A Quick Guide to Marrying Your Friends (In Washington State)

1. Have someone ask you to officiate their wedding.

My girlfriend was in a call with her friend over Skype sometime in April-ish and suddenly I overhear: “Can Conrad be our officiant?” I perk up as I can never pass down an interesting opportunity, but I realized I had no clue if this was even possible. I suspect I got picked because I was reliable and available, key traits of the 7th best friend.

2. Get ordained

I went to the internet to investigate to see if this was even possible. By the time they were completing their call I was ordained by American Marriage Ministries. I picked them because it was local to Seattle and Stephen Colbert seems like a good enough guy to endorse it, so it was good enough for me. It took less than 5 minutes but now I had to do some research to see what else was required in the state of Washington. Spoilers, it’s nothing ¹

3. Learn your duties

Surprisingly there isn’t too much that goes into a wedding for an officiant. On the day, once the ceremony is complete you must sign the marriage license in front of witnesses. That’s it! In most cases there is a ceremony that must be officiated so that meant writing out a script, planning out how the ceremony goes, and working closely with the couple. There’s lots of great resources available online. Weddingchicks.com was surprisingly helpful with writing out the script for the ceremony.

4. Write the script

Fun fact, I wasn’t super familiar with the couple before going into this as they were close friends of my girlfriend. There was a bit of miscommunication between the couple and me about who would write the script. I sent over a bare bones outline so they could make the appropriate edits, but the groom thought I was handling the entire script. We coordinated a couple weeks before and realized nobody had worked on the script. A few hours later I receive the latest draft and most of what was written there is what we used on the day. We planned 15 minutes for the ceremony, while short, was what the couple wanted.

5. Practice the speech

We flew in a few days early to help the couple before the wedding. There were a few things we assisted with before the event:

• Wedding party dinner: Low key chill event at the couple’s house. Here we went through the schedule over the next couple days while eating amazing Thai food. We hammer out the rest of the script after the everyone leaves. We also find out that at the processional is not Livin Vida Loca by Ricky Martin, which was somehow written in there. Not sure what happened there. After the script was locked, I practiced on my phone before heading to sleep.

• Tea ceremony at the groom’s parent’s home: It was nice to see the traditional tea ceremony in person. There were many members of the family involved and it was great to see traditions not die, even though everyone moved to America. They had a whole pig for dinner, which was delicious.

• The rehearsal dinner: I printed out the script, cut them out and glued them to index cards we found. I then dived into practice and ran the script as much as possible. Practice is the key for any public speaking so at all these events I was deep into practicing.

6. Execute the plan

While everyone is doing make up, photos, etc, I am practicing. I got to the venue about an hour and half early to help with setup. When ceremony time hit, I took the mic and did the best damn job I could. The only major mistake was I went auto pilot and forgot to ask everyone to sit after the couple had come up to the stage. I was in my groove before I noticed but luckily people figured it out. Kept on time at 15 minutes total, including the vows and we were out of there in record time.

7. Sign the marriage license

The couple leaves the main stage to the string quartet playing Viva la Vida by Coldplay. I head downstairs where the wedding party is, and we signed the marriage certificate with the witnesses. I could always have done better but it was fine in the end. The rest of the night went without a hitch and the rest of the wedding was beautiful. That’s it!

In America, it’s a lot easier to have this process done so I am not sure how applicable this guide is for people outside of the US. I tried to do this in British Columbia for my friends, but the process was much more difficult as they have a process to become a Marriage Commissioner. I really enjoyed the process and when I retire, I could see myself doing something along these lines full time. Hope you enjoyed my short guide on how to marry your friends and hopefully it can help you decide if being an ordained minister is for you!