Full story: We want our dear friend to marry us. He’s ordained and has performed several weddings before, so we figured it wouldn’t be a problem. He just called the county clerk to register as an officiant in VA, and they told him that he's not allowed to register because he was ordained online and isn't a "real minister". Which is ridiculous and honestly feels like a civil rights violation – they’re essentially telling us that our marriage isn’t valid because we don’t belong to an organized religion.
We googled it and apparently VA is the only state where this happens regularly. The legal foundation for it is shaky at best and it seems to be entirely at the discretion of the county clerks – some clerks allow it and others don’t. The good news is that there are 95 county clerks and our friend only needs 1 to approve him in order for him to be legally recognized as an officiant in the state. So he just has to like...call every county in VA until one of them admits him as an officiant.
We'd obviously like to avoid him having to call all 95 counties, so I'm wondering which counties other people have had luck with. We'll call those first. Thank you so much in advance – I can't believe this is an issue in 2021 
