Friend got ordained to marry us

Try looking up wedding ceremonies online. There are hundreds you can customize and merge together.

Also, double check with your county clerk that your marriage will be legal through him. Some places have different requirements.

You can also watch videos or ceremonies on youtube and get some ideas. I would go with a note card. He will probably only need 1. He doesn't need it typed word for word just a general direction. Make sure he practices a bunch so it flows naturally! Im in the very few who is using "friendors" as WW ladies refer to them so just don't be surprised if you get a lot of negativity about this choice! But i say do you boo!

Heads up: most of the comments you're going to get are going to tell you not to have a friend marry you, that it should be left to a professional, for reasons such as this- they know what to say and you don't have to come up with it. If you're set on having this friend do it, then the internet probably has some good guidelines on this sort of thing.

Get a pro. This is why people hire us. So they don't have to work at writing something they really don't know how to write (this is why I don't write legal briefs or tech manuals...), so they have someone legal who knows how to file paperwork and what to do if it's screwed up, so they have something that sounds like we knew them for years (which, if you have a good person, it will) and they don't have to stress about this at all. And that they know their officiant will act professionally, won't read from four pieces of paper stapled together, put their processional together and handle etiquette issues you haven't even imagined yet.

Nothing says "personal' like someone copping a ceremony from the internet.'

HIre a pro and let your friend do a reading. And then rest easy.

Fast responses love it! Thanks for the info on states and if it's legal. We actually thought about that just the other day and figured he can still do the ceremony but if we need to we will just go to the courthouse a week before or something. We are pretty laid back so we will still treat is like thats the day we got married at our reception with all our loved ones, So yes I need to do more research on that!

Lol, you don't even know if it's going to be legal yet?? Why would you have allowed them to do that before you even knew what you were getting into? There is logic missing here.

Yup. Definitely hire a pro. As a guest, I'd be a little disappointed to learn that you went to the courthouse a week before and this ceremony is just for fun.

Is he a professional speaker or something along those lines? Does he have experience doing things like this?

We asked H's best friend to officiate (he's a pastor with experience officiating weddings and a performer) but he still got nervous and made the ceremony a borderline shit show. Why? Because we weren't just paying customers. We're close friends so it was a lot of pressure.

If your friend is going to have to read off of cards and doesn't even know where to start, I'd really re-think this. But that's just my two cents. Do you.

We are having my FH brother marry us. He is a playwright so other than one little part we want for sure him to say we are letting him write it! We are also very easy going so I am not worried! I am going to ask that we get to read it before hand just to ensure there are no surprises but I can't imagine there will be!

Just get a pro. The last think I want to be worried about on my wedding day is if someone can legally marry us or if he's going to mess up the ceremony. My boss got ordained and has married a few people. The last wedding he did, I witnessed him completely lose his place and mess up the vows. He's an attorney that has owned his own practice for 30 years. He's incredibly comfortable speaking in public and even he messed up because he's not a pro.

You can hire an officiant to come to where you're having your ceremony.

My brother got ordained to marry us and for us it turned out well.....however the same cant be said for many people who go this route. There are people who find out years down the road that their marriage was never really legal for some reason or another. You really do need to figure out what is legal in your state. my state (ga) is very lax in that aspect. However, creating the dialogue for a wedding ceremony is far from easy. I mean there are tons and tons of examples online---but as Celia said, nothing screams personal like a copied ceremony from the internet. My husband, brother and I worked very hard on ours to make sure it included the things we wanted, while still giving him some freedom as the officiant. It was very time consuming and stressful. If we had hired a pro, none of that would have been an issue. Do I regret having my brother marry us? No. BUT I do caution you....

Also- make sure if your friend does marry you that it is communicated BEFORE the wedding, who is responsible for submitting paperwork after the wedding.

My friend got ordained to marry us as well happy because I don't have to pay a stranger to do it but he said that he had to pay $40 bucks on the site where he got ordained to get all the paperwork that told him what to say for the ceremony, his certificate and what do on our marriage certificate. I would say go to the site where he/she got ordained and that should have something there to say.

Someone faints.....RB's and FG's throw tantrums, rings are lost, licenses get screwed up, processionals are more complicated than ever, mics and ceremony music need to be coordinated, readings and ritual elements need to be found and orchestrated, divorced parents are at odds, dog ring bearers misbehave, weather is unpredictable, family drama ensues, limos get lost....the list goes on forever.

Can your friend deal with those serendipitous events?

We're having a friend marry us and I have no regrets, but this will also be the third wedding he's performed. We're working on the legality stuff together. It helps that I'm a lawyer and really comfortable with this sort of thing.

Worst case scenario in Vegas, the pros provide a separate service where they attend your ceremony and deal with just the paperwork portion for you. So a friend can still perform the ceremony but the pro is around to make sure all the legal stuff gets done and is signed appropriately. Might be something worth looking in to in your area, and then he doesn't even need to get ordained online which will cost just the same as hiring someone to deal with the intricacies for you.

We had a family friend officiate--H's mom is a retired judge, and our officiant was a former colleague and good friend of hers. he had done many weddings before and he did a fantastic, perfect, beautiful job working with us to create a ceremony that was exactly what we wanted. during the ceremony, he even teared up a bit as he described the two of us, which was a really lovely moment. it was all wonderful!

and then the morning after the wedding at our brunch, he sheepishly told us, and our witnesses (my bro and H's bro), that we would have to sign the official license again, because he'd had us sign on the wrong lines. :/ we all laughed about it, but he could back date it, and everything worked out in the end. but i share this story because it illustrates the fact that even the best laid plans, with a consummate pro who has done a million wedding ceremonies, sometimes fall apart when you're working with friends and families. emotions can run high, for better or worse. just something to think about.

We had a friend officiate. We had a super small laid back wedding. We wrote the ceremony ourselves, using some guidance from a friend of mine who is actually an officiant (but who could not perform our ceremony due to other obligations). We researched the legality beforehand (as did our friend), and figured out what needed to be done.

I think if you have a friend officiate, you just have to be prepared for things to go wrong. Ours made a mistake, and started to end the ceremony too soon. It was funny and not upsetting to us at all, but we knew what we were getting into.

If this is at all a bigger event, I would be inclined to hire a professional. I think you just need to be prepared that things are more likely to go wrong with a friendor, and you have to be okay with that. If you'll stress out if there are mistakes made, then having your friend do it is probably not the best idea.

ETA: There are tons of sample ceremonies online. You can find them all over. If you go the friendor route, I would recommend writing your own ceremony and then having him read it and see if he has any additional suggestions and let him put his spin on it. You'll probably still want to review and okay the final product though.

Thanks to those of you who gave sincere advice and have personal experience with what I asked for help on, I don't understand why give cocky comments and almost putting people down when asking for advice on an advice forum but to each their own. Basically I gathered it is more nerve wrecking then I realized to actually be up there and perform the ceremony, never really thought of it that way. That's my selfish thinking all eyes are on my FH and I We do have a decent size wedding so we are definitely going to reconsider. I don't mind a mistake here or there but if our friend happens to get really nervous and totally blows it then I would be disappointed. And no he has never done a wedding or public speaking before, he's just always the guy that's super outgoing and friends with everyone so that's why I thought he would do a good job. From the sounds of it though it's a whole different story being in front of 150 people.

The only reason we are having a friend do our ceremony is because he is legally ordained and capable of doing it. He has done several weddings, he knows what to say and knows us both extremely well. If he didn't I wouldn't even have thought twice to having him do it.

I think it would be less stressful for you to just find someone who knows what they are doing. It's one less thing you have to worry about.

If you do hire your friend, I would definitely set boundaries. Let him know what he can't bring up. Does he know of any personal relationship issues you two have had? I worked a wedding where the pastor friend who was marrying the couple brought up the fact that "it was about time this happened. The groom had his doubts. Do you have any doubts now?" The pastor thought he was being funny and weaving their history into the wedding ceremony. It backfired big time. For this reason alone, I would never recommend having a friend wed a couple. They trusted this guy and he had a script. He went rogue.

Just my opinion.