Just a few things from your wedding day go forward with you into your marriage. A great example are the gifts you receive from your friends and family. Another? Your wedding photos, of course, capturing this beautiful day in what will become weeks, months, and years of an ongoing love story.
The other obvious? You go forward into your marriage with each other. This is where having the best officiant matters. No one can tell you how your life will unfold. No one can predict the highs and lows of marriage. But, a professional can equip you. A professional officiant, like a mountain climbing sherpa, will check your equipment, fill your water bottles, stock you with granola, and hand over a darn good map.
Your professional wedding officiant understands that the wedding is a moment (a big one, to be sure), while your marriage is a journey.
So, five reasons why when it comes to the wedding officiant, you want the best. Five points of reference to consider as you think about wedding day preparations. Five motives to move hiring an officiant up on your list of “vendors to hire,”:
1. We make it look easy.
Wedding space is ritual space. It has a particular feeling, and a particular weightiness. It’s space set apart and special. At a glance, it may seem like anyone with good speaking skills would fill this role nicely. But the truth is, “holding” ritual space is a practiced skill. It can be tiring. It can be trippy. It can be tricky. Like the figure skater perfectly executing the quad toe loop, it looks seamless and effortless, but there are years of experience and education behind it.
2. We anticipate the challenges.
Similar to the details your wedding coordinator addresses, there are details that your officiant attends to. We take the time to anticipate the energy and emotions around the wedding ceremony space. We notice the small twitches, breaths, eye movements that alert us to – oh, I don’t know – possible fainting? Rising anxieties that overwhelm an otherwise happy moment? We know how long to hold the emotional moments, and when to move through them. We have back up plans in place (hard copies of those personal vows, please). And because we’ve attended to those things, they either never happen (see #1), or they don’t override the prevailing joyous mood.
3. We work for you.
We are a vendor. We are there to work. We have a contract, and a job. As a result, our clients can and do hold us accountable. While we get the job done, your guests get to be guests! They get to be active witnesses promising to support you on this marriage adventure, partaking of your hospitality, and free to fully celebrate.
4. We customize the ceremony.
At Central Ceremonies, there are no cookie-cutter weddings. We tell your story. We strive to speak deeply into who you are, and how that creates your marriage. We bring dimension and understanding to the act of marriage. We take an ancient ritual, and breathe new life into it. We make space for your place in marriage’s long, fabled history. We elevate a moment in your wedding day to the moment in your wedding day.
5. We equip you for the longer journey.
Any good officiant understands that the words spoken that day don’t remain there. Those words, like the gifts, like the photographs, move forward into your marriage. Great words around marriage give a couple insights (we call it the DNA of a marriage) into who they are as they head out into married life. Great words around marriage provide an anchor for the couple when the challenges come, when the distractions are real, and certainly when the happy moments happen. Great words inspire not just the couple, but the community surrounding them.
So, why does the best matter on your wedding day? Oh, well, probably because you matter, your love matters, your wedding matters, and mostly – your marriage matters.
Sarah has been crafting custom weddings for couples of all kinds since 1999. Sarah is a Ravenclaw, and loves mythology, historical fiction, hot tea, and cycling of all sorts. She is an ordained minister who believes in coloring outside the lines. Sarah has been married to her best friend, Joe, since 1994. Together, their greatest treasures are their two children and the marriage they’ve worked hard to cultivate.
