Atheists and their weddings

And this is why DH & I were married by a civil wedding officiant and why I became a civil wedding officiant.

We are agnostic/atheist, and we had a completely secular ceremony. We did find it difficult to create a ceremony that was a good length while also true to ourselves, but most of those were related to personal things - he wanted us to share a lot about our shared interests, personality traits we admire in each other, etc. We just aren't the kind of people to want to share those things with others. Our officiant was really good at working with us - he does a wide variety of religious and non-religious services. When we signed the marriage license, he did have to mark the ceremony as a religious ceremony due to some weird quirk of IL law but that wasn't a big deal to us.

FH and i are not religious at all. i honestly don't know if i'd consider myself atheist or agnostic... i just really don't even think about it, at all.

we are doing a completely non-denominational wedding. my uncle is marrying us and we are having no mention of god or anything. my uncle is going to say a little thing, we are exchanging our own vows and rings and that's that.

@AugustBride, that's awesome! I don't have a lot of experience with Judaism but I definitely do with Catholicism. From what I've seen, Judaic ceremonies look like more fun than Catholic ones. I really love the interfaith marriage stories! I like it when people can get along lol!

A vast majority of my weddings are non religious, either because the spouses are non-believers or because they are from wildly different backgrounds and don't want to offend anyone. (I personally think that when those kinds of weddings are done well, each 'side' gets to experience a ceremony that they wouldn't get to see .)

Most of my couples' ceremonies are centered around their stories. We might have other component like pet blessings, gratitude ceremonies for their moms, remembrances and then unity rituals like paint or sand poutings, wine, or chocolate sharings.

It can all be very meaningful and significant without any religion at all.

Athiest here. We are just making sure there isn't any mention of God. We didn't really give anyone much of a choice to tell us otherwise. Our great friend is marrying us and is happy to do it. The ironic thing is...he is extremely religious. He's a Christian so we weren't sure at first if he would say yes when we asked him. I respect him that he's doing it for us without the mention of God or anything religious.

If anything religious happens...it'd be the mention of sweet baby jesus! oh lawd! But obviously that wouldn't be meant in seriousness.

Seeing as marriage was "invented" by religions, I guess that's a problem a lot of people encounter when trying for a non-religious wedding.

I'm a Catholic and it's really important to me to have a Catholic wedding, but I'm pretty sure there are several officiants out there that perform non-religious weddings and will be able to "cater" it to have no mention of a God in the readings/vows. I don't think they HAVE to mention a God to make it legally binding.

I found an officiant in my area that is also atheist. He will do religious ceremonies, but most of his clients are atheists or a mixed pair wanting to combine them both (one religious, one not). We are VERY lucky because only one true non religious officiant came up in the area and he's an awesome person, so we booked him after meeting with him. He is a writer so he will take over handling the 20-minute ceremony, but we will have no mention of any gods. He will be reading off any poetry or book quotes that we choose, if we give him any. But he's such an awesome guy, we will probably let him run with most of it. He's definitely someone we would hang out with. I did search for officiants who said they were non-religious, but all were coming up as "Reverand" and "Father" and all that business. I just didn't want any of that involved so I went full on secular officiant. We're really happy with him.

We're very non religious also. FH was raised with a Native American religious base. So mentions of god would be so not us. We're getting married in Vegas, so I'll we had to do is check a box. Sorry your location isn't helping your situation

For the brides who said they have had trouble locating a non-religious officiant, I have a suggestion which is what we did. We wanted to get married ASAP for insurance reasons, so we went to courthouse and completed the legal marriage in front of judge, just us by ourselves. Now we can have any friend, even not ordained, do our ceremony because the legal part is done. We have not told anyone except close family and we introduce each other as "fiancé". In our minds, the marriage hasn't happened yet. But that was just the best way to handle things for us.

Yeah my father doesn't even go to church, but he was raised Catholic (my mom's Baptist). He told me, regarding my BFF's (MOH's) secular wedding, "If you aren't making a promise to God then what's the point of getting married? Who's going to make you keep that promise?" I was like "Um...aren't you making a promise to each other? Isn't that good enough reason to keep your promises?" But my FH is all about family so he said if my dad wants God mentioned, we have to do it. That when I said my plan. LOL!

@Becky, we considered that! We really like our date though lol that was our issue there. We will both be 26 years old and married on the 26th. We're only the same age for a month each year.

@Melissa, "Who's going to make you keep that promise?" That made me think of this:

@Manders- that's cool and I respect that but I will say me and FH have totally forgotten the date of our legal ceremony and plan to celebrate our wedding day as our true anniversary. We look at the date of the legal ceremony more like the date that we got an insurance plan together lol (we did it so he could get on my work health plan)

Here's the thing. To be legal, in most states, we have to be ordained (unless we're a judge or a notary in some states). The way that your officiant is legal is less important than what they are going to say at your wedding.

My family is very non-religious to the point where they didn't baptize me (or my brother). I've been to church for funerals, weddings and once on Christmas Eve with my grandmother, but never for strict religious reasons. Anything to do with religion, even just talking about it, makes me very uncomfortable. My FH was raised catholic and attended catholic schools through college, but thankfully, he's not very religious at all. We're not having any mention of God or religion of any kind at our wedding. My FMIL suggested that we say grace prior to dinner as her brother is married to a reverend. I seriously looked at her like she was nuts and told both her and my FH that having religion brought into the wedding, regardless of how, would be uncomfortable for me. That was the one and only time that I've actually said "because it's my wedding" when asked why.

Our officiant is actually a family friend who is federal court judge for the city of Philadelphia. So not only is she free of charge since a judge is not allowed to be paid for their services, but she has done plenty of non religious ceremonies and prefers them! YAY!

@Becky, that's a very practical idea! We probably should have done that. FH lost his job last December and he went without insurance until he found another job in April. Thank goodness nothing happened during that time!

How long have you guys been married??

I'm not atheist but FH and I have strong beliefs in love and equality and we think most, NOT ALL, churches are just businesses. I still have a relationship with God, I just do it in my own way. Anyway, we planned our own ceremony since my cousin is officiating. Our wedding planner suggested this book and it has been AMAZING! They have suggestions for religious, non-religious, second weddings, weddings with kids, etc. We got our entire ceremony from this book. I highly recommend it! You can find it on Amazon, I believe.

The Wedding Ceremony Planner: The essential guide to the most important part of your wedding day. Second Edition

by reverend Judith Johnson, Ph.D

@Manders --since March. I don't wear a wedding band either FYI and I have not and will not change my last name until after our wedding.

Hubby and I were both raised catholic but we are both pretty much atheists, Nobody knows in our family except for a handful of people. We went to a small civil chapel a year ago so we could have insurance and other legal benefits. Then we had that big wedding a year later. Because we were legally married for the wedding we had hubbys aunt (who is such an awesome person) as our officiant. Our ceremony was about commitment to each other in front of our friends and family, we wrote our own vows. We didn't tell anyone that we we not having a religious wedding and that the aunt was marrying us. But, I know my mom would have wanted me to be married in a church but she respected our wishes. To my knowledge there were no problems with us having a secular wedding with no mention of God.