Minnesota-Minneapolis and St. Paul

Friend Officiating - What Is the Process?

We are getting married June 15, 2013 in Minneapolis and want our friend to officiate our wedding. What need to be done so that he can legally marry us? This won't be a religious ceremony.

Any info you can direct me to would be great! I'm sure we aren't the first people to ever do this. Thank you so much!
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Re: Friend Officiating - What Is the Process?

  • Is he already ordained? We had a good friend officiate our wedding. He was already ordained, and he just had to file something with Hennepin County the week before the wedding since he had not performed a wedding in that county previously.

    I'm not sure what website he used to get ordained, but I could ask him or the handful of other people that have been ordained online what site they worked with.
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  • mac17mac17 member
    First Anniversary First Comment
    I got ordained online.  He can go to the website Universal Life Church Ministries and enter his information.  He will then need to pay $18 to receive a letter of good standing.  Once he receives the letter in the mail, he can bring it to any county and file it for about $5.  It allows you to perform a ceremony anywhere within the state of MN.  

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  • Ditto PP. Also, they can file up until the day before the wedding and still be able to marry you - our friend who got ordained online to marry us couldn't fly in until the day before the wedding, and it all worked out.

    Are you writing your own ceremony? We had a non religous ceremony as well so I'm always curious to see what other non-religous copules do for their ceremonies. :)
  • MKTKMKTK member
    First Anniversary First Comment
    Thanks for the information you guys! REALLY helpful!

    @Cackle - Yep, we are writing our own! We're both writers and the friend officiating is actually a former professor we had in college. Haven't started writing anything for the ceremony yet, and I have a feeling it's going be a challenge. But it is also exciting to think we get to plan everything to be just as we want it! Also, I noticed your photographer was Elisabeth Ann. We're meeting with her this week. Really love the photos I've seen!
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  • We put together/wrote our own ceremony as well. It is def a challenge, but I'm so glad we did our own, it was so much more personal and special! Totally worth it. :)

    You will LOVE Elise. She's fun, easy to work with, and takes amazing photos. She really could be charging a lot more than she does - her work is easily comparable to photog's who charge twice what she does!
  • We are having FI's cousin marry us, he used Universal Life Church and just got his certificate. Now we just need to fill out that form, send in the certificate and pay the $5 dollars and we are good to go!
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