Finding a wedding officiant

November 11, 2004 12:25 PM

Process for finding a wedding officiant? [more]

An atheist former jew and a slightly christian agnostic, neither a member of any congregation or anything resembling one. We're trying to find an officiant for our wedding next spring (in the catskills in NY, but I'm not sure that matters much for my question), and I'm sort of at a loss as to where to start. We'd like a ceremony that's uses various religious traditions without being overtly religious (if that makes any sense). There are some religious groups that seem appropriate (unitarians), but it seems weird to just contact them out of nowhere not being a member of any congregation. There are also random web sites for "interfaith" ministers, but it's really hard to narrow them down.


Anyone have any tips or ideas for getting recommendations? Do I just have to call and meet with tons of random people?

posted by malphigian to Work & Money (12 answers total)

my wife and i found our officiant online. i am an atheist and she claims no religion, so we were out to find a non-religious officiant. i searched online and found a couple that we then set up meetings with to meet. we lucked out and found our officiant on the first meeting. we went to the second, but the lady was a bit nuts.

so, look online and see what you can find. they are out there, but you will have to do meetings with lots of random people until you find the one that fits best. also, don't settle for the first thing you can find. make sure that your officiant is someone who you can talk to, and will perform what you feel you want, not what they feel is needed. we had a mix of traditions in our wedding, some with religious basis and others without, and it was great. just make sure you take time getting an officiant. lots of people get swept up in all the other stuff to remember that the ceremony, and vows, are the next important thing besides the two of you being there.

also, good luck and congratulations!
posted by chrisroberts at 12:49 PM on November 11, 2004

TheKnot.Com has a section on wedding ceremony issues, and also has sections on Finding an Officiant and How To Mix Traditions and Beliefs.

If you're looking for a Unitarian to officiate, you can use their website to locate on near you.

Also, don't rule out a Justice of the Peace. I went to an interfaith wedding this summer (she was Protestant, he was Jewish), and they had a Justice officiate. It was exceptionally well done, with a nice mix of traditions from both sides of the family and faiths.

Good luck!
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 12:52 PM on November 11, 2004

just a quick look for officiants in NY turned up this many of which perform interfaith marriages and the like.
posted by chrisroberts at 12:58 PM on November 11, 2004

We talked to the guy who runs the Interfaith chapel at the Atlanta airport, but he was busy and couldn't do our ceremony himself. But he did have a list of interfaith types that they call on in case of a plane crash or something, and recommended one to us that turned out just fine. He was kinda crazy, but we liked that.
posted by spilon at 1:00 PM on November 11, 2004

If you don't need your union blessed by a higher power, a local justice of the peace could do it in a way that honored your union but was strictly secular. Other people have gone the route of finding someone who was a very special person in their lives as a couple and had them do the ceremony in the way they chose with a Universal Life Church ordination under their belt. This is, of course, not for everyone but it would be legal. Other legal options [in New York] are

• the mayor of a city or village;
• the city clerk or one of the deputy city clerks of a city of more than one million inhabitants;
• a marriage officer appointed by the town or village board or the city common council;
• a justice or judge of the following courts... [list deleted, suffice to say, judges]
• a village, town or county justice;
• a member of the clergy or minister who has been officially ordained and granted authority to perform marriage ceremonies from a governing church body in accordance with the rules and regulations of the church body;
• a member of the clergy or minister who is not authorized by a governing church body but who has been chosen by a spiritual group to preside over their spiritual affairs;
• other officiants as specified by Section 11 of the Domestic Relations Law.

Most weddings I've attended recently used either a family minister/rabbi [or one specifically recommended by the family on either side] or a friend of a friend. And yeah, you do call a few random people and interview them and they also sort of interview you, but you should be able to tell on the basis of a phone call whether or not they'll be down with what you have in mind. You may meet one or two in person. You'll want to think about whether what you want is an interfaith ceremony or a truly secular ceremony even if it has some mixed traditions included. Civil officiants generally can't do "religious" weddings though the reverse is sometimes true depending on the denomination of the person involved.
posted by jessamyn at 1:02 PM on November 11, 2004

My sister used a really good justice of the peace (or similar, not sure of the exact) for her Manhattan wedding this past June. She was great and does a customized ceremony per the couple's desires. If you want contact info, feel free to email me.

Also, my wife and I asked a close friend to go the ULC route mentioned by Jessamyn. She and I worked up a very sweet, loving, higher power free ceremony and I thought it better than my past experiences in more conventional ceremonies.
posted by billsaysthis at 1:08 PM on November 11, 2004

If you pop over the border to Pennsylvania, you can get a self-uniting marriage license, aka a Quaker license, and legally marry yourselves. Anybody you like, or nobody at all, or several somebodies you like, can officiate at any ceremony you might or might not want to have.

An alternative if you want to stay in NY is to get a marriage license in NYC, get a quick and dirty civil wedding in NYC(ie, get the legal marriage), and then go do whatever you damn well please, with whoever you damn well please, in the Catskills. The ceremony in the Catskills won't have any legal effect, but do you really need for the public-affirmation-of-love wedding to have anything to do with the changes-your-tax-status wedding? Besides, most weddings are actually irrelevant -- you're married when everyone signs and witnesses the license, which is usually before the wedding.

Either way, you could then have a friend, etc, officiate in exactly the way that you'd like them to.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 2:12 PM on November 11, 2004

We found our officiant online. I don't remember exactly how we found ours, but I think we were referred via this site or something similar. We were given several options, and we met with the first on the list and we decided to go with him. He was basically a freelance Unitarian minister and was super professional and kind, and knew exactly how to handle everything, including mostly pleasing my secular family and her Catholic family.
posted by zsazsa at 2:15 PM on November 11, 2004

Much googling for a non-religious wedding officiant in NYC eventually led us to the Brooklyn Ethical Culture Society (there are Ethical Culture groups elsewhere in New York as well) and the Humanist Society of Metropolitan New York (which falls under the umbrella of the American Humanist Association, which has other NY chapters).

We never could get our schedules in sync to meet with the woman from Ethical Culture, but the woman from the Humanist Society was very nice and did a great job at our wedding.

But yeah, use the internet to draw up a short-list, and then start calling/emailing and setting up meetings to find someone you like. I got the feeling that wedding officiants are generally used to people contacting them out of the blue.
posted by sad_otter at 2:50 PM on November 11, 2004

I forget how we found ours (probably a recommendation) but she was a Unitarian minster to marry my non-practicing Catholic husband and my atheist Jewish-identifying self. We were definitely not Unitarians but she fielded our query perfectly fine, and was not the least bit concerned that we weren't in her church. As sad_otter said, it's no big deal to an officiant, and the Unitarian-types pretty much expect that sort of out-of-the-blue call, as a matter of course - there are lots of couples out there like us, non-religious but looking for something outside the courthouse and with a tinge of religiosity to keep certain parental units happy. So just start calling. Good luck - and congratulations!
posted by livii at 3:06 PM on November 11, 2004

Response by poster: The fiancee has ruled out any humanist organization, as she feels that too atheist for her likes, she wants something with a little bit of spirituality involved.

Anyway, thanks for the tips all, I will investigate further.
posted by malphigian at 3:06 PM on November 11, 2004

My brother (ULC) officiated, and we the three of us wrote it -- he the homily, we the vows, and we all found some poems. It meant a lot to us to have him officiate, and we were able to come up with a ceremony that was meaningful enough that I don't think the churchies even noticed that there was no goddy stuff included.

she wants something with a little bit of spirituality involved.
You can totally do whatever level of spirituality you want if you do it on your own, and in whatever flavor you want.
posted by mimi at 10:53 AM on November 12, 2004