Wedding Officiant Articles & Advice

Why Hire a Professional Officiant?

If you’re anything like most couples planning a wedding, deciding whether to hire a professional wedding officiant is only one of the many decisions you’ll need to make. Depending on the type of wedding you’re planning, you may be considering hiring an officiant or asking a friend or family member to perform your ceremony instead. For many couples, it can seem like there isn’t much of a difference between using an amateur or hiring a professional, but there are quite a few major advantages to hiring an experienced professional to perform your wedding ceremony.

In most areas of the United States, it is relatively simple for anyone to perform a legal marriage ceremony. Most often, the only barrier is that one needs to become an ordained minister, which is a simple process and can be done online through a variety of websites. With the exception of a handful of states with more stringent requirements, this means that practically anyone can perform a wedding ceremony – but should they?

Ask the Expert: Wedding Planner

“Your wedding is not the time you want to take chances. Hiring a professional officiant means that you will have a professional who knows how to speak in public and has the experience to ensure the ceremony will go smoothly, even if you are too nervous to remember a word.”

– Laura Weatherly, Engaging Affairs

Professional Advantages

There are a number of advantages to hiring a professional officiant. They bring the necessary knowledge, experience, and skill to help you create a top-quality ceremony and deliver it with poise and grace. Ask any wedding planner, photographer, or videographer whether they prefer to work with an amateur or a professional officiant and they will tell you the same thing: definitely hire a professional. Here’s why:

Experience

The number one reason to hire a professional officiant is experience. The more experience someone has at performing wedding ceremonies, the better equipped they are to deliver a high-quality performance in the midst of an unpredictable, unscripted environment. Performing a wedding ceremony isn’t as simple as just reading a piece of paper, and many amateurs get thrown off by the near-constant distraction of mumbling guests, crying children, flying bugs, moving vendors, and the like. A professional officiant has a level of comfort that comes only from experience, and can maintain a state of calm and focus despite changing or unforeseen circumstances. This leads to a better experience for you, your families, and your guests – you can relax and enjoy your ceremony, knowing you’re in the capable hands of someone who knows exactly what to do.

Knowledge

Since a professional officiant has the benefit of experience, they can also offer knowledge and guidance that you simply can’t get from an inexperienced amateur. A professional officiant can advise you on the proper length for your ceremony, any potential logistical challenges you might face at your venue, different options for wedding traditions to incorporate into the ceremony based on your unique circumstances, and the answers to many questions an amateur wouldn’t even know to ask. Aside from being a life-changing display of your love and commitment to one another, your wedding ceremony is also your guests’ first impression of your wedding and sets the tone for the rest of the day. If you wouldn’t trust your friend to photograph your wedding or DJ your reception, then why would you put something as important as your wedding ceremony in the hands of an amateur?

Reliability

Any professional officiant will tell you that one of the biggest benefits to hiring a professional, and one of the biggest drawbacks to using an amateur, is reliability. Professional officiants get calls all the time from couples who either hired a low-grade officiant from Craigslist who flaked on them at the last minute, or from couples who had planned on using a friend that now has cold feet and doesn’t feel comfortable doing their ceremony. These unfortunate circumstances are extremely common, and can be very stressful for a couple – especially when they happen only weeks or even days before their wedding. Professional officiants understand the commitment they make to every couple that hires them, and take that commitment seriously as a matter of professional integrity.

Teamwork

Unless you’re planning a very small wedding, chances are that you’re hiring other professional wedding vendors for your wedding. Professional wedding planners, caterers, photographers, videographers, DJs, and ceremony musicians all work together as a team with your officiant to ensure that everything happens according to plan. When one of the vendors you select isn’t an experienced professional, the remaining members of your vendor team are automatically tasked with “babysitting” an amateur instead of being able to concentrate on their jobs. This is because all of the different vendors at a wedding have overlapping or related responsibilities, each depending on the others’ competence in order to make sure things run smoothly. Pulling off a complicated event like a wedding requires a team effort from all of your vendors, and a professional officiant is an essential part of that team.

Control

Aside from experience, for most couples the most important reason to hire a professional officiant is control. This is one of the major advantages that professional officiants offer over church-based clergy as well – the ability to create a ceremony that’s completely customized for every couple without being bound by dogma or tradition. When couples decide to use a friend or family member to perform their ceremony, they give up a lot of control because of the inherent awkwardness of having a personal relationship with someone who is performing a professional service at their wedding.

You never have to worry about offending a professional officiant if you aren’t thrilled with their suggestions for your ceremony, or dislike something they’ve written and want to change it. It’s a much different story, however, to let down a family member who has written a terrible script for your ceremony or has their heart set on incorporating something you really disagree with. Ultimately, this is your wedding ceremony and a professional officiant is going to understand and respect that, and work with you to ensure you get exactly what you want.

Ask the Expert: Wedding Planner

“Using a professional officiant really makes the creation of your wedding ceremony go smoothly. Writing a ceremony is tough, and it’s so nice to have the guidance. An experienced officiant has the expertise to come up with a ceremony that represents the couple and the type of ceremony they would like to have. They have the formal approach of a “traditional” ceremony but are able to let the couples personalities come through making the guests feel more connected.”

– Ashley Amtmann & Katey Clark, Lemon & Lime Event Design

Legal Considerations

As mentioned earlier, some states are more stringent than others when determining who may, or may not, perform a legal marriage. It’s extremely important to familiarize yourself with the marriage laws in the area you plan to wed in order to avoid running afoul of local laws. Hiring a professional officiant is another way to ensure that your marriage won’t face any legal issues – a professional officiant will be familiar with any city, county, or state laws and will ensure they are in compliance.

For instance, in eleven states and the District of Columbia, anyone who wishes to perform even a single marriage ceremony must be approved and registered by the state first before marrying anyone. The requirements for authorization can vary wildly, with some states like Virginia only allowing ordained ministers with a local congregation to perform marriages.

A Choice You Won’t Regret

Deciding to hire a professional officiant is a choice that will make your wedding planning easier and less stressful, and ensure that you have a high-quality wedding ceremony. While it may seem like an insignificant decision when compared with so many other choices you’ll need to make, keep in mind that your wedding ceremony is the entire reason you’re planning a wedding in the first place. With so many benefits to hiring a professional instead of using an amateur, it’s not a choice you’ll be likely to regret.

When Should I Book a Wedding Officiant?

The best time to book your wedding officiant depends on whether (or not) you are planning your wedding ceremony in a church or other place of worship. Often, the priest, pastor, or rabbi at the church or synagogue is included in whatever fee or donation you are asked to pay to host your wedding ceremony there. In this case, you aren’t hiring a professional wedding officiant at all, so you don’t need to worry about the timing. However, if you’re planning a ceremony somewhere other than a place of worship, it’s extremely important to understand when to book your officiant and your other wedding professionals.

Conventional wisdom may be generally accepted, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s correct – especially when it comes to wedding planning advice. Most couples, upon getting engaged, look for a wedding planning timeline or checklist, either online or in a wedding magazine. It would be reasonable, then, to assume that these websites and magazines would all offer similar advice on when to book specific vendors, but do they?

Mixed Messages

We took the time to examine the advice offered on several of the most popular checklists available online to see what they had to say. Most lists started at about a year before the wedding, but there appear to be drastic differences in the advice given to couples – especially around the best time to hire specific types of wedding vendors. Here’s what we found:

Real Simple Magazine

Pros: Of all the timelines considered, this one seemed to be the most comprehensive and well-thought-out. Specifically, it advised booking the officiant at least nine months prior to the wedding, as soon as the venue was secured and the date is set.

Cons: It advised waiting until 8 months before the wedding to hire the photographer, videographer, and entertainment. Depending on the wedding date, that may be too late to ensure you are choosing from the best vendors in your area.

Here Comes the Guide

Pros: Also a very comprehensive list, it advised hiring the officiant along with the photographer and videographer 10-12 months before the wedding date.

Cons: Similar to the Real Simple checklist above, it advised waiting until 6-9 months before the wedding to hire the band of DJ, at which point many of the top entertainers may already be booked.

The Knot

Pros: The list is fairly comprehensive, and gives solid advice for booking the ceremony and reception venues at least 12 months before the wedding date.

Cons: It advises waiting until 8-10 months before the wedding to hire any vendors, and makes no mention of hiring an officiant at all. The only mention of the officiant comes at the night before the wedding when they suggest having the officiant at the rehearsal (which most professional officiants don’t do) and then having the best man pay the officiant after the ceremony (which most professional officiants would never agree to).

Exclusively Weddings

Pros: It’s online, which makes it accessible to people all around the world.

Cons: It gives terrible advice almost all the way around. The most egregious example is in advising couples to wait until 3 to 6 months before their date to hire a photographer, officiant, or entertainment.

Offbeat Bride

Pros: Like the rest of Offbeat Bride, it’s a great read and very funny and offers solid advice for most items – including hiring an officiant early in the planning process.

Cons: Strangely, it suggests hiring an officiant twice, the second time at 6 months before the wedding which could be pretty late for couples who want to hire someone really talented on a popular date.

People vs. Products

After considering what these sites had to say, it’s clear that there isn’t much agreement on the order to hire wedding vendors, or when to do it. In light of this, the best advice we could give to couples is simple – there’s a difference between booking a person for your wedding vs. booking a product for your wedding.

What that means is that, once you’ve secured your venue and wedding date, you should place a high priority on hiring any service which requires a specific person or group of people – planner, photographer, videographer, officiant, DJ, band, etc. – and book them as quickly as possible. The reason for this is simple – for services that require a specific person, you are competing with every other couple getting married on your same date for the services of the top wedding professionals in your area. If you wait too long, the best vendors will be booked before you even have a chance to start looking.

In most areas, the top talent books about a year in advance for all services. Ask the top photographer in your area and they’ll be happy to tell you that they start getting calls for dates over a year beforehand. The same goes for any of the services where you are hiring, and relying on, the talent of a specific person to work your wedding. This is different than, say, a cake bakery which might be able to make cakes for several weddings on any given date. They can produce multiple products on your date because they aren’t relying on placing a specific person at your wedding.

In conclusion, book your officiant as soon as you’ve booked your venue, along with your photographer, videographer, DJ, and other person-specific services. It’s much better to have your pick of the vendors you want to work with, and not just be stuck with whoever happens to still be available on your date.

Are Officiants Wedding Vendors?

At first glance, the question itself seems rhetorical – even a bit silly – but it’s a question that matters a lot to thousands of hardworking professional officiants around the globe:

Are officiants considered wedding vendors, and a legitimate part of the wedding and events industry?

The fact that the question even needs to be asked points to the existence of a problem that professional wedding officiants have become all too familiar with, one which has its roots in the way the wedding and events industry has grown over the last 30 years. Cultural traditions evolve and change over time, sometimes in surprising ways, and there are few businesses affected more by these changes than those in the wedding and events industry. While beautiful, unique, customized weddings have become the norm – from lavish tablescapes to exquisitely crafted details of all types – the wedding ceremony itself and, by extension, the wedding officiant, is treated almost as an afterthought when compared with the celebration that follows.

Its no surprise, then, that a recent series of informal online polls revealed that some wedding professionals don’t consider officiants to be wedding vendors at all, or even a part of the wedding and events industry. This may be the reason why officiants are so frequently left off vendor lists in magazines and on blogs, or forgotten as a category for wedding-industry awards, or not included on the invitation list at industry networking events. The reasons given were varied, but the most common seems to revolve around the notion that the wedding ceremony is often a religious function, and therefore the person performing that ceremony is a religious figure and not a wedding professional – an outdated notion that is simply not true.

While a large number of wedding ceremonies are still performed at churches and synagogues, times are changing and have been for the last several decades. In a recent report on church attendance and religious affiliation conducted by the Pew Research Center, the number of adults in the U.S. who have no religious affiliation has grown to more than 20% of the general population. Furthermore, among “Older Millennials” (those born between 1981 and 1989, who are the majority of couples getting married today), the same report revealed that fully one-third (34%) had no religious affiliation whatsoever.

What does all of this have to do with wedding officiants? It means that wedding ceremonies have less and less to do with religion, and non-religious couples still need someone to perform their ceremony. While some officiants are clergy and affiliated with a religion, there is a difference between religious clergy and a professional wedding officiant. The International Association of Professional Wedding Officiants maintains two basic criteria for determining whether someone is a professional wedding officiant:

The person must actively solicit bookings for weddings from the general public, and
The person must charge a professional fee for their services.

While the pastor at a local church may perform weddings for members of their congregation, and even perform a church ceremony for an outside couple who seeks them out, it’s customary for any payment for these ceremonies to be made in the form of a donation to the church instead of being paid directly to the pastor. In cases like this, the pastor is performing a religious function and would not be considered a professional wedding officiant. A professional wedding officiant is someone that a couple pays to perform their wedding ceremony, most often outside of a church or place of worship, regardless of religious affiliation. It’s an incredibly important distinction to make, especially when considering whether an officiant is (or is not) a part of the wedding and events industry.

So, then, what is the difference between a professional wedding officiant and, say, a wedding photographer or wedding planner, who are fully accepted as “wedding professionals” by everyone in the industry? Why are officiants often marginalized, or forgotten entirely, as a legitimate sector in the business of weddings? Think about it for a moment:

Professional wedding officiants perform an essential function (perhaps the only essential function) at a wedding, especially for non-religious couples.
Professional wedding officiants offer expertise and guidance to the couple in creating their ceremony, the same way a wedding planner would for their reception.
Professional wedding officiants work with a couple’s vision and preferences to create something unique and special for their wedding, the same way a florist does.
Professional wedding officiants have knowledge and experience that helps them create a high-quality artistic work, the same way a photographer does.
Professional wedding officiants have talent and specialized skills that help them deliver a high-quality live performance, the same way a DJ or band does.

All of these things are true, and yet officiants are regularly left off the list of vendors in magazines and blogs, often don’t get invited to industry networking events, and are sometimes ignored entirely as a class of vendors by wedding websites and publications. Venues and vendors will often leave the category of officiants off their list of preferred vendors, preferring not to “endorse a religious position” for fear of offending potential customers. All of this, of course, being based on the outdated view that professional wedding officiants are religious figures instead of wedding professionals.

We believe it’s time for professional wedding officiants to be recognized as a legitimate, and essential, part of the wedding events industry, deserving of the same level of respect and recognition as planners, photographers, DJs, and other vendor categories. After all, a top-quality wedding officiant can make a huge difference in the success of a wedding, the experience of the wedding guests, and the lives of the couple before, during, and long after their big day.