Officiating a Wedding

I had the opportunity to officiate my first wedding recently.  I was honored to be asked by a couple of good friends to share in this special occasion.  As an ordained Minister, I have the legal power to conduct marriages and proclaim couples as married (as well as a few other things).

Officiating a wedding is a funny thing.  While most everyone is familiar with the “traditional” style of wedding with some singing, and candle lighting, and vows and ring exchange, there are really very few rules that need to be followed.  So it comes down to the taste of the bride and groom, and what they want as part of their ceremony.  For this wedding, H & T (the couple getting hitched) told me that they wanted a nice short ceremony.  No Problem!

Having never done the marrying before I needed some help, so I consulted a book that was given to me as a gift by my Spiritual Mentor Sue who is a fellow member of the clergy.  This book, entitled ”Weddings, Funerals and Rites of Passage” by Rev. Amy E. Long, really came in handy as it contains a nice collection of different ceremonies and ceremony elements that can be packed together to create a unique ceremony.

I could have simply read from the book directly, but I felt it necessary to throw some of my personality, and the personalities of H&T into the ceremony, so I studied a number of different elements, and developed a nice ceremony (high level here, simply an outline for the ceremony) that really fit the setting that H&T chose, (Outside in a nice spot in the west Michigan woods) and that captured the wants and needs of H&T (simple and quick).

It was helpful to do a walk through the day before, but for the most part, that was done sort of freestyle, as H&T didn’t have a lock on what they wanted in a ceremony, and I sure didn’t have anything written down at that point.  So, as the Officiant and apparently the one in charge, I had to make some decisions, which ultimately became the outline for the guts of the ceremony that would be delivered the next day, while being flexible for the inevitable .  That’s about all you can do in a situation like that, better to bend than break.

With the rehearsal still fairly fresh in my head, I sat down and wrote out the ceremony, in bed, at around 1a.m.  It felt good to get the ceremony scripted out and on paper.

The next morning was time to prepare everything for the ceremony later in the afternoon.  As officiant, there really isn’t much to do except be there and try to pick out the people who you have to give special instructions to, like any family who wasn’t at the rehearsal who have assigned seats.  So that was the real job I had to do before the ceremony.  In addition, being that H&T are good friends, I helped with setting up the flowers and place settings in the reception hall.  This was good, because it was busy work that took my mind off things, and left me with a clear head for the ceremony.

To sum this up, the ceremony went off without a hitch (except for H&T getting hitched, of course).  leaving me with only one remaining job, to sign the wedding license.  So after the reception cleared out I rounded up the Bride and Groom, and a couple of witnesses, and we got down to the business of making this thing official.  It’s pretty straight forward, just filling out what you need to fil out and signing where you need to sign – in triplicate.

Licenses all signed and in hand (it is the job of the officiant to file the license with the locality where the wedding took place) Dorothy and I made a mad dash out of there, and headed on to our next adventure.