2 officiants

If they allow officiants to be ordained online in your state, I'm sure you could make it work. It may be easier to have one officiate and one do a reading.

I'm typically against asking friends/family to be your officiant because it's a good amount of work for them, and I'm of the opinion that friends/family should be able to relax completely during a wedding. I know sometimes, friends/family are professionals that want to do it, but I really think it's better to hire a professional officiant to marry the both of you. That way, you're not worried about their certification, any stage fright they might get, and they're not worried about having to "work" on your wedding day.

We are having a friend officiate but his wife is signing our papers. She's our legal officiant, but he's conducting our ceremony. The legal part of marriage is literally having a qualified, certified person sign papers and someone witness what is happening. At least in my state, the legal person doesn't have to be the one to actually lead the process of vows, ring exchange, etc they just need to verify that it happened. Online certifications are not valid where we live.

Contrary to the PP, I personally think its much more special to have someone you have a personal relationship with be the one that marries you, instead of hired help. There are plenty of online guides for putting together a ceremony so it doesn't have to be all that much extra work for whoever you ask to do it, but it should be someone reliable that you are confident can speak in front of others with poise and that loves you enough as a couple to put in that extra time (and sometimes money). Since the ceremony is right at the beginning, the "work" of your officiant is done pretty early and they can enjoy the party part of the wedding just fine. Asking a friend to officiate isn't any more work than asking a friend to be a MOH or BM in your wedding party.

I'm positive I have heard of people becoming ordained online. If your state allows it, then go for it! It's your wedding girl! Do whatever makes your heart happy! I'm rooting for you!

Awesome! Definitely double check the laws of your state but we have a few friends who are lawyers (in different states) and they all told us the same thing - the person who legally officiates your ceremony only has to sign papers and your "stage" officiant can be another person entirely.

My fiance and I wanted our officiant to be someone who meant something to us and watched our relationship grow. We decided on my godparents because we are so close to them. We are going to have them share the ceremony lines and divide it up. Practice will make perfect! thanks for everyone's thoughts! I was hoping to find a thread like this and other brides that were thinking about doing the same thing!

What a brilliant idea! This is so special for you and probably also for the brothers! The only potential issue I could think of is maybe there's a limit of 1 person who can actually sign the marriage license because maybe there aren't two officiant spaces on the marriage license. But maybe you could do something like: the older one signs the marriage license, and the younger one does a special reading or is the one to start off the sentence "we now pronounce you husband and wife!" Also, we had a good friend (originally his friend, but I've gotten to know the friend and the friend's wife and child really well over the last few years as well) officiate our wedding, and it was amazing! He was happy and honored to do it (apparently he had wanted to officiate a wedding for years), and we drafted the ceremony and sent it to him so he could make any revisions. That way, it was very easy on him. I spent a few hours online looking at different ceremony templates and ideas - it was fun for us to put the ceremony together, and it made it very easy on our officiant! It also felt a lot more personal to have someone officiate who has witnessed our relationship grow instead of someone that we met 1 or 2 times.