Atheists and their weddings

We're not atheists but not religious either. We found an officiant who will do basically any kind of ceremony that you want from totally traditional and religious to short, sweet and secular. He had examples of a bunch of different types of ceremonies so that we could put it together however we wanted to. So far working with him to put this together has been great!

Religion has never been a part of my life, and quite frankly, it makes me extremely uncomfortable. I can count on the number of times I've been in a church on my fingers. Even though FH is slightly religious, I put my foot down that we will be getting married by a judge in a strictly civil ceremony. Luckily, that's what he wanted too. We don't want any frills, and I'm hoping it will be over in about 2 minutes flat.

I can't believe some of you are being hassled that it's not legit if it's not a religious ceremony... you sign a legal document! How much more legit can you get??? LOL

We are both Atheist and come from religious families so we are trying to be subtle in keeping religion out. We explain not having the wedding in church because we just fell in love with the hotel venue we are using. It is easier for religious family who doesn't understand atheists to swallow when we say it like that. We are having a family friend officiate and the fact that he is a friend makes it easier to explain not having a pastor. We chose to do a unity cocktail in our ceremony because the sand and candle ceremonies just aren't "us" and we realized that in removing all religion, we had to add something or our ceremony would be too short. Because both of our families are religious and we both just aren't, we are trying our best to be subtle in removing religion. We don't want it in our wedding but we don't want anyone to realize we cut it out.

Big time atheist here-- DH's one-and-only request for the wedding was "Not in a church" even though there are denominations (like the Unitarians) who don't care what you believe.

So we got married outside at a country club.

No one remarked on it to us. Our ceremony stuck more to the "do you take...." parts and skipped the, "Isn't god awesome?" bits. And it was *short* which I cannot say the Catholic wedding I attended that summer!

If you're old enough to get married, you're old enough to say, "We don't happen to share those beliefs" to anyone who pushes you on this. Good luck!

My man and I are both atheists, and both come from religious backgrounds. He was raised Catholic, I was raised Northern Baptist. There may be some awkward moments for some of my family when they realize that a god is not mentioned, but it is OUR marriage and OUR ceremony. We do have more freedom because we are in our 30s and we are paying for the whole wedding ourselves. We are technically already married and we are viewing this wedding as our "white wedding." We went to the courthouse and had a judge marry us. The fee was actually quite reasonable and was only slightly more to go off site. I would contact the courthouse closest to your venue and find out which judges are available for weddings. At our white wedding, we are having a friend act as a master of ceremonies since we don't need the legal marriage part again. Our ceremony is going to be very focused on us. We have a declaration of intent, a reading from a children's book that is AWESOME, personal vows, a hand binding ceremony and a group hug. You can always replace the word god with "these witnesses" thereby making all the wedding guests the authority under which you are making your vows. We chose a secular venue for the ceremony and reception (which is would recommend doing) so there is no restriction on music. Some people may take issue with the lack of bible verses or prayer but that will be their issue, not ours. We are excited to celebrate our union in OUR way. ;-) I hope everything works out for you!

We had DH's bro in law get deputized for the one-time officiating duties and I "wrote" (plagiarized from the internet) our ceremony.

It was very easy for us, luckily - in the UK if you don't get married in a church you CAN'T have a religious ceremony. Your ceremony has to be performed at a licensed venue by the local registrar and they don't allow religious content of any kind - including readings or hymns. So every time MIL hopefully suggested including a Catholic prayer or reading I just shrugged and said we couldn't because it's the rules.

Just ask someone to do a civil ceremony.

I never realized there were so many atheists in the world. I just assumed most people believed in something or was a part of some form of organized religion...

I am not judging you, I just find it quite an eye opener.

@Riki, I thought the same thing until I became an ex-Christian. The majority of Atheists seem to be coming from the Millennial generation. They just aren't vocal about it for fear or resentment and ridicule.

I'm surprised there are so many on this site!

I am a solid atheist and my FH is somewhat agnostic. My parents it turned out were more religous than they seemed and didn't always handle me not being catholic (or christian) well...but at this point I think it is pretty non important. They also were super hippies and so a non traditional type wedding isn't actually that strange to them.

I am super happy to have put together a ceremony (that I think will be somewhat long..30mins or so) that includes a lot of readings, a sharing of welcoming, sharing of love, and more (there are a lot of great samples out there to start with and then you can just tweak it to fit you). I think I used a few references from www.practicalbride.com My favorite thing about it is that I know each element of the ceremony will have meaning to me and that is wonderful part about doing it all!

We are having a friend marry us (who got ordained for another friend...but if that falls through we have another family friend that is an episcopal minister that said she would marry us if we wished).

With that said I do sorta drool over small white churches near farm land....something about that feeling it evokes..I love. I also am not anti church....I think churches do a great job at creating a wonderful community of people to support one another.

The issue I'm having is finding vows that don't sound like we're just reciting a legal contract. I still want some romance!

@Sarah, we have actually been looking at wedding vows from some of our favorite books/movies/shows. One of our lines will be very much catered to FH:

"Until death or Tampa Bay winning the Superbowl do we part."

I'm non-denominational, but my husband is atheist. We just told the officiant, to keep it non-religious. I guess if she had a problem with it, she wouldn't have done the ceremony. I'm not sure where she got our vows, but they were not the traditional vows.

Edited: had to look up the definitions to make sure I was getting my labels correct