How to "invite" officiant

Talk to the coordinators at your church about it...we have not invited the priest to ours. Ooops. Letting FH handle that whole thing.

That's exactly what I did. I sent him/his wife a STD and a wedding invite in the regular mail like everyone else, and verbally invited them to the RD. ETA: this may make a difference, our officiant has been my pastor since I was 10 and we're very close.

We are inviting our officiant as well, but he is FH's lifelong dentist. We sent him and his wife a normal STD and will send a normal invitation. I don't see anything wrong with doing it that way.

Oh geez I didn't even think of inviting the officiant. Is this a must? What if it's someone who you don't know? I mean it makes sense, you feed the other vendors (photographers, DJ, etc), so why not the officiant.

When didn't decide which pastor was marrying us until after we sent our STDs and went through the church counseling. We plan on handing him an invitation inviting him and his wife. We are having a plated meal, so we need to know what they want. I have known our officiant since I was 14. My car broke down once at church and he gave me a ride home. Turns out we live in the same apartment his grandma lived in for 10 years.

Our officiant is FH's cousin so it's probably different, but we are sending him an invite just like everyone else.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with inviting your officiant to the wedding reception or the RD. Priests routinely attend our family weddings. In fact, they're the ones who lead a prayer once everyone is seated. How to do it? Hmmm...when I invited mine (many years ago), it was a personal invitation (I think I said, "And of course we have a seat for you and a guest at the reception. We'd be honored if you would attend as our guest". He declined because he had to prepare for the next day's service, but if he had accepted, I would have followed up with a printed invitation mailed to his home.

Don't be offended if he/she can't attend. Some do and some don't. Believe it or not, we (florists) are issued verbal invitations to about three out of every four weddings we do. We always decline. By the time we're done doing what we do, we don't look "wedding worthy" and we just wanna go home, jump in the shower, have a glass of wine, and relax (oh, and count our millions).

The youth minister at my parents' church is officiating for us. We hand delivered him a Save the Date, and mailed him an invitation for him and his wife. The invitation actually got returned because we had his address wrong- oops. So we ended up hand delivering his invitation too. But we made sure he knew his wife was invited, and that they were invited to the RD as well.

That's fine, Sara. As long as they know that you want them to be there, you don't have to get caught up in the specifics as to how you get that message across.

This is all great advice - thank you ladies! @Sara, so you invited his wife to the RD too?

If you're close with your officiant (clergy, friend, relative), be sure to invite him/her & spouse well in advance. If you wait until the rehearsal is over or the ceremony is over to say, "Would you like to join us for dinner?", the answer will probably be "No, thanks. I have other plans."

That's what I would do!

We sent an invite to ours and her husband. She hasn't RSPV'd, lol. But she made a big deal of how she'd take the entire day off and wouldn't accept officiating any more ceremonies on the same day, so we're hoping she's planning to stay for the reception.