Why are officiants so expensive? (virginia wedding)

View Quoted Comment Hi Darcy, yes please! Pass along any info you have. We're getting married in Fairfax County

View Quoted Comment Exactly! We just want the bare minimum. We're spending all this money on a party, we want to party! Thank you for your suggestion

View Quoted Comment Oh wow. That's so much

Wow! That's a lot! Our officiant in Savannah, Georgia is $300 not including tip. We thought that was pretty reasonable.

View Quoted Comment We've thought about doing this! Get married on our date this year, and then on our one year anniversary, have a vow renewal.

View Quoted Comment We're both from South Jersey and were debating on whether to do the wedding back home or here in VA. I didn't want to plan a wedding a few states away, so we're doing it in VA.

View Quoted Comment We are having our wedding in Fairfax County. We've thought about going to the courthouse ahead of time to get married and then just have our friend do the 'ceremony' on our actual wedding day.
The Facebook group is a great idea! I'm part of a few consignment groups, but I've never seen any info about people who can perform ceremonies. Thank you!

View Quoted Comment We don't go to church. I grew up Catholic and have all of my rites done, so technically I could have a priest do our wedding. But that's not what we want. And we don't want to go to church for a year and a half just so we can get someone to marry us.

View Quoted Comment Also, we're almost date twins! I really wanted 10/10/20, but our venue was already booked that day, so we went with 10/9/20

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Oh man! Our anniversary is Oct 10 and I felt like I didn't want to make him remember another date hahaha. Congrats on being less than a year and a half out! It's getting closer all the time!

View Quoted Comment Ours is September 3, but it was too close to his brother's wedding anniversary and we thought it'd be weird 🤣😂

Congratulations to you too! I just want to get everything signed now so I can just chill until my wedding day 🤷🏽‍♀️

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I'm glad to hear that you've done most everything too! I just need a florist and a cake and I'll be done! Everyone is always surprised that we've done so much already!

Same here our officiant is $575, after not being able to get married in a church an officiant was pretty much our last choice. I did wish though that I could have found someone less expensive for our 30 minute ceremony.

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No problem! I actually found here on WW: Wendy Jones https://www.weddingwire.com/biz/wendy-jones-manassas/9529c5ca4307c6f7.html

She's marrying us on Saturday. I'll let you know how she is. She's been great so far. When we went to get our wedding license the lady preparing it knew who she was and said she was amazing. If you're looking for religious though, she won't be for you.

OMG I completely agree, I had no idea how freaking expensive they were! I was thinking $300 bc my fiance told me they were expensive. But then we have an hour long phone call with an officiant, going over a beautiful 15 ceremony, and then she told us the charge would be $750!!! I was speechless on the phone with her. Like why??? We ended up finding someone who created a beautiful 15 min ceremony for $400. Still wild, though.

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That is what we did (: Went to the courthouse Nov 9, 2018 and will be having our wedding ceremony/reception on Nov 9, 2019!

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If mine were in the $300 range, I'd have no issue.

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We'll def have to talk it over with our parents if we go this route. we wanted to elope and asked our parents how they would feel about it. it did not go well.

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I mean, I still need a florist, caterer, dj, and photographer BUTTTT - I'm talking to all of those people currently. I'm hoping we can have them all booked by the end of the month.

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The church was never an option for us