You’re a wedding officiant and your couple says, “We’re not really religious, but we’d like something spiritual in the ceremony.” Now what? Do you add a prayer? A blessing? A religious reading? A ritual from their tradition? And if you’re not clergy, are there elements you should completely avoid?
More and more couples are getting married without a traditional minister, priest, rabbi, imam, or other religious leader officiating their wedding.
Some identify as spiritual but not religious. Some don’t identify with any religion at all. Some have walked away from the faith tradition they grew up in. And plenty of couples still have some connection to religion, even if they aren’t part of a congregation or faith community themselves.
Which means wedding officiants hear both of these requests all the time:
“Please don’t include anything religious in our ceremony.”
And:
“We’d like something religious in the ceremony. What can we do?”
If you’re a professional wedding officiant, a notary, a celebrant, or even a friend or relative officiating for the first time, that second question can be surprisingly intimidating. You may not consider yourself clergy. You may know very little about the couple’s faith tradition. You may be worried about saying something inappropriate or even performing a religious ritual that you aren’t qualified to perform.
I’ve been navigating this with couples for years, and my starting point is pretty simple.
The couple are the boss.
Our job as officiants is to help facilitate their vision for their ceremony. If they don’t want religion, I’m not going to slip a sermon into the ceremony because I’ve got a captive audience. If they’d like a spiritual or religious element, I’m going to help them find something that fits them, their beliefs, and the ceremony we’re creating together.
But there are some important boundaries and some practical ways to do this really well.
A Wedding Can Feel Sacred Without Being Religious
I happen to believe that what we do as wedding officiants is sacred work.
Two people stand in front of the people they love and promise faithfulness, partnership, friendship, and a shared life. They make those promises publicly and ask a community of witnesses to hear them. That’s part of the reason wedding ceremonies can be so emotional even for people who have no religious beliefs at all.
There is also the civic side to marriage. My wife and I actually experienced that very clearly when we got married in South Korea. As two Canadians teaching and living abroad, we decided to get married there. We went through the government process at the Canadian embasy, filled out paperwork, got things stamped at one office, took them somewhere else, got some more stamps, and eventually somebody handed the papers back and essentially said, “Congratulations. You’re married.”
We were shocked. Like, we totally didn’t expect it. We were married now?
Legally, we were.
Then we had our wedding ceremony with friends and family a few weeks later.
Those are two different dimensions of marriage. One is the legal act. The other is this unusual, beautiful ceremony where people process down an aisle to music, stand in very specific places, exchange promises and rings, and publicly mark a major transition in their lives.
We don’t do that in everyday like. Like, when we arrive at work on Monday morning. Nobody plays music while we process into breakfast.
Wedding ceremonies are deliberately ceremonial. That’s part of their power.
Marriage is profound, significant, even sacred, without assuming that every couple wants God, prayer, Scripture, or religious language included.
Those are choices you make with the couple.
Ask How Religious They Want the Ceremony to Be
I like to get this conversation started before I’m even hired.
During my initial chemistry check with a couple, I explain that when we eventually plan their ceremony together, one of the things I’m going to ask about is religion and spirituality.
Then during our actual wedding workshop, typically four to six weeks before the wedding, I make it very straightforward:
“On a scale of zero to ten, where are you religious-wise?”
Zero means: no references to God, no prayers, no religious language at all.
As you move up the scale, maybe they want a little spiritual language, a brief blessing, a prayer, a Bible reading, or some other tradition that comes from their faith background.
Very few couples who find a professional independent officiant are looking for a ten. If they wanted a complete liturgical worship service from their particular faith tradition, they’d probably already be talking with clergy from that tradition.
In my own experience, somewhere around three quarters of my couples tell me they don’t want anything religious in the ceremony. Of the couples who do, many are somewhere in that middle territory.
“We’re not really religious, but we’d like something.”
Or:
“My grandmother is very religious, and this would mean a lot to her.”
That gives us somewhere to start.
Know What You’re Comfortable and Qualified to Do
This is particularly important when the couple requests a specific religious ritual.
You don’t need to know every religious tradition before becoming a wedding officiant.
You do need to know when you don’t know something.
If a couple asks you to perform a ritual you’ve never encountered, tell them:
“I haven’t done that before. Let me learn more about it and make sure I’m the appropriate person to perform it.”
Then do your research.
I remember preparing for my first Filipino wedding and learning about the coins, veil, and other traditional elements. I needed to understand which aspects were cultural, which were religious, and whether there were parts I shouldn’t simply assume I was qualified to perform.
The couple should participate in that process too. Ask them to check with their family or faith community if necessary.
If the ritual requires a priest, imam, kahu, rabbi, or another qualified religious leader, bring that person in.
For example, I’m not going to pretend to be a Catholic priest and administer Holy Communion at a Catholic wedding. That’s not my role, and I respect that tradition too much to pretend that it is.
If the couple wants communion and their tradition permits a layperson to administer it, that’s a different conversation.
The point is to understand what you’re being asked to do before you do it.
And if there are religious practices you simply aren’t comfortable performing, establish that during the chemistry check. There are excellent officiants who tell couples right up front that they don’t perform religious ceremonies and will happily refer those couples to somebody who is a better fit.
That’s good service.
The reverse is true too. If your ordination or licensing body requires you to include particular religious language, disclose that before the couple hires you. Let them hear exactly what you’re required to say so they can decide whether they’re comfortable with it.
Nobody should be discovering these things while standing at the front of the aisle.
Don’t Automatically Reach for a Bible Reading
When couples ask me what reading they should include in their ceremony, I generally put the question back to them.
I don’t have a standard poem or Scripture passage that I automatically recommend.
If a particular passage is meaningful to the couple, fantastic. Include it.
If they can’t think of one, I don’t see any reason to insert a reading simply because wedding ceremonies traditionally have readings.
That includes Scripture.
I’m a Bible nerd. I studied the biblical languages in seminary. I know the standard wedding passages.
But if a couple asks, “What’s your favourite Bible verse for weddings?” I still don’t pick one for them.
That should come from them.
Religious elements work best when they actually belong to the people getting married.
There is one exception where couples often genuinely want my help. They’ll say something like:
“We’d like to include something religious, but we don’t know exactly what.”
That’s where I’ve found a prayer and a blessing to be incredibly useful options.
Prayer and Blessing Are Not the Same Thing
When I ask couples whether they’d like to include “a prayer, a blessing, or both,” they’ll sometimes ask me what the difference is.
A prayer is the more overtly religious option.
When the officiant says, “Please join me in prayer,” the ceremony intentionally pauses. Guests may bow their heads or close their eyes. The officiant speaks directly to God.
It’s a distinct spiritual moment.
A blessing can be much lighter.
You’re not necessarily stopping the ceremony and asking everyone to pray. You’re speaking words of blessing over the couple.
That distinction gives couples an easy choice.
Some say, “Yes, we’d love a prayer.”
Some say, “A prayer feels like a little too much, but we’d love a blessing.”
Some want both.
In my experience, of the couples who want some religious content, the overwhelming majority are satisfied with the blessing alone.
And there are two places in the ceremony where I’ve found these elements work particularly well.
Where to Put a Prayer in the Wedding Ceremony
I prefer to place the prayer after the love story or officiant’s speech and before the vows and rings.
I know there are liturgical reasons for putting a prayer near the beginning of a ceremony. I went to seminary. I once had a professor assign us the task of writing an entire wedding as a worship service, complete with prayers, hymns, communion, and the wedding itself embedded inside the larger liturgy.
I got an A.
Then I thought, “Good Lord, I am never going to use this assignment in the real world.”
For the typical wedding I officiate, I want to get to the couple as quickly as possible.
Tell their story.
Make people laugh.
Remind everybody why these two people love each other and why they’re standing here.
By the time you’ve told that story well, the room has changed. Guests are emotionally engaged. They’ve laughed. Maybe they’ve cried. They are completely invested in these two people.
Then when you say:
“Please join me in a prayer for Megan and Luke and their life together.”
People are ready to go there with you.
The prayer also becomes a natural transition into the vows and rings. We’ve told the story of how they arrived here, and now we’re moving into the promises they’re about to make.
Here’s the prayer I’ve developed and used with couples over the years:
Please join me in a prayer of blessing on Megan and Luke and their life together.
God, we thank you that you are love, and for the privilege and joy it is to be part of this joyful occasion today where Megan and Luke solidify their relationship with a lifelong commitment through the bonds of marriage.
May you bless them. May you protect them from all harm and lead them into peace wherever they go. Surround them in their work and in their companionship, in their sleeping and in their waking, in their joys and in their sorrows, in their lives together to the end and beyond.
And may the love they share and the life they build from their commitment today flow out as a blessing to their friends, family, neighbours, and everyone around them.
Amen.
I deliberately wrote this to be broadly accessible. Wedding guest lists can include Christians from several traditions, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, people who describe themselves as spiritual, and people who don’t identify religiously at all.
If I’m offering a prayer in that room, I want the couple to recognize their beliefs in it without unnecessarily alienating everybody else.
Where to Put a Wedding Blessing
I put the blessing much later.
Immediately before the pronouncement.
The couple has exchanged vows. They’ve exchanged rings. Any unity ritual has happened. Everything has been building toward that moment when you’re about to declare them married.
Then I pause briefly and say:
Megan and Luke, a traditional blessing on you and your marriage.
May God bless you and keep you.
May God’s face shine on you and be gracious to you.
May God’s light be upon you and give you peace in your marriage.
And may you be a blessing to others in your union all your days.
Then I move directly into the pronouncement.
It’s brief enough that it doesn’t derail the momentum of the ceremony, but for couples who want that spiritual acknowledgement, it gives the moment genuine weight.
They’ve made their promises.
They’ve exchanged their rings.
They receive a blessing.
And now they’re married.
Give Couples Options Instead of Assumptions
Ultimately, this comes back to the same principle I use throughout ceremony planning.
Ask.
Don’t assume a couple wants religion because their parents are religious.
Don’t assume they don’t want it because they aren’t churchgoers.
Don’t assume that because you personally believe marriage is sacred, you need to tell the couple what they should believe about it.
And don’t perform a religious ritual you don’t understand simply because the couple asked for it.
Talk with them.
Find out what they’re hoping to create.
Know your own boundaries.
Do your homework when a tradition is unfamiliar.
Bring in somebody qualified when that’s the respectful thing to do.
And when a couple simply says, “We’d like something spiritual in there somewhere,” give them clear options.
A prayer after the story.
A blessing before the pronouncement.
Or both.
After years of trying different approaches, that’s the balance I’ve found works beautifully for couples who want a touch of religion in their ceremony without turning the wedding into a full worship service.
And for couples who want none at all?
That’s easy too.
We tell their story. They make their promises. We celebrate their marriage.
The ceremony can still be every bit as profound.
If you’d like more practical help building wedding ceremonies from beginning to end, my Unboring!Wedding Academy includes my complete ceremony framework, scripts, workshops, automated ceremony builder Officiantly, and resources for working through these decisions with your couples.
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