Asking a Friend to Officiate

First, is it legal in your state? Some states recognize it and others don't.
Ask them sooner than later after you find out legalities.


Is your friend/relative comfortable with public speaking? Do they tend to ramble or will they stay on track? Will they be overly emotional or not? How will they handle any snafus that arise? Are they reliable to get paperwork submitted promptly and correctly?

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In Alabama it sounds like you need a judge or someone who is religiously affiliated. We found some websites that can legally ordain someone for free so our plan was to use that method.

I didn't think about them being overly emotional! That's definitely something to consider.

Thanks for all of the advice!

Contact the marriage license office and confirm the legal requirements of who you can choose before you make any further plans.

We asked one of FH’s close friends who has officiated several weddings previously to officiate for us. We’re having him over for dinner tomorrow to discuss script because he has ideas from what he’s done before and I have ideas from my research and just readings I love. I guess having done like 20 weddings before he’s practically a professional, but I want to make sure we are on the same page with expectations.

Definitely know the legal requirements and make sure everything gets taken care of for that. Otherwise, I think it’s important to be clear about what your looking for- are you going to write/find a script, are you expecting them to do that, or do you want it to be a kind of collaboration? What’s their personality, will that translate well into the atmosphere you want- whether that’s more serious or more fun? Are they reliable (honestly- because some of our best friend just aren’t)?

Our back up plan, because we live in CO and can legally get married without an officiant our witnesses, is to rework the script for FH and I to welcome everyone, have the wedding party do their readings (which they are planning to do either way), say our vows, exchanged rings, and declare ourselves married. Without his friends officiating the ceremony will probably just be a bit .

Firstly, check to see if it's legal in the jurisdiction in which you're getting married. Here in MD it's legal for a non-clergymen to become ordained online and perform ceremonies. However, our state requires officiants to become registered and only certain websites are recognized as legitimate.

We had always knew who we wanted to marry us, one of my husband's best friends. He's a well-spoken and lighthearted guy who has a great presence.

We met for dinner (our treat of course ) to go over a general game plan and then during rehearsal we'll decide if that's how we wanted it to go or not.

As for payment, he didn't ask for much because that was his gift to us. All he wanted was for us to reimburse him for fees paid to become ordained and registered which was about $50.

My brother officiated our ceremony! It was really so special. It meant so much to us to have someone important to both of us rather than a stranger to officiate, and to be in our video and all our photos lol. He got ordained on American Marriage Ministries, it literally took 5 minutes and was free. My husband and I basically wrote the ceremony script together. We took bits and pieces from things online, and made it our own. We also left a mark where we thought it would be a good place for my brother to add in some words in his own if he wanted. We didn't hear his addition until the day of the wedding, and he just said a couple sentences about "even though today is the first time our families are officially joined, the truth is Jason has been a part of our family for a long time already" and it was soo sweet.

I don't think he spent too much time preparing. I gave him the script like a week in advance lol, but I'm not sure how much time he spent on it during that week. The thing is also though, my brother is a REALLY good public speaker, and I knew that about him. If I hadn't previously seen him publicly speak, I don't know that I would have asked him. You just can't always tell who is going to be a good public speaker... like me personally, I can sit with 1 other person or even a small group, and talk confidently for hours. But give me a speech and put me in front of a crowd, and I choke. I stutter, I talk too fast, etc. I gave a 2 sentence toast at our reception and stumbled over like 4 words just in that hahaha. So I definitely would not trust myself to officiate a wedding. My brother on the other hand, is a really quiet person and he isn't very talkative in general, but like I said, he is SO fascinatingly calm about public speaking and just does an amazing job.

So just make sure you actually know the level of their public speaking abilities, and don't base that on their personalities alone or what you think they'll be like.

If you have someone like that, it'll be great ours was so wonderful and special. Multiple people said it was the best and most personal and genuine ceremony they had ever been to. And my brother was so good that some of my mom's friends were joking that they wished he had been around to officiate their weddings lol, and some of my friends were unironically asking if he can officiate theirs when they get married

One of my best friends is a politician so sje can marry us but the reason I asked her is her belief system in the institution of marriage. She and her husband have bern together since high school,2 tours in Afghanistan, a military wife, 6 beautiful children, 30 years together and they are still madly in love. They believe that marriage takes word, faith is part of the home and you love one another snd enjoy life.

Don’t do it. I asked my “best friend” to officiate my wedding and we are no longer best friends now. She acted all excited when I asked her but she was never proactive with her role and I had to end up firing her and hiring a professional. I got so angry bc by the time my RSVP date rolled around she never even RSVPd to say she was coming or not (she’s in NY I’m in Florida, NY is where I’m originally from). I had to reach out to her and ask if she was coming or not and she gave me some excuse that her dog wasn’t feeling well and didn’t know if she would come. When we spoke to a professional officiant after I fired my friend we realized how much a professional does that a friend couldn’t do. First of all the vendor we hired was so proactive about writing our ceremony for us, something my ex friend didn’t even start even when she had less than 2 months left. The professional officiant will even many times handle the music for your ceremony unless you are having live music of course. A non professional, even the most confident people, might choke up and get nervous and not be ready for unexpected situations but a professional will handle issues with ease.

Oh and on top of it my ex best friend didn’t even bother getting officiated. When I fired her it was a month and a half before my wedding and she was even bothering looking into getting officiated.

My brother & my nephew can both do it but we opted to hire a professional. We felt that there are times that you just don’t have family do things & this was one of those times.

We are eloping and having a friend officiate. We haven’t actually talked to him about expectations for the ceremony yet. It’s just a few days away when he gets into town so I’m sure we will have a quick chat but I’m not sure what to tell him to cover.


Luckily, this is one part of the day I’m not that worried about because it’s not in front of a lot of people. Our vows are more important than what someone else has to say about our relationship. I’m kinda curious to see how it turns out! Lol

We asked our friend who was our matchmaker to be our officiant. We asked her when we first got engaged. In our state, I believe they have to register to be an officiant.

My FFIL is going to do it, as of now. He officiated my FSIL's wedding a few years ago, but he was very quiet and only did the vows. I really want something longer, so I need to talk to him about expectations soon to see if he is still willing to do it. Plus, he'd have to be mic'd because no one could hear him at all at my FSIL's wedding. Definitely consider ability to project their voice while nervous or if you'll need a mic!

We had originally planed to have a family friend do ours who was a pastor at one point. He ended up backing out so we are having my grandfather do it. I would say to make sure the person is comfortable speaking in front of people is the #1 thing. I would also consider that you will more than likely need to write the script for them which as I am doing it now I am seeing that it is very time consuming.