Wedding Blog

If you do a Google search for “Courthouse Wedding”, you’ll come up with links like this and this. The first one has statements like “More than 4 out of 5 marriages that start at the courthouse will end at the courthouse. The courthouse is where you go for a divorce, not a marriage.” That other one paints a really vivid picture: an arguing couple on their way to divorce court, metal detectors, and prisoners in shackles. Both of them are written by ceremony officiants for hire. Surprise, surprise.

You know already that our courthouse wedding vision got off to a rocky start. Namely, it was hard to find a courthouse that would actually marry us on the date we wanted! And a lot of the courthouse-type-people I spoke with on the phone were kinda rude. And Grand Forks County’s weddings are done at the jail. That’s a little too close to the “prisoners” image, which the author admitted was a worst case scenario.

You’ll hear about our ceremony and everything surrounding it soon, but I just wanted to say this:

I would not change anything about it. It was perfect. A perfect, beautiful venue (oh mah gawd, wait till you see the photos!). A wonderful day. A friendly deputy clerk. Our closest loved ones.

My point is that you can (to some extent) control the circumstances under which you get married, even if it’s at a courthouse.

Part of our successful day had to do with our location. Our courthouse was located in a town of 1500. It’s a quiet and charming rural location where the employees were all very friendly and helpful. Prior to the ceremony, we had full access to the rooms throughout the courthouse for photo ops and parent introductions. And afterward, though the courthouse closed at 4:30 (the time of our wedding), we were told we could stay as long as we liked (but the door would lock behind us when we left). We did not have to go through a metal detector, either. (They had one, but did not make us or our guests use it.) These were nice, real people, not the stereotypical disgruntled government employees who might give you the stink-eye or wand you for weapons.

My research helped a lot. I found out when weddings took place, and also made sure that they knew when we were coming. I called multiple times throughout the summer and spoke directly with the person who would marry us. I did not want to show up only to find that she had a scheduling conflict and/or was unavailable on our day. During my phone calls, I clarified the number of guests we’d have and made sure that it was OK to have a photographer present as well. Even though my conversations did not guarantee that nothing would go awry, they helped my peace of mind and made sure everyone involved knew what was happening.

If I’d gotten a bad feeling from the officiant, the building, or the situation, I would have looked elsewhere to celebrate our union. But instead, the vibes were off the hook, the wedding was fab, and the courthouse was breathtakingly beautiful. Score!