About a year ago, two of my friends from college got engaged after dating for ~6 years. Groom was my roommate through 4 years of college. We met Bride during our last semester and I was semi-responsible for introducing them. I moved away from them after college, but have kept in touch with them and we see each other a couple times a year. Groom flew out to NYC for my graduation from law school. Needless to say, when they got engaged I thought there was a good chance they'd ask me to be in the wedding, possibly even as the best man.

Well, they ended up asking me to actually officiate the damn thing. I was pretty surprised and flattered, and of course readily agreed. As a lawyer, the first thing I did was confirm this crazy idea of theirs is legitimate. It is, at least in CA. See here for more information. All I had to do was get a notarized oath to uphold the Constitution (lol):



The wedding is about a month and half off. Until then, this will be kind of an ongoing brainstorm thread for me. Some questions circling my mind right now are: What do I wear? Should I bring a date? How chatty/funny should I be vs. reserved and formal?

I'm fine with public speaking and brought the house down with a best man speech a few years back, but my role as the officiant is obviously different. I guess a lot of this will depend on input from Bride and Groom, but I expect them to somewhat defer to me in crafting the ceremony. Here's the very simple sample ceremony provided by the county:




Feel free to chime in with advice or your own experiences with friend/family wedding officiants.

Still to come:

• Drafting the ceremony
• Bachelor party TR (scheduled for mid-April)
• Wedding TR (scheduled for early May)

My brother and his wife just had the officiant read something they had written, similar to yours. That was that.

I would assume that's pretty much all you have to do. Make sure the paperwork is right, be at the rehearsal, do exactly what they tell you to at the ceremony then assume a pretty normal role at the ceremony.

A friend of mine officiated my wedding and I officiated for another friend. It was fun. I think I wrote my own stuff. I might have read a short poem to or something, don't remember. (all in Cali)

ej,

"Should I bring a date?"

You're officiating the wedding, not entering the priesthood. Obviously bring a date (unless you don't want to, and then you could use that as an excuse, but presumably the ceremony is like 20 minutes of a 6+ hour event.

I would definitely avoid humor and a conversational tone unless you're 100% positive that is what they're looking for. I mean, they picked a friend instead of some random or a priest or whatever, so I'm guessing they want it to be more personal.

Are they doing their own vows? Obviously that would make things easier for you to just facilitate. If not, just keep it super simple. An officiant shouldn't be charming, funny, etc. The attention should be on the bride and groom and you should just keep it short and simple.


I'm getting married next year and I have no idea who I'm going to have officiate (all I know is it won't be any type of religious figure).

Just got some guidance from the Groom:

hahah this groom sounds awesome and i know you are going to do a great job jeff.

find out what the readers are reading so there is no overlap / conflict in your remarks.

they want you to talk for roughly five minutes, which is way more than just "marriage rocks blah blah," i would expect there is some reflection on the bride and groom from your own experience that should take place in there. not quite like a toast you would give at the reception, but probably a good opportunity to share a brief anecdote from back in the day if you can think of something appropriate, or talk about the personal qualities of the parties in a meaningful way.

i would probably try to work in some appropriate poem or quote but you know them much better than any of us.

overall i like what noah said about not being overly funny / memorable, to keep the focus on the bride and groom.

bonus story from ham on rye wedding: i am kind of sappy and was going through different traditional texts and **** for when my wife and i were trying to write our own vows. i showed her one of the things i had looked up which is that really heavy quote from the book of ruth about where you go i will go your god my god you die i die yadda yadda, and she was like, jesus ****ing christ dude that's dark. gtfo with that emo ****.

Be conservative. Don't try to bring the house down. You can't really do anything wrong, but the worst officiant I've ever seen told a borderline pornographic story about a hot tub experience with the couple, it was truly bizarre. Just avoid telling any weird stories and you cannot do anything wrong unless you have a heart attack while marrying them or something.

<---- Just got married 2 days ago.

Honestly it looks like you'll nail it. If you use a sample like that as the skeleton for the ceremony it'll be great. Maybe just have a couple of variations within, ie : we could use this paragraph/that one in this place. It'll personalise things for the bride and is easier than going through and attempting to build the whole text together.

Wish it were as easy to have the person of your choice officiate where we're from.

wtf, details?

I'd suggest writing a draft and shipping it to them ASAP. They'll have time to rewrite it if they want to.

I just spent an hour the other day rewriting a ceremony for our officiant (wedding on May 7th). They gave the structure, which I had no clue on, and I made it better and more relevant to us.

Since you're their friend it should be easier for you.

Dress like a priest anyway. You're a lawyer, so it's not like you have anything to worry about.

To be honest, what is written in OP sounds like an e-harmony commercial, which isn't a good thing, imo, but maybe that's just par for the wedding course.

Yeah but the structure of it is good, as is the length.

Yeah that's kinda how I felt about what our officiant sent us. I didn't want it to be something that nobody could relate to. In the end, I said all the same stuff but, in my opinion, better.

It will either be awesome or horrible. I'd rather have one of those than "standard." **** standard.

If they wanted a legit looking ceremony, they should have gotten a legit priest. Therefore, this is open season for you to have fun with it.

To start, re-watch the wedding scene from Spaceballs to see how to dress.

Next, copy/paste some official sounding vows/ceremonial speech and send it to them for "sign off". It doesn't matter what notes they provide back, you're not going to use it, anyway. If they didn't want to be surprised...they shouldn't have asked you.

When doing the vows, make sure to break your buddy's balls a couple of times. For instance, when asking her "do you take this man blah blah blah in sickness and in health", make sure you add a couple of extra items to think about, like "even if he gets gonorrhea from a prostititute in Costa Rica?" or something, or "even when her ass gets huge after having kids and she becomes the biggest ****ing nag you've ever met in your life?". After she says "I do", you say "really?" If they are doing the box thing, there are multiple easy jokes to have there, too.

If they want to keep it short, keep it under 10 minutes.

I disagree with LMD. Don't be conservative. If they wanted a boring, normal wedding, they would have gone that route. That's what I would do, but then again, I am a pretty big dick.

You oughta go with a bunch of obscure, Dennis Miller type references that almost no one will understand. "Wow! That bride's dress looks like it was made with more fabric than the artist Christo used to envelop the Pont Neuf!"

The few people that do get it will be on the floor and, more importantly, I would enjoy the trip report.

Just take notes from this guy. None have done it better.

congrats..

oppps double post..my internet

Who do you think will win the game? Also if I pick wife, will you officiate in such a way that she has an unfair advantage? Im thinking of going to vegas a putting a cpl hundo on the wife. Let me know your thoughts. Also will this be streaming live? If not, maybe a delayed video.

All,

Your trolling and terrible advice has not deterred me! More to come...

Got an invite to another wedding that made me chuckle:

Dinner Selection:
[ ] Beef
[ ] Chicken
[ ] Vegetarian
[ ] Child

A few notes from a random wedding this weekend:

1. The best speech was given by a para/quad who couldn't talk. Why did his win? Because he wrote it down beforehand. (His computer read the speech). All the "from the heart" speeches were ineloquent and failed.

2. The first song following the bride and groom's first dance was Rebecca Black's "Friday."

3. There was a piñata at the end. No blindfold or rope or anything, they just threw it out on the dance floor. The bride and groom each had a few whacks, but hadn't cracked it, so they offered the bat to whomever. I grabbed it, announced "SWEEP THE LEG!" and ****ing golfed the back left leg clear across the room, allowing its sweet innards to spill at my feet. I was super proud. My date lined up next, went for a Happy Gilmore, and whiffed completely, falling on her ass.

Hahaha. I think I was the only person that enjoyed Dennis Miller on MNF where he'd regularly do things like reference the Crimean War during a Browns Panthers game.