I selected “man minister in a traditional religious setting,” but I should explain.
It was a male minister, that much is true. He was the ordained minister at the Protestant church where I sang in church choir for years. But our wedding was at a chapel at the university I attended. And being at a non-denominational university, the chapel was non-denominational; it could be Protestant or Catholic or Jewish, or pretty much anything else as needs demanded. It did have stained-glass windows, but those were flowers and birds and other nature scenes. Nothing religious in the place, unless you wanted it (a Catholic couple might want a crucifix on the wall, which would be pulled out of the storage closet, for example; then put away after the ceremony).
It was also the correct size. We only had about 20 people at our wedding, and they filled the place nicely. Much better than the small group of us in a 300-seat church. Overall, a very nice ceremony in the perfect setting for us.
I wanted to be married by someone I knew, as opposed to some random person. A friend from my college days was in the Unitarian seminary and our wedding date was set as the first day after he was legally ordained to marry people.
The setting was the apartment of my college roommate - we basically had no money. Said friend and former roommate also cooked us a meal and baked a cake.
The ceremony was eclectic, incorporating elements of Southern Baptist, Judaism, and Neo-Paganism. We were more or less eloping so the two witnesses were the friend/former roommate and minister’s wife.
For us it was excellent to near perfect. Probably not ideal for many other people.
My marriage ceremony was sufficiently unique that no single tickbox applies. I chose “male minister in non traditional setting” as the closest approximation. Here’s the deal.
My wife is Persian. She grew up Muslim in Iran. After immigrating to the US, she converted to Christianity, specifically the Episcopalian flavor, as an adult.
For our wedding, she wanted (a) the officiant to be her favorite minister at her church, let’s call him Father Bob, and (b) the ceremony itself to strictly follow Persian traditions, with the handful of later Muslim insertions converted to Christian references or simply excised entirely.
In short, she gave the Christian minister the script for conducting a formal Persian wedding. It was not “non traditional” because we followed all the expected Persian rules — the sofreh, the stitching of the fabric, the repeated call to the bride answered by her attendants, the whole list. It was very close to being fully and entirely traditional, with only minor tweaks as noted above. Yet a non-Persian, non-Muslim religious official presided over the ceremony, and was the one who “married” us.
(Me personally, I’m an atheist, so I was happy to do whatever made my wife happy.)
My American family members said it was lovely and surprising, because they’d never seen anything like it. My wife’s Persian family said the ceremony was “correct.” So make of that what you will.
Married in 1986 (still married and going strong) by a woman Unitarian minister. I can’t quite reconcile Unitarian with what I think of as “traditional,” but I also have trouble calling it “non-tradtional,” especially if that means it ends up in a category with a Jedi wedding. I went ahead and voted “traditional” because it seemed closest.
We were married outdoors in the garden at Farmington Historical Home in Louisville. It was cloudy that day, but we had a friend there who kept it from raining on us (as the inside joke goes; there’s a whole lot of context to it, though). The reception was in and around the carriage house on the premises (we could have gone inside for the ceremony if it had rained).
We were wed in the now-defunct Norris Bookkeeping and Accounting in Green Cove Springs, FL, by Ms. Norris (a notary) during lunchtime one fine Friday. The witnesses were two of her employees. I think it cost us $25. Afterwards, we drove thru McD’s on our way back to work. We’ll reach our 42nd anniversary on Dec 9, so I guess it took.
First wedding was a male Lutheran pastor, in his church. That lasted seven years.
Second was a man at the courthouse. Wife and her mother had been looking forward to a proper ceremony, though, so four months later we had one – a male Navy chaplain (by coincidence also a Lutheran) in the base chapel. That was 32 years ago. We still celebrate both anniversaries, of course.
I have friends who had a traditional Jewish wedding. But she wasn’t Jewish, and at the time, you couldn’t get rabbis to perform mixed marriages. So the officiant was a friend who got a one-day permit to conduct their wedding. I think the setting was a California state park, but i might be confusing two weddings i went to in CA that summer. It was followed by a traditional Chinese wedding banquet, as her family was Chinese. That was a fun wedding.
She’s since converted to Judaism and is frummer than thou.
My wife’s cousin. A minister. We aren’t religious at all, but this pleased my wife’s family, and we both really like her and her husband. Very cool people. Heh, they just opened their own brewery.
It was at Keystone Ski resort. On top of a mountain. Everyone had to ride the gondola up. That scared a few people. Especially when it stopped and seemed to be stuck. But they just do that sometimes.
My wife-to-be had been raised Catholic, so she wanted a traditional Catholic wedding, though she hadn’t gone to church in years. I was born Catholic, but neither my family or I had gone to church since I was a little kid.
After we got engaged we chose a neighborhood church to begin attending months before the wedding to establish ourselves to get married there. The first day, we were both nervous and felt very out of place. We got there a little bit early and sat in a middle pew. The priest came in from the back of the church and immediately figured us out. He sat behind us, leaned over and playfully said “I know why you guys are here”. He was a really nice guy with a great sense of humor, and made us feel at home there.
After our wedding, we stayed regular churchgoers until he retired. The church went downhill from there, with a rotating series of ‘guest’ priests and deacons who did things like tell us to write our Congresspeople and urge them to fight to ban abortion. Our churchgoing days were done then.
We were married by a friend of the family, who got ordained to officiate our wedding.
We got married at the coffee shop where we met for our first date. It was an ode to the neighborhood, local coffee shop, florist, baker, caterer, all within walking distance of our apartment.
We were married by a friend who is a Methodist minister. I’m Christian, my wife is Jewish. The three of us put the ceremony together, and it was in a nonreligious setting. The ceremony itself was religious just not specifically Christian or Jewish. I did break the glass at the end.
We were married by a Catholic priest in one of our local Catholic churches in 1984.
The priest who was supposed to perform our wedding got suddenly transferred two weeks before the ceremony, so the priest from the other Catholic church in town stepped in. The priest that got transferred was later convicted of sexually abusing altar boys and died in prison.
My first marriage was by a Mormon bishop in a non traditional setting. I was officially out of Mormonism at that point but the bishop was a longtime neighbor and the father of my friend. Our family had been in that ward for 25 years and they had lived there since before we did. We were poor and the price was right. As I wasn’t attending church the bishop could have refused but our families were close.
For my second (and current) marriage, none of the choices apply.
We got married in Japan and weddings have no legal meanings. The marriage is valid when an application is submitted to the city office. Many people have weddings in churches just for the fun of it, but it doesn’t actually do anything.
Our first wedding was in Korea officiated by a bank president at a hotel. There was a western-style ceremony in gowns and tuxedos with several hundred guests. Highlight was cutting a cake with a sword. And then a smaller traditional-style ceremony in hanbok. Highlight was catching nuts in our clothes. We had the option to sign paperwork to officially register the marriage in Korea, but did not. The wedding was purely social.
Our second wedding was in Ohio. A very simple one in my home church officiated by my minister, that we paid for ourselves. Maybe 20 guests. We signed the paperwork to register the marriage, so this wedding was both religious and “legal”.
When was that? Some rabbis still won’t. The rabbi at my local shul wouldn’t but he gave me the names a three or four nearby who would. In 1993 we found one who lived a less than an hour away who did ours if we promised any kids would be raised Jewish. My stepsister had a similar arrangement in 1986 without difficulty and she wasn’t an outlier as I recall.
It was 1986. Maybe they preferred a friend to a rent-a-rabbi. I know my family Rabbi was uncomfortable with my groom, who was technically Jewish (his mother’s mother’s mother had been a practicing Orthodox Jew) but had little-to-no religious background.
