Since it seems that every state is different, this question is mostly aimed at my fellow Pennsylvania brides (but everyone else feel free to give me your opinions as well!)
My FH and I are not getting married in a church. We are having our reception in a barn and our ceremony at the same location just outside in a small garden. It's beautiful. Anyway, we were under the impression that we could have a friend get ordained and they could marry us and everything would be fine. Looking into it further, it seems that that may not be legal? My FH emailed the Clerk of Orphan's Court (who are the ones that deal with marriage licenses) and he was sent a form that right at the top basically says that a person ordained over the internet is not permitted to perform marriages in Pennsylvania.
I texted my cousin yesterday because him and his wife were married in her parents backyard and they had her cousin officiate. He said that when they were going through the process they were told that (at the time they were married in 2016) the marriage was legal but if laws change then maybe in a few years it would no longer be legal. So they had a district judge marry them the day before. My FH mentioned that that could be an option but I don't really want to do that. I personally feel that that might take some of the excitement out of the big day.
Basically I'm just wondering if anyone else ran into this issue and what did you do? Did you just do a quick courthouse wedding and then the "real thing" the day of? Did you happen to be able to get the mayor to marry you, because I see that that is an option? There has to be someway to do it that makes it legal!
