Friend as Officiant

[miss di]

Hello!

 

we would really love for our very good friend to perform our wedding ceremony...does anyone know the laws in Mexico regarding officiants?? i know it's super easy to get ordained online, but i also know it depends upon the state. how about the country??

 

has anyone else done this or know of anyone who has done this?

 

we're thinking about getting (silently) married here in SF before heading to mexico, so we don't have to deal with blood tests, etc. in that case, what are your opinions on just having our friend read the 5 paragraphs or whatever it may be without going through the trouble of being ordained?

[*Heather*]

That's what we're doing. My brother is performing our symbolic ceremony in Mexico but we'll secretly do the paperwork here, and I don't think he'll bother getting ordained (but we'll tell people he was if they ask).

[miss di]

awesome! thanks for the response. makes me feel better to know that someone else is being sneaky like that...i don't think i'll make her go through the trouble either. she's flying in from london this saturday so i'm going to ask her if she would do us the honor...fingers crossed!!

[~Kate~]

We're doing that as well - my close friend will perform the ceremony, which we wrote ourselves. However, as our crowd has a lot of lawyers, we can't really tell them she got ordained since they'll know we can't do that here So we're just telling people that we're doing the paperwork here in Ontario (we found someone who will do this without making us do vows or anything) but having our ceremony in Mexico...

[Jacilynda]

We are having a family member perform our wedding. If you are already legally married before you go you can have anyone perform your wedding, they don't have to be ordained. We had looked into this as well cause we were going to pay for him to become ordained if we needed to, but since we're legally married it doesn't matter!

[Mishka Designs]

I know I'm late in answering but for future brides - here in Mexico it doesn't matter if someone is ordained or not - it's not legal. And that includes marriages performed in a church by a priest or a pastor. So, technically anyone can perform a symbolic ceremony.

[JoLo908]

So, basically, we can get legally married here in the U.S. and then have any one of our friends perform the ceremony even if they are not ordained? Where do you obtain the writing for the ceremony??

[Mishka Designs]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JoLo908 So, basically, we can get legally married here in the U.S. and then have any one of our friends perform the ceremony even if they are not ordained? Where do you obtain the writing for the ceremony??

yes, basically - I think it really depends on how you and your family feel re: that idea and how you would like your ceremony performed. There are a lot of websites with different vows and ceremonies that your friend (or you ) can find to put together your ceremony - just do a search on any of the search engines :).

[Jacilynda]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JoLo908 So, basically, we can get legally married here in the U.S. and then have any one of our friends perform the ceremony even if they are not ordained? Where do you obtain the writing for the ceremony??

just google ceremony vows and there are TONS of options for how to do your wedding and what to say and what to add in, etc. We decided to do this when we were told that to do a legal wedding w/ paperwork and the officiant it was going to cost us $700, and if we didn't want paperwork just the officiant it was $250. I didn't want to pay all this when I could get married at home for $53 and have a family member who is coming perform our wedding!

[marisolhernandez]

We are doing the same thing too. Secretly getting married in SF and then heading to PV for the symbolic ceremony. We have chosen some pretty great readings, does anyone have a copy of their ceremony to share? Rob's friend is marrying us, which will be great bc he is an amazing speaker, but I have no idea about the ceremony outline. I found some online, but they seemed really long and most were very religious.