Asking officiant

In my opinion, and yes I am using a professional, is that by saying "whatever", she did not advocate for her profession/career. Instead, she made it look worse to hire a professional.

I also wanted to add that I toyed with the idea of hiring a "random" professional. It did not feel personal enough to me. I really wanted someone who knew us and we could form a true relationship with.

We're having a friend of FH officiate ours. We aren't having a religious ceremony, and he's very well spoken and presented. We'd never pressure him into it, just presented the idea and he gladly said he'd love to.

Brittney, he might be honored, he might be terrified. But he (not specificallly OP's, but any 'he' asked to do this) may not really want to do it but not really want to say no. We get a lot of those calls.

it's not just defending my profession; in some cases a friend is perfect.....if you have six people in a park, if you really don't mind what it sounds like, if you don't mind writing the whole thing yourself, if you just want to get through it with someone you know, if you think officiants charge stupid money for 20 minutes. I get it. Everyone has different priorities. Pro officiants can be great; they can be awful. Just like any other pro. It's all in doing the research, picking the right person and not cheaping out. I"m not going to tell you that every pro is better than any friendor, because that's not accurate. There are plenty of shitty pro officiants out there.

This isn't just someone standing in front of your relatives and friends saying 20 minutes of random stuff they strung together from the internet. It's important. Its the first expression of your individual and eventually collective personalities in front of lots of people that you theoretically care about. It starts your day, and it should be good, not just legal. It should inspire, not just get the job done, unless that's really all that's important.

Yes, I advocate for it because your ceremony should have a higher priority than mustache straws and cute signs. You want to create an impression, to be unique, to move and touch your guests? A great ceremony can do that. And very, very few relatives can manage to pull that off. And very few venues love working with friendors because most of them can't put a processional together, have no sense of time (as in, "yes it'll be 20 minutes" when it's really 6 minutes and when you get to cocktail hour they don't have ice yet....)

As for the 'random stranger' comment.....an overwhelming number of my reviews (and any great officiant) , here and elsewhere, mention that the guests thought I'd known the couple forever. It's all in the skill that a great officiant will bring to the table, before, during and after. (This isn't ego speaking, believe me; there are many, many fabulous officiants who will find that great reading about foodies or dogs or the periodic table, know how to deal with the helicopters overhead/screaming flower girl/lost or fucked up license/missing unity candles.

Great officiants will never be obsolete, just like great DJ's, great caterers and other pros who spend their days trying to create fantastic weddings for couples that value them.

My 'whatever' comment referred to writing your own script and not really worrying about anything but the legality of the deal. Sorry to be so vague.

@Brittney that is a pretty bold statement to say that her career is "in jeopardy of becoming almost obsolete" I'd like to see you back up that claim... but her advice is good. Also, no matter what you think, even the people closest to you are not going to be 100% upfront and honest about something that they think might hurt your feelings -- especially if it is something as important as officiating your wedding ceremony. I totally understand that it is meaningful for someone close to you to perform the ceremony, but it is a huge undertaking.

Goodness. Talk about your winning Oscar speech.

I appreciate your position; however, I stand by mine. Didn't mean to offend you. It's just my opinion.

An, it's really not that bold.

As someone who had a friend officiate my wedding, I am wholeheartedly on team pro. Our ceremony was beautiful, and my friend did a great job (we got tons of compliments on it). However, I (with some input from H) wrote most of our ceremony except the homily (though I edited that heavily too), so that was an added stress I would rather have not had. But the main reason I am team pro is the experience my friend had. She was very honored and excited we asked her, but as our wedding got closer, and it began to dawn on her how much of our wedding day was depending on her, she became increasingly stressed out and worried about messing up. This is a person who is a good public speaker, active in our church, is a regular service leader, has prepared/written services, and has given sermons. She even declined to bring a plus one because she wanted to focus on marrying us and didn’t want any distractions on the day of.

Also, as Celia pointed out, things can go wrong on your wedding day, and a friendor officiant is less likely to be able to handle catastrophes. In my case, we had two - our sound was an issue because of the proximity to the water and commercial boat traffic. Luckily, my friend has some experience with sound and was able to work with our DJ to fix the issue without bugging us about it (which ended up meaning she had to forego the wireless mic she planned on having). The other issue is we forgot our wedding license. Luckily, I’m an attorney and knew that we could sign our license after the wedding, so I didn’t panic (though everyone else including my friend did).

Personally, I have never seen a friendor who is better than a pro. Even my lovely friend had some misses (trouble holding both her script and the mic at the same time, forgetting to hold the mic up to my mouth when I said my vows so they were hard to hear, etc). In fact, other than my friend, i’ve only seen one friendor who I thought did a good job. I didn’t find the ceremony to be more personal than a non-friendor though. Nor was it overly memorable.

ETA - I just wanted to add that writing a beautiful, personal ceremony is hard work. It’s not just getting up and giving a 20 min. speech. Finding the right words and structure for the ceremony takes significant time and energy. I am a good writer, but it took me weeks to get script right and to find the right readings. I LOVED the ceremony I wrote. I still think an experienced pro would have done just as good a job if not better.

I officiated a friends wedding this past summer, and I am whole-heartedly on the team "You have to be honest about your friend's/relative's capabilities." I was so honored to do it, and I loved being able to do it for them, but I will admit there was a lot more work to it than I had anticipated. I spent many hours leading up to the wedding talking with my friends together and separately, preparing the script, preparing the flow of the readings, asking questions about their vision, timing things, etc. I think anybody who had less experience with public speaking than I had would find this a very very challenging job (my experience is quite extensive in a variety of fields: church, professionally at work, theatre, etc.) I also had to pull together how to do a specific unity ceremony that I didn't know a lot about, so there was a good amount of research put into that.

The day of was a lot of stress and pressure to make sure it all went perfectly for them, and I am happy to say it did (for the most part). I did make a few minor mistakes, but many people commented how lovely and personalized the ceremony was and how they were crying and laughing and the videographers even asked if I had a card/ was a professional because they would be glad to recommend me in the future

With that being, it is NOT a job for anybody to do, if you want a beautiful ceremony. And you need to think hard if the person you ask is willing to put in the time and effort to make it beautiful. If they are, then I see nothing wrong with using a "friendor" for this.

My friend asked me to do it by writing a super sweet letter and mailing it me. When I read it, I cried, called her, and gave an enthusiastic yes! I got ordained online, and the marriage requirements in the county I married them are very lax, so the likelihood of messing it up from a legal standpoint were small.

I just don't understand why you would take a chance with literally the only part of your wedding that is legally necessary. But you're going to do it anyway so good luck!

@celia, I dont care about guests thinking my officiate knows me forever. I care about them really knowing me and forming a relationship with me. Plus, I want to know them well before putting down a deposit.

Thats why I am going with what I consider the best of both worlds. A "friend" figure who is also highly trained.

The number one reflection I got from people was they didn't know how I was so calm through wedding planning, my response every time was that I hired pros to do the things I had no idea about so I trusted them to do their job since they knew more than I did. Same thing goes for the ceremony. I have no idea the legality or how to run a ceremony so we chose our pastor because we wanted someone who would be able to guide us through the process for the most important part of the day. He helped give us suggestions for things to include or what we didn't want and told us what had worked well in other ceremonies he performed and things that didn't always work out all while tailoring it to my husband and myself. Our ceremony ended up being the best one I have ever been to (not just being biased, many people came up and made the same comment) and I realized it was because all of the other ceremonies I had been to and most of our guests had been to recently were all done by friendors, that while they were personal, didn't have the right flow and felt like more of a speech than a ceremony.

If you really want your grandfather to perform your ceremony, then go ahead and sit down with him and ask him. You don't need to make it a big deal, just ask him. And while you are asking him tell him that if he doesn't feel comfortable performing the ceremony you completely understand and would love for him to be involved in other ways so you give him an option to bowout gracefully without feeling the pressure to say yes.

One of FH's good friends is officiating ours. He's done tons of weddings before though that's the only reason I'm allowing it!

We gave ours this card we found on etsy. He leads our disciple group we go to and he said he was keeping it forever

@Haley I completely agree with you. I've read some comments on here that made me want to delete my account.

I say just sit down with him and ask. I might suggest that you make it clear that while it would be an honor if he would, you certainly don't want to put pressure on him. It sounds like he would be honest if he wasn't comfortable with it, but it's never a bad idea to emphasize that it's completely okay if he doesn't. And it's good that you have so much time to plan the ceremony together and make sure he's legally able to perform the ceremony.

Trip post

I was a guest at a wedding where the bride wanted her g'pa to officiate. Because he was not legally able to, the pastor of the church co-officiated. Although the g'pa was a lay reader at the church, because it was his granddaughter he was very emotional and made several glaring mistakes (asked who presents this man to be married to this man -- not a ss wedding; read the same paragraph twice; frantically flipped back and forth in his book, etc.). I was cringing in my pew and felt so bad for him and the bride & groom.

I have all the respect in the world for clergy people who have the calling to go through seminary and become real ministers/priests/etc. The only requirement for an online ordination is a credit card. Civil officiants have more requirements than that (at least in Florida). Here it is a course, a test, being bonded and insured. And the State agreeing to renew your commission every 4 years.

Dup post

@ Jennifer ug, worse than asking a friend/family member to officiate is making a poem for it. I am really, really anxiously awaiting the day when poems and weddings are not tied together. Rhyming poems are for children's books and jumping rope. Just because something rhymes does not make more acceptable. And I say this as an AVID fan of Dr. Suess. But his poems belong to stay in entertaining books, not important conversations between friends and family or guests at a wedding.

@JSARGE, that's awesome! I am glad your wedding went well! However, do you still meet up with Celia? Do you find you have a relationship? I really want the person who marries us to be someone we can call up and say "hey! let's all go to dinner!"