Rent a rabbi is kind of rude. I don’t appreciate that. We were new to town and didn’t know the local rabbi any more than we knew her. We had several hour long meetings with her before she would marry us. She was also a licensed family therapist. In the case of my step sister it was our family rabbi who my stepmother knew since 1970.
You started off making and objectively false statement and then that? Really?
Where i lived, there was one reform rabbi who would do mixed marriages. It was a hot topic in the Reform Jewish community, because mixed marriage had become common but the rabbis were trying to discourage it. And i think “rent-a-rabbi” was a fair description of that guy, from what i heard, both from people who were married by him (including one cousin) and from people who choose a different officiant.
Maybe things were more liberal where you lived.
None of the above, I think.
A male JP in a semi-religious setting with a combination of religious and non-religious portions of the service.
Well it’s Southern California but it’s more a factor of there are a lot of rabbis here. Plenty of congregational rabbis will do it, my officiant being one of them. Interestingly her husband was also a rabbi and he wouldn’t do one. Some of the larger LA Reform shuls have multiple rabbis and I suspect at least one would do a mixed ceremony.
We threw a surprise wedding at a family reunion in a beach house in Rhode Island. We arrived a couple of days early to find a judge and get a marriage certificate. The family was surprised beyond all belief. Mostly because we had been living together for 26 years to the day. That was 26 years ago.
The judge arrived with his wife, planning to go elsewhere since the ceremony was so brief. We found out that she had never had an opportunity to see him officiate at a wedding so we invited her in.
A good time was had by all.
Our wedding was officiated by an ordained minister, but we carefully excised any mention of religion from our ceremony (with the exception of my father-in-law’s reading from the Bible, which was really important to him, and was an inoffensive and lovely passage anyway). We chose the minister because she was a friend and a wonderful person, and she had no trouble with our degodifying the ceremony.
We got married at the church we were choir section leaders for. UCC Church, minister was a woman.
My very Catholic MIL didn’t make much of a fuss, but was bothered by it not being a Catholic wedding. At one point she did tell my wife that she was concerned because “the Pope wouldn’t recognize or marriage” (my wife responded that the Pope probably had other things to worry about). She never said anything about the minister been a woman, but my wife suspects that that bothered her as well.
Neither of us is religious, but because we’re both professional singers, we get a lot of church work. Seemed the most straightforward way to do it. A purely civil ceremony probably would have been a bridge too far for my MIL’s family.
2x here, in 1985, and then in 2002. Both times by a male pastor in a Lutheran church, ELCA synod. I have 3 kids from my first wife, and none with my second wife. Both times, for the lady it was her first marriage.
I was raised Catholic and am now back attending Catholic services. For the purposes of this thread and poll, Minister is good enough for a Catholic Priest for me. It is broad and general enough for clergy for me. Of folks want to be pedantic about it, take it to another thread. Like @puzzlegal said.
I’d call that a traditional religious setting, IMO. A wild guess. For this poll.
I got married in a hotel by justice of the peace. The ceremony was in a front room design for ceremony and the reception was in the banquet room down the hall.
First time by a preist , full Catholic Church wedding. Second at the court house, must have been a Justice of the Peace. Third time by a friend who was a lawyer for both sides of the families, got a permit from the city or county for one day.
I voted male ordained in a non-traditional faith setting. Dude was a reverend but married us at the reception venue in a non-religious ceremony. 1999.
We got married by a man in the Ethical Culture Society in Philadelphia - totally non-religious. I responded he was ordained, since he was an official officiant of the Ethical Culture Society, but in Pennsylvania you don’t need any kind of official or person to get married, so it didn’t matter.
One daughter was married by a judge in a little Georgia town, and the other was married by a minister in a totally non-religious ceremony. They picked him because he spoke German and half the guests were German.
I went to the county office to get a copy of her marriage certificate, and while I was waiting at a window a couple, with one witness present, got married by the clerk two windows down. That was pretty no frills.
A judge. This is before Obergefell, in a state that allowed SSM, and as we wanted a minimal civil ceremony anyway and were a bit paranoid the circumstances might later be scrutinized for legal irregularities by a hostile government, we opted for a judge instead of a Minister of the Universal Life Church or whatever.
We were married in 2015 in Honolulu by a woman judge. It was in the small office of a business that arranges such weddings – we paid the business, they hired and paid the judge and we had no say in who it would be (i.e. man or woman). It seemed the easiest and cheapest way to get married, and we didn’t really care about the ceremony or trappings, we just wanted to be legally married. We didn’t even have a witness (not sure how that works) but we do have a certificate from the State of Hawaii.
It was possible by that time to get married where we live, in California, but there seemed to be a lot more red tape and waiting for appointment openings.
Hopefully by now the red tape has cleared up, and there isn’t a long wait for an appointment.
By the same (male Episcopal) priest who had baptized my bride twenty plus years earlier. Possibly in the same church as well, though I’m not sure of that.
Another ELCA marriage here. Male minister in the church where he was called. I would have liked to have had a different minister - the one who had been a minister at the church when I was in my teens, but he was out of the country and couldn’t do it. (He had a family member who wanted him to do their marriage, and he had already committed to come back for that wedding, but that was a different state and a different month, so he couldn’t do both.)
The minister who did the ceremony was fine, but I didn’t know him as well, and he was never a friend of the family as the other one. s
Married in downtown Cleveland Oh by justice of the peace Ronald Adrine.
His manner and look on his face made it sacred and meaningful.
We wete poor and even if not, I see no reason to waste a lot of money on a big to-do.
Our reception was the xmas party at the bar where we met. Free.
This was in 1990.
It’s interesting how things have changed. In 1993 we had to get a syphilis test before the license would be issued. This requirement was removed in 1995 in California because well for one it’s absurd and secondly they were finding something like ten cases of syphilis for every hundred thousand tests. Google tells me that by the early '00s most States had repealed this requirement with Mississippi being the last hold out in 2012.
Glad to hear it.