Pros and cons of having a family member officiate the wedding

I'd love it, but my fiancee wants a church wedding. I'm legally able to perform weddings, and it's fun, especially when it's for someone you care about! It makes it special. I may officiate my fiancee's son's wedding. I hope so!

We had my Godfather officiate for us and it was great! We had him ordained online through ULC, which was free and took less than a minute. My husband and I put together a ceremony script and had my Godfather review it and suggest edits, then we sent it off to a printer to be bound in a hardcover book as a keepsake. We left a couple of blank pages for what we called "Musings from the Godfather" for him to add his personal touches too. After the ceremony we simply had him sign our marriage license and we mailed it in to the county clerk's office. Easy peasy.

If you consider doing this, please make sure to contact the clerk's office where you are getting your license to make sure it's even legal. There are many places it is not.

View Quoted Comment How long before the wedding did you ask him to officiate? We are visiting the family for Christmas and I don't know if it's too early to ask. We do have a wedding planner so I think she will be dealing with the license and such or at least give us advice on how to do so.

We so wanted to have my Uncle officiate, but he is physically not up to it so we will have to find someone else to officiate for us. It is real bummer for us. Having someone who knows and cares about us is very important.

My fsil is officiating our wedding. Just make sure your county doesn’t have special requirements, she has to go down to the county and get deputized to be able to perform ceremony

Just make sure it is someone you can 100% rely on, and someone who is comfortable public speaking. My brother is officiating our wedding!

View Quoted Comment Ooh the thing about public speaking....need to remember that lol

We are having my uncle officiate our wedding! He's performed a few weddings in our state since I was little and he's a really good public speaker, partially because he's a singer in his band. So we know he'll perform the ceremony well. Another pro is that he knows us both well and we'll both be more comfortable at the alter with someone we know officiating. We are also having a pretty intimate wedding. Our bridal party consists of my best friend as the MOH and FH's best friend as his best man. FH"s little sister is our flower girl. So it's already very personal and small so we thought it would be even more special to have a family member marry us!

He was so honored when we asked as well. He was really touched and that made me so happy! I'm a pretty sentimental person so having my uncle who I'm close with marry the love of my life and I is one of the best decisions we've made about the wedding!

So I'm all for getting a family member to officiate!

We have lucked out and are having a close family friend, who is a pastor, officiate our wedding. But if we weren't having a church wedding and couldn't have our family friend officiate, then I would go with a close friend that we know can follow through.

We both look at our wedding date as a day to celebrate our relationship, and who better to speak over and about us then something that truely understands our relationship and us as individuals?

View Quoted Comment I think we asked January or very early February for our October wedding. I don't think it's too early to ask since you'll see him at Christmas!

We did have our mutual friend officiate, and could not have been happier with our choice. He had officiated one in the past, so he already knew what he needed to do. We also had a family member in attendance who can officiate, so we knew if something happened with our friend we could still get married that day. However, I've heard of random paid officiants backing out last minute too, so I think that's always a risk you have to just roll with.

Both. Our original plan was just to have the friend who introduced us (and who's wife is my MOH) officiate the ceremony. We had asked him and he agreed and we were all excited. My mom, bless her, tried REALLY hard to be excited and cool about our plan, but ultimately (after a lot of prodding) admitted that she was uncomfortable with it and felt it took away from the legitimacy of the ceremony. We disagreed about that last bit, but my mom and I are super close and I while I disagreed I understood why she felt that way. As a compromise we're having a dual officiant ceremony where our friend will run most of it (welcoming, readings, unity ceremony) and a more traditional officiant will come in to do the vows and pronunciation at the end.

We are having two friends officiate together. One is ordained and the other is an amazing speaker so they pair well together and they are my FHs former roommates, so they've been there for our whole relationship

If the person you are having officiate your wedding is flaky I would just skip it and hire someone. I have however heard of officiants who were hired back out a month before hand. It’s rare but anything can happen. We are going to have a family friend officiate it but I know in my heart he won’t back out last minute unless something terrible happened, because he has been wanting us to get married for years and was my FH’s mentor growing up since he was fatherless.

My step father is officiating for us as Gandalf the White

i definitely am not worrying about that going wrong but it’s early and I just got the idea lol

View Quoted Comment Don't leave this detail to the wedding planner. Call the county clerk and see what the requirements are. There was a ww post about a month back where there seemed to be misunderstanding about the states requirements. The husband who was visiting US to get married went back to England and they found out they weren't actually married because the state didn't recognize the officiant.
I know that's an extreme example.

My future FIL will be our officiant. He was the officiant for my fiance's older brother's wedding and it will be so special to be able to marry his middle son.

I'm going to guess that the friend/family member is inexperienced at officiating weddings

Cons
Messing up ceremony is more likely.
Since the leg work and planning of every part of the ceremony falls on the couple, it's a lot of work.
Loved one becoming too emotional.
Real potential for things to not be handled properly and the marriage not being legal.

Pros
Probably cheaper

FW's Padrino is officiating ours. However, he is a bishop in the lutheran church so it's a little different.

View Quoted Comment

Got it. That’s not a problem. Being a control freak, I will most likely be micro managing the wedding planner anyways.