Can a family member or friend "officiate" at a symbolic ceremony?

It is pretty frowned upon to get married and then get married again. Can you have your family member/friend get ordained first? Then you could pick up a marriage license and have the moment of your wedding happen in the presence of the friends and family that you want to witness the ceremony. In my state the license is good for a year.

Just obtain a license, get your friend ordained, then have the ceremony you want.

Why do you want a courthouse wedding too?

If I were doing this I would have the friend perform the ceremony then go to the courthouse and make it official. Bc the courthouse “wedding” you’re talking about really isn’t the wedding, just making it legal haha We are having a friend officiate ours and he had to go to the courthouse and file for a one day civil celebrant license. You have to look up your states laws about ordination, I’m in Virginia and he couldn’t just get ordained on the internet for us to be legally married

We're not getting married twice, my apologies if it sounds like that. We're getting married in my home state and we're literally planning our wedding from across the country. We're going to the courthouse to get our marriage license and can only have two witnesses present to sign the marriage license. Thus, we're having a symbolic ceremony and reception the day after going to the courthouse to sign our marriage license. My sister and BIL were married at the courthouse last year and held a reception two days later due to when they were able to reserve their venue and such. FH's family and mine are from different religious backgrounds, which is why I do not want someone to get ordained if they are not comfortable with that. I literally need someone to say "we're gathered here today to witness the marriage of FB and FH." FH and I then say our vows and exchange rings, have said person say "you are husband and wife, you may now kiss the bride" and we then proceed to cocktails and hors d'eourves.

View Quoted Comment Agreed, going to the courthouse is just to make it legal! I'll check into my state laws about celebrant licenses. My uncle owns a boat, and to my knowledge, boat captains can officiate on their vessels, I'm just not sure about on land.

Yes this is ok since you will already be legally married. We had a family member who had to do it for immigration issues. They were legally married in a courthouse the day before and another family member (not ordained or have legal capacity to) officiate the wedding the next day. Their anniversary is the day with all of us present, not the courthouse ceremony.
If you have a friend or family member in mind see if they would be willing to get the legal capacity to marry you. If not that's ok too if both dates are close, like a few days apart in my opinion.

View Quoted Comment I think this is only frowned upon when it is months or years before the wedding and is a secret.

Day or two, before or after, no biggie. Gotta keep things legal.

I don't see the purpose of having the courthouse wedding the day before. It seems like an unnecessary step. Just have your friend/family member get ordained so you can legally marry the day of your ceremony in front of friends and family.

Check on your state's laws. As some pp have suggested to just get your friend ordainded you need to a) check that your state recognizes online ordination and b)make sure you friend feels comfortable taking on a responsibility like that.
We live in Pennsylvania which has a large Quaker population and offers a "self-uniting liscense," which allows us is announce ourselves married. My sister will "perform" as our master of ceremonies just to keep things moving smoothly but at the end of the day we are the ones marrying ourselves. We just need 2 witnesses to sign the official liscense that we will return to the courthouse.