You take your place at the front, turn to face the wedding guests, and... they're all wearing masks. They're spaced 6 feet apart. The room is half empty. You can't make out any smiles. You can't pick up on the excitement in the room. The only sign of life you can see is pairs of open, expressionless eyes. You clear your throat and get ready to speak. There are two ways this can go. Say Nothing So It Seems Normal? Conventional wisdom goes like this: "When something is socially uncomfortable,...
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8 Steps for a Simple and Meaningful Wedding Ring Exchange
Just about every contemporary wedding ceremony has a part where the couple exchanges wedding rings. This has been going on literally for ages - the earliest wedding ring exchanges were happening in Egypt over 3000 years ago when couples would exchange rings made of hemp or reeds, and then other cultures improved on that with rings of iron and then previous metals. Because the ring-exchange element of the wedding ceremony has been going on for thousands of years across all sorts of religions...
How to Read the Wedding Ceremony Script (Without Being Glued to the Page)
I get asked at least once a week: How much of the wedding ceremony script can I read? Is it even okay to read it at all? How much of the script do I have to memorize? I love being the bearer of good news, so here it is: You can read absolutely all of the wedding ceremony script word-for-word. As wedding officiants, we're not Tony Robbins. We're not motivational speakers. We don't need to stalk the stage up and down and pace back and forth. Nobody expects that or wants that from us. We need to...
3 Ways to Beat Your Fear of Wedding Ceremony Mistakes
It can be debilitating: the fear of making a mistake while you're officiating the ceremony and messing up the whole wedding. Why are you so worried about messing up? Because you're a good and decent person! This is not just some solo presentation - the kind where if you tank up there it's only on you! A wedding is all about the couple. With all the flowers and ties and grandmas and drapery, there's this sense that it's such an important occasion and if we screw this thing up, we're slapping a...
Wedding Ceremony Reading Samples (And What To Do Instead!)
You're a wedding officiant or a couple looking for sample readings for your upcoming wedding ceremony. And you just want this part to be easy. In fact, I'm surprised you haven't just scrolled right down to look for sample readings already! (Spoiler alert: I haven't included any.) Basically, you just want to find a verse or a poem or a quote here on the Internet, think "Oh that's nice" about it, and copy and paste it into your ceremony. I'm going to save you the trouble: skip the sample wedding...
7 Steps to Responding Well to a Negative Review
I got my first-ever negative review this week. I'm at my Macbook writing a wedding love story, when "bing!" - in comes an email from Wedding Wire saying I've received a review from "Spencer." Right away, I'm a bit disoriented. Because I've never officiated a wedding for someone named Spencer. I open the email, and I'm met with the subject line: "Look elsewhere if you want someone who respects you as a customer and isn't only after your money." Um. That's the title of the review. It only goes...
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