In our desire to DIY anything and everything we can, we’re also DIY’ing the ceremony. We’re marrying ourselves.
Wait, what?
I don’t mean that I am marrying me and Mr. Wizard is marrying Mr. Wizard (how weird would that be?)—I mean that we are saying vows and pronouncing ourselves married without an officiant to do so. This is something called a self-uniting wedding, and is only available in Pennsylvania, as it originates from the Pennsylvania Quaker tradition. It is just as legal as a “regular” wedding with an officiant, except that it requires a different marriage license. With a traditional license, the bride, groom, and two witnesses sign, and then to make it legal an ordained officiant signs. With a self-uniting license, all that is needed is the signatures of the bride, groom, and two witnesses—no officiant necessary!
In Pennsylvania there are three options for who you can have legally marry you: a judge/justice of the peace, a city or borough mayor, or a minister/priest/leader of any established religious congregation. As atheists, we knew we didn’t want a religious figure to marry us, so that was out. Having the mayor marry us just seemed…weird. And we didn’t really like the idea of a stranger coming and telling us we’re married just because they said so. One of our goals for the wedding, besides all the stylistic/visual stuff, is for everything, especially the ceremony, to be as personal as possible, and none of those three options fit that bill.
Then I found out about self-uniting, found out that you don’t have to be a Quaker to have this kind of wedding (thanks to a local ACLU case), and immediately showed it to Mr. Wizard. He loved the idea, too, and so it was decided: we would have a self-uniting wedding. We love that we get to “marry ourselves,” and we won’t have any strangers present at our ceremony or telling us we’re married.
The other great thing about this is that we have a completely blank ceremony slate. There is no standard self-uniting ceremony, so we can literally do anything we want to. The only legal requirement for this is that you say the words “I take you as my husband/wife” to each other—our ceremony could literally be us saying that sentence to each other and nothing else if we wanted to. Obviously we will flesh it out a little bit more than that, but having such simple legal requirements makes it easy for us to completely customize our ceremony to fit us best.
Pennsylvania brides, are you doing a self-uniting ceremony? Has anyone ever been to one?
I give you major props for doing this. I think the few blanks of our ceremony we had to fill in were confusing enough, let along drafting an entire meaningful ceremony without the guidance of an officiant. I am so interested to see how this all turns out for you two!!
I’m not in PA (I’m in NJ) but that. sounds. awesome. Love it!!
You can also do this in Colorado. It’s the only other state besides Pennsylvania. From what I understand, it comes from Colorado’s history during the Wild West era, where there were not always enough religious officials available in small communities to marry people.
@Mrs. Snow Cone: We have been sllooooooooowwlyyyy cobbling together a basic outline, but omg. It is great that we have all the options in the world, but it’s also daunting that we literally have *all the options in the world*, haha. Reading other peoples’ ceremony scripts, from any kind of wedding, has been incredibly helpful so far!
Also in Colorado, it’s not a different license and anyone can marry you with no other qualifications necessary. 
@mandyanne: Oh I didn’t know that! Cool. Learn something new every day!
that sounds really awesome and I can’t wait to see your ceremony recaps! I’ll have to live vicariously through you since we’re doing a traditional Catholic ceremony!
So jealous that you have that option, thats awesome! We (oh who am I kidding, it will just be me, haha) plan on writing out the entire ceremony ourselves so its personal and non-religious and says everything we want it to say (plus I was a writing major in college so I figure if I cant come up with something better than standard b.s. then who can!), but legally we need an officiant, so we will be hiring somebody to literally just say what we tell them to say, word for word.
Very cool!
By the way, the witness requirement might be only for self-uniting, or be a local-specific thing (not sure). Our marriage certificate in Montgomery County PA was only signed by the rabbi – even our signatures don’t appear.
I would have loved to do that!
Unfortunately (fortunately?) my brother is ordained in the Church of Universal Life, so we decided to give him probably his only shot ever at officiating a marriage.
That is as awesome! So excited for you!! Wish we had that option here in Seattle!!!!!
I was going to point out the Colorado thing, too — I’ve loved this idea ever since I first heard of it! It might be a bit of a daunting task but it will be soooo personalized and lovely. I bet it’s worth every bit of hard work!
This sounds so unique and awesome! I’m very interested to see how you structure your ceremony. Good luck, we wrote our whole ceremony, I know it can be daunting
Love that. In Mass, you can’t self-unite but you can have anyone marry you with a special one-day license so that is what we are doing. I love the idea of hand crafting your ceremony, we are doing that too and it fun but amazing how many options there are.
Wow, I have never heard of a self-uniting ceremony before! I so look forward to seeing yours, I’m sure it’s going to be beautiful!
Interesting! My FI is Quaker, and his parents were technically self-uniting, I suppose, in that they were married “in the care of the meeting.” They were married in VT though I wonder what the differences are… in a traditional Quaker wedding, there’s not really anything different from a normal meeting (when Quakers gather to sit in silence together) except that the couple stands up at some point and affirms their vows. I wonder how that works legally in a state that doesn’t do self-uniting… I will have to ask them! I’m excited to see how you write your ceremony, for me personally I think I would be way too overwhelmed with all of the options!
What a neat idea! I am looking forward to seeing what you decide to include/not include into your ceremony!
As a fellow Pittsburgher (or Pennsylvanian), we also were excited about this! Another awesome facet to the good old Quaker-based law is that the officiant doesn’t have to be ‘officially’ ordained – as in, the websites that ‘ordain’ you are good enough. Therefore, my cousin went through the process and is marrying us. As my FI said, “Everything in our wedding is going to be so meaningful!” We’re also drafting the ceremony from scratch and making it fit us. . .fingers crossed that we both come out relatively unscathed and Bridezilla-y. 
Mrs. Wizard, Pittsburgh Age and Occupation: 22, Front-end Web Developer Fiance's Age and Occupation: 23, Software Programmer Engagement Date: June 8, 2011 Wedding Date: June 2012 Venue: Glades Pike Winery, Somerset, PA About Me: I’m a born-and-raised Pittsburgh girl marrying a born-and-raised Pittsburgh dude. I’m a stubborn Italian with a huge personality, and I love oldies music, baking, housewifery, and all things Harry Potter. He’s a quiet, level-headed guy who loves my cooking and laughs good-naturedly at my lack of verbal filter. He’s an intellectual who likes to learn, and can often be found going on "Wiki walks" and landing on the most hilariously weird articles imaginable. We truly are a case of "opposites attract," and we balance each other out perfectly. We keep each other sane and make each other laugh so hard we cry almost every day, and that’s all I could ever ask for. Together we’re planning a simple, elegant, summery June wedding, and we can’t wait to be Mr. and Mrs.!
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