How do you have a wedding ceremony without a Bible?
Posted by Ariel · Advice

My fiance comes from a Catholic family and I from a Jewish and Catholic family, but neither of us is particularly religious. We hired an officiant (for those of you in the NY area, Rev. Sheila Gay – she's fantastic!) who will be using some elements of each religion to pay respect to our parents and families (and because my mom HAD to have the glass breaking!) and will also be using some Buddhist readings (FI was a philosphy/religion major and we spent a year in Japan) to make it really personalized. We didn't want to do any rituals that didn't feel authentic – if we feel silly doing them, then what's the point? I'm excited to have a ceremony so tailored to us.

I highly recommend "The Wedding Ceremony Planner: The Essential Guide to the Most Important Part of Your Wedding Day" by Judith Johnson. It has the ceremony structure laid out with passages to select for both religious and non-religious ceremonies. I am Wiccan and my fiance is Agnostic, so we are completely leaving religion out of the ceremony and putting more emphasis on family ties and love. I was able to put together the perfect ceremony for us, piece by piece. It's a great read, and you can find it at any bookstore or on Amazon.

We had our good friend, a physicist, officiate our wedding, and for his "sermon" (really his affirmation), he read text from the Massachusetts court case affirming that civil marriages were a civil right. It was actually really moving. The rest of the ceremony was readings and our vows (which we just wrote ourselves).

Funny story: I hadn't written my vows before the rehearsal, so when we walked through the ceremony to measure how long it took, I just made something up off the top of my head. I think I said, "I vow to keep the whiskey warm and the beer cold…" After the ceremony, a bunch of people who had been at the rehearsal said they were disappointed that I didn't leave that part in my vows!

Since the state of Alaska allows you to appoint anyone as your marriage commissioner for a day, we asked a close friend to perform our nonreligious ceremony. She and I scoured the internet for interesting and relevant pieces and parts and came up with something that highlighted our beliefs as a couple. We wrote our own vows and ended the ceremony with "The Art of Marriage" by Wilferd Arlan Peterson. It was short, sweet, and perfect for us. As long as it feels appropriate for you and your partner, run with it and make it your own. =)

I'm agnostic and my fiancee is Catholic, but we decided we didn't want it to be a preachy ceremony. Since I am not Catholic, we obviously couldn't have a priest officiate (as is tradition for Catholics) and I did not want to convert just because of that, because I simply do not share those beliefs and felt I would be dishonoring his religion, him and myself were I to lie and pretend to be something I am not. Futhermore, I would have felt horribly uncomfortable having religion in my ceremony since I am not religious, so we decided on a great officiant who is a justic of the peace. It was nice that he had his own vows pre written too, because I found the task of writing my own a bit daunting with all the other things I am doing for the big day. It would have been just one more thing and would have overwhealmed me (even though I'm usually very creative). We're having a very basic ceremony, which focuses on the bond of love rather than the role of religion. It fits us perfectly and we're very pleased with it. I think you might want to look at Justice of the Peace's in your area as an alternative.
Good luck on your big day!

We both work in the courts, so a friend who is a justice of the peace will be marrying us. She gave us lots of examples to work with, but just googling "Secular Wedding Ceremonies" went a long way too! For the record, I'm Christian, but don't believe that I need to be married in a church for my marriage to be accepted or recognized and my fiance is an atheist. It meant a lot more to him that we be married by someone secular than it meant to me to be married in a church. Compromise is everything!

We had the town's mayor officiate, and he said a generic "Do you promise to X, Y, and Z?" But the bulk of the ceremony was taken up by Hubby's sister reading Edward Monkton's "A Lovely Love Story". The whole thing took about 10 minutes, in and out and adorable all at the same time

I was honored to officiate at my sister's wedding – I put all the vows in a Curious George binder – everyone loved it!

We used a magistrate from the courthouse & he was nice enough to come over to our venue. Agreeing with Danielle, we had to agree to it and that was about it.

Here's a link to our vows, if you're interested in it.
http://tinyurl.com/n5t3hu

I haven't fully decided on the setup of our ceremony but I do like the words of Susan B. Anthony, originally written by Lucretia Mott: "May your independence be equal, your dependence mutual, your obligations reciprocal."

We were lucky to find a retired Unitarian Universalist minister who married us– none of the judges would come out on a Saturday! (Unitarian Universalists do not subscribe to a particular creed, but have an open mind about religion– it is not a Christian church). She emailed us the ceremony in advance and edited it when we met with her. She had one reference to the G-word that we omitted. UU ministers are probably a good resource. We definitely lucked out!

I like the book, "Weddings From the Heart" by Daphne Rose Kingma – it has many ideas for ceremonies, including vows & readings. another one I really like is "Handfasting and Wedding Rituals" by Raven Kaldera & Tannin Schwartzstein. Intended as a guide for pagan weddings, this book has lovely rituals that can be incorporated into any non-religious ceremony. I've used it as a reference several times when planning ceremonies for couples who wanted secular weddings.

Hope that helps!

Are non-religious weddings not that common in the US?

I'm in Australia, and all the weddings I've been to, plus 99% of the ones I've heard about second-hand, have been non-religious. I would regard non-religious weddings as the norm and religious ones as out of the ordinary – but that could just be down to my family and peer group I suppose.

I second this. The entire structure of our ceremony was pulled from this book and our officiant (my Mom, who is religious) was able to craft a very meaningful ceremony without the slightest hint of a higher power.

Bonnie, that's a great question. 75% of Americans identify as Christian, so if you want to extrapolate from there (some Christians won't have a religious service, but then there are Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, etc weddings as well) I would say it's safe to assume that at least 3/4ths of American weddings are religious. That sounds about right to me in terms of the weddings I've attended, too.

Thank you SOOO much for this post! I am a non-practicing Catholic and my Fiance is Athiest. Interesting yes indeed!! I have been wondering how we were going to do this. I am having one of our closest friends to marry us as she knows us and our views. I will share more after halloween (our wedding date) on how it goes!

I had great luck googling "unitarian wedding ceremonies" and "secular wedding ceremonies" as others above have states. We also wanted a traditional format so I looked at several Christian formats but worked with the secular example to find appropriate replacements. (Ex. Instead of a priest leading a prayer, the officiant is offering a moment in silence for contemplation.)

Our friend is officiating and just had to apply for a one-day license from the state governor's office (Massachusetts allows this, not all states do). He's crafting the welcome/intro around the Mass Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage.

In the early stages, I collected any and all passages and readings that spoke to me and then created a broad outline of the main components of the ceremony where I cut and paste them in, made edits, rewrote things, etc. It took some time to do the initial research, but actually putting it all together happened pretty quickly as by that time we had a good sense of what we really wanted to convey.

My family is also super religious, and my mother was very upset about my brother getting married on the beach in Mexico by an internet ordained friend. Luckily, in the end they were able to appease her by asking her to do a reading for the wedding that meant something to her. Of course, she read something from the Bible, but it was sweet and she was happy and therefore…so was everyone else.

We found this book really helpful, too. It has an outline of the typical protestant ceremony, with explanations of what each section is. We took that outline and built our own secular ceremony around it.

I'd love to share my secular wedding. Today is my 1 year anniversary. Happy Fall Equinox!

http://www.mywedding.com/TomAndRebecca

We posted our entire ceremony script that we wrote ourselves using little bits we found around and a whole lot from our hearts.