Francesca - The Wedding Officiants Guide: How to Write and Conduct a Perfect Ceremony

for the BRIDE or GROOM scanning this book

Youve asked your cousin, or your sister, or your best friend from high school to marry the two of you. What can you expect from them between now and your wedding day? And what should you watch out for, since you have just asked an amateur, rather than a professional, to perform this most important task?

You should expect your officiant to:

• Take the necessary steps to ensure that he or she can legally officiate at your wedding.
• Interview you, maybe more than once. Youll discuss your preferences for the ceremony and talk about the things that make you a unique couple.
• Send you a draft or two of the ceremony so you can make any changes.
• Coach you in getting your wedding license within the right time frame.
• Be at the rehearsal and know how to steer the guests and the wedding party in the right direction.
• Arrive early to both the rehearsal and the wedding.

During the ceremony, everything the officiant does should be to support you during your transformational moments. Officiants dress soberly, stand calmly, and speak clearly, allowing for pauses and natural moments of tenderness or humor. Your officiant should not pull any surprises or make inappropriate jokes.

After the ceremony, your officiant should secure signatures from your witnesses and file the license with your county. Overall, your officiant should be reliable, organized, and discreet. Your happiness must be the paramount goal in her or his mind.

This book will let your officiant know exactly what youre expecting from her or him, and how to do it all. You might also enjoy browsing through of the book for wedding-ceremony options, rituals, and readings before you hand it over to your newbie officiant.

Sweetie, this is your old man, began the recorded message. Ive gone ahead and ordained you online through the Universal Life Church. If you have questions, contact Brother Daniel in Modesto. And Id like you to shadow me at rehearsal on Saturday; its in wine country. Click.

I sank slowly into the chair Id borrowed, at the desk Id built from a cheap kit. My nine-year-old daughter and I had just moved into a tiny apartment in a city where we didnt know anyone, and I had just been laid off from a copywriting job at a technology company. Me, a minister?

Id always wanted to go to seminary. Id read books and pieces of world scriptures and philosophies, even taken courses in prayer and meditation. But between raising a family and working, I had no time to commit to several years of intensive study. Also, I was raised in a family that included practitioners of different faiths, so if I did find the time, I wasnt sure which school of thought would accept my untraditional interfaith ideas.

Now my dad, Hank Basayne, was inviting me to join his business. Since his peers had ordained him as a Humanist minister in 1968, he had performed nearly eleven hundred weddings, memorials, and other ceremonies in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. Health issues were beginning to multiply and slow him down. He needed a backup. And I needed a job.

Ordination online was free. I spent some money on the credential, which I later framed. And I bought a little card to stick on the dashboard of my car showing that a minister is on the premises. No one in ten years has asked to see my credential, but the little dashboard card has been helpful for parking at weddings.

Shadowing my father, I met couples of every description and brides in every stage of pre-wedding anxiety. There were fainting grooms and missing licenses, and separated parents forcing themselves to act courteously after years of feuding. I saw dogs bearing rings, and little boy ring bearers who vomited, and rings that flew off their ring pillows. Windy gusts tore at long bridal veils, and bees lurked in lawns. There were also masses of flowers, happy tears, gorgeous dresses, musicians, favors, doves, and comic asides.

Dad looked handsome in his black robe or his suit and tie, smelling of Old Spice. It fascinated me that after performing hundreds of weddings, he still looked forward to each one with keen enjoyment, anticipating another adventure. You may recite a certain passage or hear a certain reading scores of times, he reminded me, but dont forget that your wedding couple is hearing it for the first time. Thats why it never gets old, and why you should never recite anything mechanically. Dad likewise warned me not to over-rehearse my lines, so that when the time came, my script offered me some of the sense of wonder and surprise that it gave the guests.

One day he gave me his second-best robe, a black one with a hook closure at the neck. It hung heavily and made me feel authoritative.

Rather than follow in my fathers Humanist footsteps, I decided I would be an interfaith minister. That means I can perform both spiritual and secular or civil ceremoniesIll explain more about those in . My particular interest lay in weddings that combined different faiths and cultural traditions. A Japanese groom and a Jewish bride. A Filipina bride and a Midwestern Methodist groom. Ordinarily, couples who belong to the same church tend to get married in their church. My constituents would be the unchurched, as well as people whose churches would not accept their spouse. Or their earlier divorce. Or their decision to marry in a park surrounded by redwoods.

In addition to our love of weddings, Dad and I shared a passion for writing. A few months before he died, I sat with him at his dining-room table overlooking San Francisco Bay, discussing ideas. Lisa, he suggested, by now you know a lot about weddings. Why dont you write a book about what you know? The more I thought about it, the more excited I felt about writing a guidebook for you, the new officiant.

Aside from giving you the permission and the tools to have fun while doing something unusual and important, Im also writing this to raise the bar of officiating in general. I have winced too often when an officiant, professional or not, forgot something as critical as the grooms name. Ive cringed at an officiants awkward jokes, or long-winded story about himself.

Perhaps you are fresh from seminary, ready to begin a long career of wedding couples. This book is for you, too; just skip the ordination section. Whether youll ever conduct only one wedding, or go on to preside over many more ceremonies, you want to give the couple your closest attention and best effort.

As an officiant, youll be using the skills and traits in the following list. If you feel rusty in a particular area, you may want to brush up.