What was most important to you when choosing your officiant?

Our officiant is my Pastor. I love my church and him, but my FH's family is Hindu, so I didn't want to offend them by speaking exclusively of Christianity.

In church, he's able to take the message and turn it into something that anyone of any religion can take away, so he's going to do that for the ceremony and just speak about love and loving each other.

And he's super easygoing and funny too! I can't wait!

Our officiant is my pastor, and that was non-negotiable to me. She’s been my pastor since I was 8 years old. FH wasn’t impressed with that decision at first, but I think he will like her more when he interacts with her at pre-marital counseling and things.

The biggest part for us was the officiant wasn't connected to a house of worship. We are not religious, so that wouldn't have been an ideal fit. We also wanted a custom ceremony script, and able to incorporate our own vows, readings, and unity ceremony without restrictions.

I know it’s usually frowned upon here but one thing H was very passionate about, was who would marry us. He wanted his uncle to marry us and I have no problem with that! His uncle is a pastor and has married all of H’s cousins and a few other family members so it really meant a lot to us to have someone so close to H and the family marry us. He did a great job and no regrets at all using a “friendor” for this.

Having a connection with us, following our directions and instructions and respecting our wishes to have a religion free ceremony.

We wanted someone to do a completely secular ceremony. We also wanted a short and sweet ceremony. The hardest part when meeting with officiants was being pressured into opening prayers and blessings. As soon as someone would disrespect our wishes for a religion-free our meetings were over

Also, custom ceremonies were important to us. We didn't want any mention of potential future children (you'd be surprised how often it's mentioned). We had an officiant who refused to omit those parts so we moved on.

We were obsessed with our officiant when we found her. She felt like we were longtime friends from our first meeting. I think that was really important!

In Greece, you kind of get "stuck" with the priest that has the church. So, we met the priest, and we liked him. Then, we asked him if my fiance's childhood priest could co-marry us. So, we're having two priests at our wedding.

My number one thing is NO religious affiliation whatsoever. I'm having my cousin officiate. I'm very close to him and he is so excited to do it.

My officiant is my stepfather. I was blessed that he could have such a special part in my wedding since my dad is walking me down the aisle.

Oh yeah, we also made it very clear not to mention future children, and no opening prayers, etc.

The most important aspect to us was to have absolutely no mention of religion or religious aspects. Our officiant was extremely respectful of that and even mentioned incorporating some words that sound religious but weren't in terms of the meaning of the word (i.e. "blessing") to please both us and our religious family members. An added bonus was how passionate she was about what she did. That really spoke wonders to us. Another plus was her sending over a short reading she had written titled "What I learned about love, I learned from my dog". It was beautifully written and made us laugh while we thought about our own dog.

My FH has had no opinions on anything regarding wedding planning so far besides that he wanted his uncle to marry us so I said done! His uncle is ordained online and has officiated 4 or 5 weddings before. We are going to work with him to create an interfaith ceremony as I’m Christian and my FH is Jewish.

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We are in our early fifties so any future children was.....pointless! LOL! No prayers and (yes I know I sound like a skipping record) ZERO mention of "those who have passed." Any talk of mentioning my dead parents.....I was outta there.

We got lucky with our officiant we didn't even need to think about finding anyone else. The company we do trivia with almost every week also djs weddings and the host we got to know well is an officiant. If we had to look around for one we'd want someone who isn't religious and who we meshed well with.

Finding an officiant was one of the hardest things for us. We first thought of different friends and friends-of-friends who had been ordained and who had done a good job officiating weddings before. But, that didn't work out, and I think our state has changed its laws recently about who can legally officiate a wedding.

So, I used WW to search for vendors, and narrowed it down to a few. There was one who I liked quite a bit, and was communicating with and ready to hire her when FH ran into a local judge that he's known for years but hadn't seen in a couple months. So, that's who we wound up hiring. We like that he knows FH fairly well, and that he's also a professional who has done many weddings. He will also customize the ceremony however we want.

So, I would say, the most important things for us became finding someone who could lend a personal touch (whether we knew them ahead of time or not) and who was a professional who knew what they were doing.

Personality. DH was very picky with who we were going to have marry us. Also - we are not religious at all so they had to be okay with performing a ceremony with no mention of anything religious.

Most important for us when choosing an officiant was their ability to make people laugh a little, but also to cry a little I looked at reviews on WW that specifically mentioned this when we picked our officiant

Our officiant is a close friend of my FH who has been very much like a mentor to him throughout my FH’s life. We wanted someone who had significance to us and who didn’t have to be affiliated to a religion because we are not religious. We couldn’t be happier to be sharing that moment with him and we know he will do an excellent job.

Our officiant is my mother (she's a JOP). And she knows me/us more than anyone!

My FH hated the idea of "randomly" picking someone from the internet. We were originally going to go with a woman I had met at a bridal show with my mom, but my FH works with a retired pastor who offered to officiate. I was hesitant at first because my FH and I are not religious and I wanted nothing to do with Bible verses or prayers, but he's very sweet and open-minded and is allowing us to do thing our way. His old profession allows us to bridge the gap between the more religious family members, which is a nice bonus for my mom.