longest 90 seconds of the day? Some options that work well for two brides — you each walk with a parent from opposite sides, you walk down together from the back, one of you goes first and waits, or you both skip the aisle entirely and are already standing there when guests arrive. There is no default here, which means there is no wrong answer.

7. The wedding party. Bridesmaids and groomsmen is a sorting system based on a thing that does not apply to you. Sort by whose person they are instead. If you are worried about the visual imbalance (one of you has 6 people and the other has 3), the fix is a mixed processional, not making somebody add a friend she likes less. And yes, people can be in both.

8. The "don't see each other before the wedding" rule. If you are getting ready in the same house, this rule will run your entire morning, and it will run it badly. Change it to something narrower: no seeing the outfit. That is really what anybody cares about. You can eat breakfast together.

9. The first dance. Keep it, but move it. If you are both nervous about it — and one of you probably is — put it immediately after you enter the reception rather than 40 minutes into dinner. You are already being looked at. Get it while the adrenaline is still doing you a favor.

10. The toasts. The traditional roster is father of the bride, best man, maid of honor, in that order, and it is a hierarchy more than a lineup. Change it to a guest list. Pick 3 or 4 people, tell each of them 3 minutes, and tell them the deadline is real. If you have a parent who is thrilled and a parent who is still catching up, you are allowed to give the microphone to the thrilled one.

11. The last name. There is no default for you, which is genuinely more work and genuinely more freedom. Both keep, both change, one changes, hyphenate, pick a third name nobody has ever had. The only thing I will say firmly is decide it before the invitations go out, not after, because everything downstream (the signage, the thank-you cards, the monogram somebody's aunt is embroidering right now) points back at that one decision.

Pile 3: Ignore these (they were never for you)

12. The garter toss. It is a bit where the groom goes under the dress in front of your relatives. There is no two-bride version of this that improves anybody's evening. Skip it.

13. The bouquet toss, as written. The premise is that a room of single women should compete for the right to be next. If your friend group has been out here waiting on the law to catch up, that framing lands differently than the wedding blogs assume. Either drop it, or change the target — toss to everyone, or hand the bouquet directly to a specific person on purpose. That version is lovely. The scramble is not.

14. "Her family pays." This one is dead everywhere, not just for us, but it dies harder at a two-bride wedding because there are two sides and neither is the traditional payer. Build the budget from who is actually contributing what, in writing, early. It is not romantic and it will save you 3 arguments.

15. The idea that one of you is the groom. Somebody will ask. A vendor, a distant cousin, a form with two fields on it. You do not owe that question an answer, and you definitely do not owe it a costume. One of you can wear a suit because she wants to wear a suit. Neither of you is playing a part.

16. Being announced as anything you did not choose. Mrs. and Mrs., the Smiths, both full names, first names only — tell the DJ the exact words. Write them down. Vendors default to a script when you leave a blank, and the reception entrance is a bad place to discover which script they picked.

The one thing I would actually plan around

If you take nothing else from this: the traditions you keep should be the ones that put people you love INSIDE the day, rather than the ones that put you on display for them. That is the whole test. Something borrowed passes. The garter toss does not.

And this applies well before the wedding, too. It is the same instinct behind our whole approach to the bachelorette — the joint or separate question is really just this list again, one step earlier, with the same non-answers waiting for you online.

Summary

• Steal: something old/new/borrowed/blue (doubled to 8), the first look, vows you wrote, the exit, and anything your own family already does.
• Change: the aisle walk, the wedding party split, the no-seeing-each-other rule, the first dance timing, the toast roster, and the last name.
• Ignore: the garter toss, the bouquet scramble, "her family pays," the who-is-the-groom question, and any announcement you did not write yourself.
• Decide the last name early. Almost everything printed points back at it.
• The test for any tradition: does it put your people in the day, or does it put you on a stage?

If your family has a tradition you are wrestling with and it is not on this list, hit reply and tell me — I will take a swing at it. And if the bachelorette is the next thing on your list, the free Mini Game Pack is 10 pages and it is waiting for you.

— Jen