Wedding Officiants

Once you have your wedding date on the calendar, it will be time for you to look for many things. You need a wedding photographer, a baker, a florist, a wedding venue for your ceremony and for your reception, and many more decisions will need to be made. But one of the decisions that people often don't take too seriously but they should is their choice of someone to officiate their wedding. Las Vegas is one of the most talked about cities in which to get married, but you will have to ask yourself if it matters to you who presides over you ceremony. We think it should matter if you want everything to go as smoothly as possible. You want someone who is a professional no matter if you are having a religious or secular wedding. Experience can cover for a lot of things that might and often does go wrong. Hardly any wedding comes off without a hitch, that is just the nature of things. Once you have decided what type of wedding you are going to have, then you can start looking for the right officiant for your wedding. We want to help as much as we can so we have provided some good reasons you should look for a professional and a few tips on how to hire one.

The first thing you will want to do is to decide on what kind of ceremony you want to have: religious or secular? This will obviously determine whether you will look for a minister or a secular officiant. One of the first places you could look for a secular officiate is the county clerk's office. Ask the clerk's office for a list of Justices of the Peace. Whoever you end up choosing, make sure that they have experience. We urge you to stay away from someone who would be considered a newbie. Just because someone can legally marry you doesn't mean that you should let them. An officiant that has been through a number of weddings will have hopefully honed their speaking skills and will know how to bring excitement and life to the reading of all of the material that needs to be read.

You can also get married at city hall. Be forewarned that this is usually very quick so if you don't think you would like a quick ceremony, this is not the route that you will want to go. Normally this will be the mayor officiating, but again, there are no frills, its more of a let's get this done type of attitude. But this may be exactly what you are looking for so if it is, it is certainly an option. Some states allow a friend or relative to perform your wedding. Your designee will be granted the power to do this for one day. Here, you have a lot of flexibility in how you want things to go. But again, check with your state first to see if this is permissible

If a religious ceremony is the route you have decided on, you need to look for a member of the clergy that believes closely to what you believe. You may already have one affiliated with your family. If you do not, do some research in your area and find some houses of worship that you believe might espouse something close to your beliefs. Then call them up and ask if you can meet with someone to talk over the possibilities.

Whoever you meet with, make sure that you pay close attention to the potential officiant's personality. Do you like them? We recommend looking for someone with an upbeat personality that can make your ceremony interesting to all who attend. You want someone who can move smoothly from one activity to another. And if something does go wrong, you want an officiant who can possibly make a joke to smooth things over and then move on. The last thing you want is someone that might panic or get upset and ruin your ceremony. You also want to gauge how professional they seem. You need someone who is going to be responsible. They need to show up on time and calmly and patiently be in control. This will put you at ease as well. A true professional will know how to interact with everyone at your wedding. And they are also flexible. This can be a huge attribute because as we said earlier, most weddings have some sort of surprise crop up at some point. You want your officiant to know how to react when that surprise happens and then is able to divert their energy into a positive direction. Last but not least, whoever you hire, make sure that a contract is drawn up that spells out the responsibilities of all of the parties involved. Don't make the wrong choice, take your officiant research seriously and experience the ceremony that you deserve by hiring an experienced professional.

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