Wedding officiant script

No offense, but if your friend was licensed as an ordained minister, with the authority to marry people, I would like to think that the licensing organization would have instructed him in the acceptable way in which to do that. i.e. his responsibilities as a marriage officiant.

No help here, but I agreed with Michele.

I agree,,,he should have been given samples or something in his training....but here are a couple sites that may help.

http://www.bestweddingguide.org/wedding-officiant-script/

http://www.angelfire.com/id/vancuren/wedscript.html

Make sure he breaks up your vows. When I co-officiated with a brand new minister, she rattled off the whole vow and expected the groom to repeat it. He had the deer in the headlights look. Then she did the same thing to the bride!

Not to sound mean, but this is why people hire pros; not just for officiating, but for flowers, music, photography. Your ceremony is the first part of the day; it's important, it should be meaningful and entertaining, and it needs to be legal.

Without some creativity and talent on his part, yes, you can all collectively cut and paste and it'll sound just like.....everyone else's ceremony. I suspect that's not what you want.

I would have him call your town of county or whoever grants marriage licenses, find out what HAS to be said, and then together you can write around those parts.

To the people saying that the certifying organization should have trained him... there are some websites now where anyone and their grandmother can get ordained. It's not very formal.

Leanna, that was my point. I guess he just gave them his credit card # and they sent him a nice little certificate/license.

We are doing the same thing and I've created my own ceremony based on a bit of Googling, some personal ideas, and tradition. We are not religious by any stretch of the imagination so our reading is secular. We have the opening (the officiant is a great speaker and will do his own intro approved by us), the reading, the vows, the rings, the kiss. That's it. Ten minutes in and out.

In my state, anyone can marry people as long as those people agree that he is appropriate to do so. We aren't stressing the "What should he say?" aspect because in the end, it's a formality.

No online 'certifying' organization is going to train anyone who goes to them to get "legal".

Kristyn, our ceremony was nontraditional - it was entirely nonsectarian, set outdoors, and featured two songs on the ukulele and a little Irish flair. If you'd like to see the "script", PM me.

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Yea, wouldnt they give him something? There are plenty of things out there for guidelines though if you just google it. In fact, when we were searching for officiants, many of their pages had sample ceremonies on them. Just make sure your friend really is "legal". our officiant informed us that some states have rules regarding who can and cannot marry people and some ban those ordained online.

Kristyn, you can pm me too if you would like to see our ceremony script. We had a friend officiate our ceremony as well, and it went wonderfully. Obviously each individual needs to decide what's best for them, but we wanted a person we knew to marry us, and it worked out great for us. Our ceremony was personal, short, informal, exactly what we wanted, and I was glad that it was our friend there sharing the memory with us instead of someone we will likely never see again.

Kristyn, we can help each other. I wanted my brothers involved in our wedding. My older brother will be performing the ceremony. The wedding is in May 2013, so we are still working on the script.

Thanks everyone for your help and advice! He did get a book I guess, but being a control freak I would rather just write everything myself, so its more personal and at least then I'll know its done right! Lol. I've been finding a lot of good ideas and resources on the internet as well. He is legal to marry us (we double-checked) and it means so much to us that our good friend will be doing the honor. Thank you again everyone!

We are going to do the same thing. Here in MA you can get a license for the day. They don't give you a guide on what to say, just tips around the web.

I will keep an eye on this thread and see what you all come up with.

Don't forget to look up his duties within your state/county! There's more to it than just the ceremony...

I did get help with my script from these lovely ladies and ended up with a beautiful, unique ceremony.. Love the helpful ladies here.

They don't need to give him anything to my knowledge. Honestly, we had a friend that was ordained that did our ceremony and it was absolutely beautiful! Just google ceremony scripts. We did the opening of the ceremony, a poem (a friend read), our vows, exchange of rings, the hand ceremony and then he pronounced us husband and wife. honestly, i wouldn't change it for a second! Let me know if you have any questions!

I did research and wrote our ceremony, knighting ceremony and wrote a script on a scroll sin e it was very different.t wording

Make sure he knows what to do with the license.