Weddingbee Blog

Step 1: Think about all the weddings you’ve been to and who their officiants were. See if you can poach one.

Step 2: Realize that most of the recent weddings you’ve been to have been officiated by friends of the couple.

Step 3: Think about your friends and who would do the best job.

Step 4: Realize that if you ask a friend to officiate, you will have to write the entire ceremony yourself as you’d feel too guilty asking them to do it.

Step 5: Wonder if you have the time or energy to put together an entire wedding ceremony, remembering that you want it to be special and meaningful to everyone in attendance and freaking yourself out at the thought of failing to do that.

Step 6: Find out that your mother doesn’t really believe weddings officiated by friends are real weddings.

Step 7: Panic. Drink a glass (or two) of Syrah that’s been in the wine rack for just such a freakout.

Step 8: Wonder how serious your fiance is about the whole “non-religious” aspect of the ceremony because where else are you going to find someone who can officiate this thing if you can’t ask a friend?

Step 9: Realize he’s pretty serious about it.

Step 10: Panic again. Drink a glass (or three) of Pinot Noir you were hoping not to crack open for another few months.

Step 11: Ignore the whole thing in hopes that an officiant will magically appear to you in a dream.

Step 12: Realize that you’re getting way too close to the ceremony date, and remember that the ceremony is the legal part and the part that is technically the reason why everyone is coming, which means you have to find someone.

Step 13: Turn to your best friend, Google.

Step 14: Realize that you already found the perfect person way back when you were trying to find pictures of weddings at your venue, and that you had bookmarked her website in case the whole friend-officiating thing wouldn’t work out.

Step 15: Meet her for coffee, love her enthusiasm and honesty, and realize that your fiance likes her as much as you do, which might actually be the first time during the entire wedding-planning process that this has happened.

Step 16: Kick yourself for having waited this long, but pat yourself on the back for picking an off time of the year to get married so she is still available on your date.*

Step 17: Sign contract immediately when she says that she’ll do most of the writing work and you just have to revise and make comments.

Step 18: Drink a glass of champagne that you bought for just this occasion to celebrate finding your officiant!

*Note: It appears this 18-step plan only works if you are getting married during the off-peak wedding season. But who am I kidding? You really really don’t want to follow this plan!