What questions should I ask a prospective wedding officiant?
When you're interviewing a wedding officiant, you want to ask them a couple of different things. First of all, if it's clergy, if it's a church person, is the wedding a set ceremony? Do you have any personalization? Do you get to pick anything or choose anything? If the wedding is standard and set, is that okay with you? A lot of couples go want a traditional, out-of-the-book wedding ceremony. If that's what it is and you want choices, you might need to look somewhere else. You want to ask those questions: Can we write our own vows? How many meetings are we going to have before the wedding? Do you want to have a lot of meetings with this officiant? Are they going to do pre-marital counseling? Are they going to be talking to you more about the content of the ceremony? You also want to find out what the officiant's fees are. If you're hiring someone where you are not a member of a church of synagogue, which is where that would be included as a part of your membership, then there's going to be a fee for their service at your wedding. That can make a big difference to you. There can be a very wide range of fees for clergy. These are all things that you want to consider. One of the first things you want to think about is personality. How are you connecting to this person? How does this feel? Is it a warm, fuzzy feeling? Is that what you want from the person who's marrying you? Do you feel as though they're going to produce a beautiful wedding ceremony for you? That's very important.
