We had been planning on getting a self-uniting marriage license (we live in PA) because we wanted a family friend to be our officiant. For those of you that are unfamiliar with it, a self-uniting marriage license is traditionally for Quakers (who have a large council of elders rather than clergymen), and requires no officant to sign the marriage license, just the couple and 2 witnesses.
Anyway, we go to apply (and have to drive 45 mintues out of the way to a county that actually has them) to find out that if we go that route, other states won't recognize our marriage as a legal union. So if my health insurance is based out of another state, my husband would not be able to be on my plan. I thought I had done my research, but I guess I missed something.
So we ended up getting a regular marriage license. Now we have 2 options. We can get legally married at the courthouse the day before (which is bad etiquette, and I would feel bad for kind of lying to my guests) or pay an officant hundreds of dollars to come to our ceremony site on a Saturday to marry us. We would still want our family friend to do most of the talking, so this complicates our ceremony immensely.
What would you do?