Rehearsal without an Officiant?

The director of your venue should be able to help you with this. from my experience, you don't need your officiant.

We are doing ours without an officiant. All my vendors wanted to charge me a few extra hundred dollars (PER vendor!) just to come and do the rehearsal. I said thanks but no thanks, I can figure it out. I found this website just doing a google search and will be using the instructions from it to have my own. All I need to do is find a bossy friend to help facilitate and voila! I think it mentions the speed, but you can also tell people how fast and how much space in between they should be. Anyway, I thought this may help you a little (and anyone else who is in our same boat), since it is pretty thorough and even includes a diagram of how it should look in the end. http://ceremonyofficiants.com/wedding-ceremony-rehearsal-guide/

You probably don't need an officiant. Just need to practice processional, recessional, where everyone stands. I would also suggest making sure to practice holding bouquet and passing it off and then remembering to grab it again before you start recessing.... I've seen several brides start walking without it and the maid of honor has to stop them to hand back bouquet. We are just going to use a little portable bluetooth speaker to play music so people know their cues as well.

Our officiant probably won't be able to make it to our rehearsal either but I wouldn't worry too much. I was told by a friend, who is a DJ for weddings, that the timing is always going to be a little off, no matter what. Also, maybe have the first GM walk after you then the next 2 can walk with your BMs then the last one walk after them? I can see it in my head and it looks pretty good lol.

We almost never do one. Frankly, many venue coordinators (who will space people down the aisle) are far better than most officiants when it comes to that. And most of my venues don't even offer a rehearsal on a separate day, nor are we available.

Your officiant is the first person up the aisle, so once the processional starts, they can't really help you. (Although I always make sure my couples have a total blueprint of who is coming up when, to what music.....) Just work out who is coming up when, to what music, and have someone in charge of sending them up the aisle at the proper time.

Celia, I'm legit about to print your comment and show it to FH.

Mine is including it in her fee, but since I have a DOC who will be there, I didn't think it was necessary if it hadn't been included.

Go for it Nicole....in about 1300 weddings now, I've done about a dozen rehearsals. I find that they are a stupendous waste of time; no one pays attention, it's walking and standing, and no amount of rehearsing little kids will guarantee that they will do the same thing on Saturday that they did on Friday night.

When you get to the Monday of that week, you'll be thrilled to bail on anything you can. Have a casual get together, give out presents, call it quits.

Nice input celia...my officiant does not do rehearsals.. Basically he is a professionallll..no rehearsal needed I guess..i was a little bummed a first, but i'm sure it will work out fine!

Yep, I keep telling him that and he's trying to tell us that the officiant guides everything (ie tell us where to stand, etc. as if that's not our choice). I tell him no, that's what a coordinator is for and he doesn't get it. I'd be more than happy to pay the fee to have them there if necessary, but we already have 2 DOCs provided by the venue that can guide us along.

I will send the current venue manager an e-mail to ask if he will be there for the rehearsal. Since we booked they have had three different venue coordinators and I was more worried that if they have no clue what is going on who would be the next "go to". I have also been looking at processionals on YouTube to get an idea on walking speeds so people are not rushing.

The officiant is at the front. How is he suppose to guide everyone who is walking???

We can't; we SHOULD organize it first, but it should be printed out and handed to the venue coordinator.

Exactly, lol. Well he finally backed down, so my wallet thanks this thread.

Celia, your advice is relieving. Unfortunately, my venue does not provide a coordinator to run the rehearsal (they have venue coordinators only). I'm actually looking at hiring an MOC for this reason, so that all my mom would be doing is giggling and drinking an Arnold Palmer.

We didn't have our officiant at our rehearsal. Our DOC was the one who coordinated the procession. Officiant is just to ...officiate. Timing of walk down is venue coordinator or DOC. And it's the DJ that cues the music change. I'm pretty sure your officiant will know when to start the ceremony .

Our DOC will be at rehearsal, but not our officiant. My theory is the DOC is going to be more helpful when it comes to the "choreography" of the processional, recessional, etc and she will be the one leading us day of. I plan to have a copy of our ceremony at the rehearsal though so if at any point we need verbal cues, we have them.

I'm worried about when our rehearsal will be and who will be able to make it (all but 1 member of WP is traveling from OOT). We may have to play our rehearsal by ear and just talk some people through it. I think we will be fine as long as enough people show up to rehearsal to give us an idea of timing down the aisle, spacing, etc.

I think that if the way that if details are important, have a DOC or someone experienced run the rehearsal. My FH has been in several weddings now as a groomsman, and he and I notice details such as all attendants standing at a 45 degree angle to the guests, right hand over left, transfer of the bride, etc. It's nice to get to try it with tempo so that everyone is calm, as people tend to speed up when they're excited or nervous (myself included).

Since so many of my ceremonies are destination weddings, we don't usually have a chance for a rehearsal. So, I write my ceremonies to include instructions to the couple as we go along (face each other, join your right hands).

I did have a rehearsal on Fri. afternoon for a Sat. afternoon wedding. But, it was a larger wedding party, we did the unity cross (which I had not done before), and there were 3 readers. The venue coordinator got everyone down the aisle to me and I took it from there.