I recently got engaged, and am looking forward to planning the wedding, but there's a major issue that's hanging over my head, and I'm not sure what to do about it. Neither my fiancee nor myself are particularly religious, but much of both of our extended families are as well as his mother and my dad and step-mom are very religious. Since I don't want our wedding ceremony to be based around something we don't believe in, I don't think a religious ceremony is appropriate. However, we wouldn't mind having a prayer or some small religious element. (I want to get married outside, so it definitely won't be in a church) The problem is that from my understanding, most ministers will ask you to do marriage counseling with them before they marry you, and I feel like that no minister would want to marry us when he hears about our religious beliefs. At the same time, if we have someone besides a minister (like a justice of the peace or something) marry us, it would probably cause an uproar among many of the people in our families. This is a particularly difficult problem because my dad and step-mom will likely be paying for much of the wedding. Does anyone have advice?