After your wedding day, it will be the ceremony that you will remember most. Yet, it is often the part of the wedding to which the least thought is given, or it is the part the bride and groom presume is solely the prerogative of the officiant or the church.
You don’t have to let that happen. Some couples may want their weddings to be simple legal ceremonies, but most want expressions of the sacred reality of their love. It stands to reason that some real thought should be given to the content of your wedding ceremony.
You do not have to accept any church or synagogue that is handy; you have a choice. If it is the place you or your fiancee grew up, or a facility where the ceremony celebrant is a friend or is much revered, that is your most likely and comfortable choice. But if you have no spiritual community that feels like home, you should search around until you find a place and a minister/priest/rabbi who represents your thoughts and feelings, your way of looking at the world, and who will officiate at a ceremony that can be sacred in a way you define sacred to be.
Of course, you will want to take into consideration the religious traditions of both bride and groom, and both of your families. But, never forget, it is first and foremost your ceremony! If the bride and the groom are of different faiths, it is important to be inclusive and considerate of the beliefs of both sides. In actuality, the core beliefs of most religions today are very similar and the areas of disagreement are relatively minor. Virtually everyone believes that love is the essence of God, and that God’s primary command is that we become better, more loving, more compassionate, more caring people, and that we do that through our relationships with other people. A lot of ceremony can be built around those universal beliefs.
Just as you shop around for the perfect reception site and the most appropriate gown, etc., so you should shop around for the wedding ceremony location and the wedding celebrant who will best reflect the way you feel about marriage and each other. You want your marriage ceremony to exude how you feel and be relevant to your beliefs.
What do you think about life and love? What is your spiritual perspective, your values? Everybody has a philosophy of life, but many people have never put it into words, or have not yet had the occasion to think clearly about what is truly important to them. When you get married, you want this most important moment in your life to reflect your core beliefs, your truest feelings. Some want it to be a happy ceremony or a joyful ceremony, and others want it to be a solemn occasion. What do you want?
Start early to select your site. Approximately 80% of weddings are on Saturday, and 10% on Friday evenings, and 10% on Sundays. The most popular months for weddings are May, June, September and October, and churches or other ceremony sites can often book months in advance. Some locations schedule weddings beginning at 10:00 am and going every two hours into the evening.
Certain churches and locations have many rules and restrictions, while others will have few. Some priests, ministers or rabbis are much more strict than others about what they will allow. Some, like the priests and ministers in our national referral service, will have ceremony workbooks, that will let you pick and choose, and write your own ceremony. Some faiths (e.g., conservative Catholic or conservative Jewish) will allow interfaith marriages only if both parties agree to bring up the children in their faith. Other more liberal or reformed elements (including Catholics and Jews) will leave that up to the family itself. Some religions require permission to marry outside the faith or to have an interfaith ceremony, while some clergy and religions believe that love is paramount, that if “God is Love”, then those “in love” are in God. Occasionally, clergy of two different religions officiate.
More options exist than are listed here. What is important is that you are both comfortable with your location and your celebrant. If you are not, you should look around until you are.
You should also be aware that there are fees for the wedding ceremony as well as the reception. The ceremony site, if different from the reception site, will be an extra charge as well as the organist, church musicians or vocalists, etc.
Most wedding celebrants who are associated with a church or a parish may not charge a set fee, but accept donations instead. Most celebrants that you might secure outside of a home community setting have set fees that range from $150 (which sometimes results in minimal interaction) to $500, with the middle ground being $250 to $300. A few will tell you that they have no set fee, but accept donations, and most couples then offer donations in the same range as the set fees. Sometimes this supplements the income of the wedding celebrant (they can spend a great deal of time in each wedding’s preparation), and sometimes it is used for the work of their church. Brides and grooms who are planning low budget weddings and cannot afford these kinds of fees often find that many celebrants will officiate at your wedding for a low donation or for nothing. (However, after a clergy person invests thought and time into making sure your wedding is meaningful he or she should not be made to feel that they are financially less important than the cake, flowers or party favors.)
Some clergy spend very little time with the couple prior to the rehearsal or the wedding day itself. Others have relatively extensive and structured marriage preparation sessions. In my national wedding officiant referral service, we find that two sessions of about an hour each has always been sufficiently enriching, enjoyable (for both ourselves and the couple) and appreciated. These can be fun! Many couples appreciate this time spent before the wedding as very beneficial. With divorces for first-time marriages running around 50%, and for second marriages at 55%-65%, these pre-wedding sessions help couples focus on ways to keep their love as alive on their 50th anniversary as it is on their wedding day.
When the atmosphere and words of your ceremony reflect the love you and your fiancé feel for each other, it will be a powerful launch into your new life together. To think that marriage is an arrival, a settling in to a life of love, is to miss what marriage is about. Life itself is the continuing quest for becoming a more loving person; marriage is the choosing of a soul-mate, a unique and trusting partner with whom we can best make that journey to greater love more happy, more successful and more beautiful. Marriage is the magnificent continuing passage into greater love; it is not the destination itself. A wedding ceremony that builds on the values of your past and looks to the future will speak eloquently to you both throughout your life together.
- Jim Burch is a Catholic Priest who operates a national wedding officiant referral service, which has hundreds of Catholic priests and Christian ministers who are happy to marry people of any faith wanting a spiritual ceremony. You may check out this service at ww.weddingceremony.org.
Submitted By:
Rev. Jim Burch
Ceremony Officiants - USA/Canada