Professional vs friend as officiant

We used my husbands aunt as our officiant. She's great at public speaking, she's done plenty of weddings & he wanted to have someone close marry us so he chose her. She also didn't charge us anything & she was ecstatic to do it!

We are trying to use a friend as ours, we still have to ask him but he's done weddings before. Want it to be more personal instead of some random person who doesn't know us at all.

Professional because the one wedding we attended before our wedding where a friend did it, the officiant made what should have been a 20 minute ceremony into an hour long ceremony in the blazing sun because he went on a tangent about his relationship with the groom.

Kind of both? My old boss is doing our ceremony, and we are friends, but she is also a Justice of the Peace and has done several weddings already. We decided to use her because well, she offered to do it for free as long as we invited her husband to the wedding, which we of course were going to anyways since she was on our invite list to begin with.

My brother-in-law is clergy and has done a lot of weddings, so he was the obvious choice. This will make our wedding "Jewish enough" to satisfy my FH's parents, even though it's going to be a completely non-religious ceremony. I wouldn't be comfortable hiring some random person because they would have limitations on where and how we can do it. I also hear that Jewish clergy charge a lot, so I'm glad we don't have to worry about that.

We had a "real" pastor marrying us. However, I would love to be an officiant to international weddings, if I could change my job, that would be it ! ;-)

Professional, they just have done it many times and I predict it will go a lot smoother that way 🙂

I went with our mutual family friend. I think it's more personal to have someone you know do it. Plus he has officiated 5 other weddings and he public speaks all the time at work.

My daughter's platoon sergeant was supposed to officiate their wedding but due to a last minute Covid military travel ban, he was not allowed to travel. Fortunately, my dad had been ordained online and officiated the ceremony.

My friend married us. She has never done it before but said she would love to and it turned out great. We wanted someone who actually knew us to do it.

We're using FH's stepdad. He's already an ordained minister and has done several weddings. He researched the legalities of it since he's out of state. He's very good with people and such a sweet man.. And I didn't really want a stranger do it.

We are asking a mutual friend who is also one of the groomsmen to marry us. It will be his first time and we prefer it that way so he can share some funny stories of us instead of a stranger giving vague speeches

I really don’t want a friend to do it. I can’t explain why LOL I’ve been to a couple weddings with friends or family officiating (online ordination situations) and they were not public speakers. The ceremonies were rambling, they didn’t have good speaking voices, there was a lot of fumbling around in different parts, and so attempts at humor that fell flat.

We're doing a professional officiant, it was included in our bundle with our DJ.

We thought about having a friend do it (specifically my best friend who introduced us) but she and all of our other friends are not keen on public speaking.

FH's Brother and FISL are getting married in two weeks and are having his best friend officiate, and after having to talk her down from a nervous breakdown about it I most definitely didn't want to put any of my friends through that stress.

A mutual friend of ours will be our officiant. We met her through community theatre--she's just fine with public speaking! She has also officiated a few weddings before, so she was super prepared when we met to discuss the ceremony. She sent over the script, and aside from a few parts not on there (she asked us for our favorite quote or lyric about love), the whole thing will be less than 20 minutes (which is PERFECT for us). Plus it'll be a little more personalized since she can share some stories from her perspective, vs. something we shared through an online form.

We're asked one of our close friends to be our officiant. He's getting ordained just for us, and is actually taking the role very seriously. He let me create an outline for our ceremony, which was really nice! So it'll be a little more tailored to us rather than the traditional wording.

We just aren't church going people, and didn't feel comfortable having a priest or someone random marrying us.

Had I had a Church wedding, I would have wanted my mom's former pastor to do it, because i just really liked him. But he's not at their church anymore . So we decided to ask my Godfather who was the officiant at an old family friend's wedding a few years ago. We also rent out his guesthouse, so he's gotten to know FH and us as a couple very well over the last year.

As someone whose FH, dad, and brother are all officiants - it will definitely be someone we know! I think having a friend or loved one officiate is an awesome option so long as a) they are good at and enjoy public speaking and b) they're willing to meet with you and work within your vision and constraints for the ceremony. Someone above cited a friend who droned on and on about his relationship with the groom - that friend was confusing officiating for a best man's speech. Officiating should be about the couple, not the officiant - it's fine to insert some personal observations or a short anecdote since that is one of the benefits of your officiant knowing you both well. But the officiant should speak about themselves relatively little and they are to speak more about the couple's relationship and wishes for their marriage.

I want to use my brother as our officiant - obviously FH cannot officiate his own wedding and I'd prefer for my dad to walk me down the aisle alongside my mom.

We plan to ask a friend of ours to officiate because he’s very well-spoken and hilarious. The only thing is that he’s 6’3ish and we’re 5’3 and 5’6 so he may look like a giant next to us 🤷🏻‍♀️

We asked my former boss but she declined because we aren't practicing Christians (I'm a spiritual Christian, he was raised Muslim) so we found an officiant that we really like who is also doing our premarital counseling sessions. She's worked our venue before and I believe she'll make the day go a lot smoother.