Will you marry … us? The friends stepping up as wedding officiants.
These couples phoned a friend.
Why these couples said “I do” to having a friend officiate their weddings. (Photo Illustration: Juanjo Gasull for Yahoo Life, photos: Getty Images)
I no longer talk to the man I married when I was 29. But I’m still quite close to the man who married … both of us.
At the time, my fiancé and I were living in Brooklyn, just a couple of blocks from my dear childhood friend Erik Kaiko and his wife, Megan. The four of us shared a CSA and frequent after-work happy hours. Asking Erik to officiate my wedding was a no-brainer; he was an actor, an excellent public speaker and a true friend we knew we could count on. We weren’t at all religious, and Erik had already gotten ordained over the internet in order to officiate another friend’s wedding, so it all made sense.
Another bonus was that we were having a tiny wedding — immediate family only — and the officiant loophole meant we could “invite” a couple of our best friends without opening the floodgates to actually inviting all our friends. The ceremony and wedding day were wonderful, and it is absolutely no fault of Erik’s that we divorced a year and a half later.
Why go the friend route? A recent survey on religious activity in the U.S. shows that nearly half of 18-to-29-year-olds identify as “religiously unaffiliated,” which suggests that they may be looking beyond ministers, rabbis and other spiritual leaders to help them tie the knot. And, as Erik himself points out, “Our generation is accustomed to looking for ways to do things differently, in a more personal way — and getting married is a significant life milestone that is a good example of that.”
But what goes into asking a friend to fill this role, and what makes someone wedding officiant-worthy? Yahoo Life spoke to real couples and their officiants to find out.
Lynn McKay wanted her friend Acacia O’Connor to give her wedding a more “personal” touch. (Photo Illustration: Yahoo Life, photos: Lynn McKay, Getty Images)
‘I wanted it to be a deeply personal service’
“I decided to ask a friend to officiate my wedding because I wanted it to be a deeply personal service,” Lynn McKay in Syracuse, N.Y., shares. Her friend Acacia O’Connor was an obvious choice because “they are smart, funny, thoughtful and eloquent,” McKay says. “I knew that they would make the service special. They said yes immediately (of course).”
McKay wanted to differentiate her wedding ceremony from the more religious or run-of-the-mill ones she had attended or seen depicted. “I had been to various weddings where I couldn’t connect to what the officiant was saying,” she explains, “and I felt like Acacia made it both personal and meaningful.”
O’Connor has been asked to officiate multiple friends’ weddings. “It wasn’t for my love of the institution of marriage, that’s for sure!” they laugh. O’Connor has never been married, is not monogamous and “isn’t the biggest fan of tradition,” they say. But they’re a good friend, a writer, a good public speaker and seem to have a certain … vibe. “I’m priestly? If that makes sense?” O’Connor says. “I get the sense people think of me as someone who will have thoughtful things to say in creative ways, which is something you want in a wedding ceremony.”
O’Connor also felt it was an honor to be asked. “I felt an incredible amount of trust in me, asking me to play that role,” they explain. “I’d much rather officiate than be in any type of bridal party. (I’m nonbinary and before that I was gender non-conforming, so that definitely is partly why I’m not bridal party material.) Honestly, other than the affianced, the officiant is kind of the star!” And why limit it to weddings? “Bring on the divorce rituals and the funerals — I can do it all!” they joke.
After some wedding snafus, bride Brandi Ryans needed an officiant she could trust implicitly: her pal Julie. (Photo Illustration: Yahoo Life, photos: Brandi Ryans, Getty Images)
‘We never really thought about anyone other than Julie’
When Brandi Ryans of New Jersey got married in 2010, it was important to have someone she could count on after a series of major letdowns. She and her now-husband had put down a deposit on a wedding venue only to discover soon after that it had closed and the owner had fled the country, with their hard-earned thousands of dollars