What is your Officiant saying at a non-religious ceremony?

We are doing a semi-religious ceremony, to not offend my mother, which basically means there is one mention of God at the beginning and a little "blessing for the couple" that is prayer-esque and mentions God once.

We are writing our own vows and a few friends are standing up to each do a short reading from literature that talks about love in a quirky non-gagging way. Basically I looked around Google for secular wedding ceremony and pieced together what I liked.

We pieced together things from our officiant (before it was my uncle) and from online and added our own spin to it. We made up our own time capsule ceremony, my mom is performing a song, and we wrote our own vows. We wanted it to be really unique and tailored to us. Our general theme is our adventure / journey together. I love how it came out. You can be as creative and non-traditional as you want.

I guess one of the good things about hiring an officiant who does ceremonies on a regular basis is that they will be able to bring lots of good suggestions to the table in terms of how the ceremony can go. We met with our officiant a few weeks ago and he was able to layout lots of great ideas for the ceremony that we got to pick and choose from.

Our general layout is that there are a few things that you are required to do by law but the rest of the ceremony consists of our vows to one another and then he is also speaking about marriage etc in a nice "poem". We have the option to also insert readings etc if we wanted. You can also do things like lighting a unity candle, hand fasting, a rose ceremony, sand ceremony etc.

Lots of great ideas online!

We are not having a religious ceremony at all, even though his family is super religious (mine is so-so). We are having the officiant read a couple of things...

We are doing a hand fasting ceremony and the officiant will talk about marriage in life, etc.

We are both environmentalists, so we have a reading from John Muir:

“The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing. The trees wave and the flowers bloom in our bodies as well as our souls, and every bird song, wind song, and tremendous storm song of the rocks in the heart of the mountains is our song, our very own, and sings our love.”

Our vows do have the word God in them, but it's vague so it really doesn't bother us - plus it may make our families feel better HAH. We may also have a "moment of reflection" but not sure yet...

Thank you for all the responses, I really appreciate all the feedback! Googling Secular Wedding Ceremonies now

Our officiant is a United Methodist minister, but he was super relaxed and easy to work with. He asked us how religious we were (we aren't at all) and how religious the people attending were. We told him it was a mixed bag, and he had some really great suggestions for the ceremony. He will, put a couple verses in there from the Psalms, but they will be presented more as "poetic expression" than preachy in your face.....Most of the ceremony will emphasis the power of love, family, and community. And he will end with the Apache Blessing. We are leaving things vague enough that we don't feel we are being disrespectful to a religion we don't adhere to, but not so specifically anti-religious that we cause some guests to not be able to enjoy the day.

Our neighbor / friend is marrying us.

I pieced together the ceremony and he’s basically just going to read what I wrote, obviously after some serious rehearsing. We are not religious and we are not having any type of religion brought up during the ceremony. To make our ceremony a little more exciting and longer than just “I do” we are doing a rose ceremony for the moms and a love letter and wine box ceremony. Both are really sweet and I think will add to the ceremony.

A word of welcome, a few readings, vows (we're writing our own), exchange of the rings and signing..that's about it...except we're bilingual so everything will be said in French and English. They sent me a copy of what they usually do and I just changed the reading for something I prefer

God will be mentioned. It will not be a sermon because I'll be weepy and emotional and hungry. And God help my guests if I'm hungry...

We are having a civil ceremony. I'm not quite sure what our officiant will be saying but I know there will be no mention of the word, "God."