Creating an Exceptional Wedding Ceremony – Choosing Your Officiant
Thank you to Keith and Lynne Langille of Exceptional Ceremonies for sharing this insightful overview in choosing your wedding officiant. Having attended many weddings I can say that a wedding officiant can be a key to creating a personal ceremony that will engage your guests and create a richer experience for your day.
While having a registered officiant, a marriage license, and two witnesses are the only elements you legally require to complete your wedding, choosing an exceptional officiant is one you may want to start looking for earlier than you might think to create a ceremony that is both personal, engaging and enjoyable for your welcomed guests. Booking an officiant can be left far too late into the planning process and then, couples are surprised to learn that many are unavailable and choices are more limited.
As with most other key wedding vendors, the most highly regarded and experienced officiants are booked early – often eight to fifteen months before the ceremony date. It is recommended that you book your officiant at the same time you book your venue or confirm your wedding date. This is even more important if you want a bilingual or French ceremony as there are relatively few fully bilingual officiants in the Ottawa area and they book up even faster.
To find your officiant, we recommend reading reviews from other couples who have used them; ask friends, your wedding planner, venue coordinators, or photographers who they would recommend – most have seen many local officiants in action.
If you and your guests want to have a great wedding ceremony that leaves all of you with wonderful positive memories, then your choice of officiant is definitely the last place where you should be trying to economize. Once you’ve talked to a few, you will quickly appreciate the differences in the levels of service and value that they provide. You’ll also get a sense of their level of passion and whether you have a connection with them that gives you peace of mind. For a truly personal touch, a good officiant will invest time in their relationship with you to make the most of your big day. In the Ottawa region, the prevailing fee range for an officiant to conduct an average ceremony with 75-150 guests and a wedding party of six to eight is about $400 to $550 without a rehearsal or $550 to $700 when the officiant is asked to lead a rehearsal.
Here are some of the most important questions to ask:
- Tell me about your officiation style? Do you have your own website? What makes you unique from other officiants in Ottawa?
- Can I meet you face-to-face before deciding whether to hire you or leave a deposit?
- How much time do you actually spend with the couple to learn about what they want when developing their ceremony?
- How many years of officiation experience do you have? How many wedding ceremonies have you performed?
- What difference can a of the ceremony rehearsal make? Do you lead live rehearsals? How many live rehearsals have you led?
- How many ceremonies do you perform on an afternoon? How much time do you space between ceremonies on the same day?
- Do you have a standard ceremony script template or do you prepare custom ceremony scripts?
- How can our beliefs be represented in the ceremony?
- How do you help us to write our own vows? Who does the work in researching and proposing optional script content? When do we have to complete our script revisions?
- How humourous and light-hearted can my ceremony be?
- What advice can you us about music, readings, seating plans, special requirements, etc.?
- Are you available during the day, or just weekends and evenings?
- When do you arrive before a ceremony? How long do you stay after the ceremony? What will you do if our ceremony starts late?
- What style and quality of clothing do you wear to the wedding ceremony?
- What different ceremony packages do you offer and what is the difference between them?
- What are the fees, taxes and other costs for each of your ceremony packages?
