Honoring your journey.
I enjoy working with couples to find just the right elements, language, and rituals for their ceremonies, and am honored that Wedding Venue Mapy featured an article about this topic.
Here’s Article Link:
Wedding Ceremony Outline
Humanist Celebrant Orlando is proud to be a prefrerred vendor of Wedding Venue Map!
Many couples are making intentional, socially- and environmentally-friendly choices as they plan their wedding and other celebrations or gatherings. Gifts may not be required, but it is traditional to provide one. The registry serves as a guide for your guests, letting them know what you need and want. How will your registry reflect your values?
Whether for simplicity, ethical sourcing, Humanist values, or just spreading ripples of kindness, here are some tips for making your wedding registry truly meaningful, mindful, & unique.
Shop Small / Shop Local – whether you’re supporting a single-mother textile artist you met on Etsy or the shop down the street owned by your neighbor’s dad, creating a registry with links to small or local businesses is a great idea. If you’re not sure where to start, use local Chambers of Commerce to help you find businesses.
Better yet – talk to your own network of friends & family – who do you know that owns a small business or who relies on sales & referrals for their livelihood? This is a great opportunity to find out.
Shop Diverse – Enhance your focus on diverse sourcing by placing your registry with, or posting registry items from, certified Small, Woman-owned, Veteran-owned, or Minority Business Enterprises. Local Chambers of Commerce can help – look in your community for a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, African American Chamber of Commerce, PRIDE Chamber of Commerce, Veteran-owned business associations, and others. You may have other small business network in your area you can reach out to.
There are no secular/Humanist chambers or professional organizations; however, you could reach out to your local Humanist groups & congregational leaders. They may know of members who own photography businesses, do Humanist celebrancy, are DJ’s, or other professions.
Alternatives to traditional gifts. Focus on experiences such as trips or dance lessons; membership to a locally-sourced food delivery service or wine club; gift cards for e-books; memberships to local museums or other places you both enjoy visiting; or organizational memberships such as American Humanist Association or National Audobon Society.
Themed Registries – Whether it’s local art, gift certificates/gift cards from local small businesses, single malt scotch, live houseplants, or some other thing you just can’t have too much of, setting up a theme and letting your guests provide you with a unique “wedding collection” can be a wonderful registry idea.
Value-Focused Fund Registry – Maybe you’re saving up for a tiny house, solar panels, adoption fees, or an electric car. Maybe you want funds to work with a local nursery to re-landscape your home with native, food-bearing plants. You can set up a fundraiser registry to support your lifestyle and goals.
Don’t want to ask them to spend money? What about something they can look for like printing a comic strip they think you’ll enjoy? Or something they can do – For example, you could ask them to give you a printed photo of a piece of local outdoor art like one of the Pride murals in the Mills 50 District in Orlando, then you could create a collage of those photos and frame it.
Professional Development Fund – are there professional courses, conferences, certifications, or professional memberships each of you wants but hasn’t been in a position to fund? Create a PD fund as your registry so your friends and family can be part of increasing your personal & professional success.
Estate Planning – Now that you’re starting your life together, it’s important to plan to take care of & protect one another. You should meet with an estate planning attorney, a financial advisor, and a funeral and cemetery professional. Such guidance and/or getting things in place can cost money – ask for a fund to help you plan for your future.
For the kids. If there are already children involved, consider making the registry about them, rather than you. Toys or clothes they want, or even an educational fund or contributions toward a savings account.
Fundraiser Registry – Maybe you’re saving up for a tiny house, solar panels, a fund for adoption fees, a pair of kayaks, or an electric car. Maybe you need funds to work with a local nursery to re-landscape your home with native, food-bearing plants. You can set up a fundraiser registry to support your lifestyle and goals.
For many, wedding gifts support starting a life together and provide truly needed items. Others, especially those marrying later in life, may not need a microwave or dish set. In fact, they may already have too many items as their households blend!
Consider sharing the happiness and love of your special day with people in your community.
The Giving Registry – Consider finding a charity you support and asking for donations instead. You could set up an online fundraiser or contact the charity and ask what they need (like specific funds to paint a mural in a children’s area). There are some shelters where you can fund a meal and you could go to prepare and/or serve it; you could invite local guests to join you there.
Volunteer Hours Registry – You can ask guests in lieu of gifts to invest one (or more) hours of their time volunteering in the community. You can ask them to share their hours, the charity/cause they supported, and a photo of them doing the work (donating blood, picking up trash, serving at a soup kitchen, etc.) and create an online wedding album of your friends and family making a difference.
If you want to step up your kindness game, consider a volunteer wedding. There’s nothing like starting out your journey together as a couple by standing shoulder-to-shoulder with your loved ones & making a positive difference in the world.
Tip Jar – Rather than bringing gifts for you, ask them to contribute to a surprise “tip” for the vendors serving at your wedding (some of whom may be working for minimum wage or less, or struggling in their small business!). You can set up a collection box and split the funds between the vendors – serving staff, musicians, caterer, photographer, wedding coordinator, etc., mailing it to them with your thank you note.
The Giving Table – (HCO can coordinate this for you!) Consider a needs drive for a local shelter, school supplies for teachers, pet food for an animal rescue, or other items that support a cause meaningful to you. Holiday wedding? How about a toy drive (for example, STEMGiftDrive.org)? You may even consider having a representative from that charity be in attendance at the gift table with a display about the charity so your guests can learn about why you chose that organizaiton.
Consider requesting that gifts, if wrapped, be covered using natural fabric Furoshiki or recyclable paper, forgoing ribbons, shiny cardboard (including cards), balloons, and other items & materials with a negative environmental impact.
While many couples have a single wedding ceremony followed by a reception, this isn’t working for everyone.
A trend in weddings is the extended celebration over multiple days. With guests coming in from all over, making the wedding itself a destination provides opportunities for family and friends to celebrate together in multiple ways. Or maybe you have friends & family with varying schedules & you’re making sure they can be included.
They help you craft the perfect ceremony, guiding you through stylistic choices and options that will make your wedding unforgettable. This may include weaving rituals into the ceremony and/or each event that are meaningful to you and creating ways that your friends and family (yes, even the dogs), can be integrated into the script.
From minimalist to lavish, how you decide to honor and celebrate the beginning of your journey as a married couple is a personal – and important – decision.
Everyone’s wedding is unique because every couple’s family and journey together is unique. Whether the couple & Celebrant meet at Starbucks to sign the marriage license or we craft a week-long integrated series of unforgettable wedding events for hundreds of guests, it should be exactly as you imagined.
Consult with your Celebrant for ideas and inspiration; we’ll provide the building blocks, experience, and ideas. Together, we’ll construct an amazing, perfect celebration just for YOU.
Contact Humanist Celebrant Orlando for your consultation today.
A beautiful destination wedding in Orlando!
A ceremony can be provided for a couple by their officiant (notary) or celebrant (Humanist or religious clergy). Some don’t even get to review it before their wedding day.
You have a choice – The words, rituals, and experience of your ceremony can be as unique as you are! Here are some suggestions for personalizing your ceremony and vows.
Personalizing your ceremony can be as simple as answering a few questions for your celebrant, reading some samples to select elements you like, or just including your own vows or statements of love. Or, you can have a fully personalized ceremony written by you, or written for you.
It’s important to ask your celebrant or officiant if you can review the ceremony and talk to them about personalization options.
Your ceremony should reflect your values and character.
By law, you must each declare that you are willingly entering into the legal arrangement of marriage. This must be witnessed by a qualified official (Humanist or religious clergy, notary, etc) and they must sign your marriage license. This doesn’t even have to be done during the ceremony, it can be done just before we sign the marriage certificate after the ceremony.
The order of things, rituals, and language have no legal requirements other than the declaration & signing. However, religious, cultural, or family traditions may have expectations and requirements that you may want to honor.
Talk to one another about what you want in a ceremony. What does this ceremony mean to you? Maybe the words are not important – the act and symbolism are. Or you may want a humorous ceremony that friends and family will talk about for years to come. Or you may want a serious, solemn, “deep and meaningful” ceremony. Some want a combination of all of that. Together, rate these styles in order of importance.
Any of these can be crafted to have a more traditional feel or to be the most unique ceremony your friends and family have ever experienced.
That is up to you. Your ceremony might be a few minutes, or it might be an hour. Consider your guests: do you have elderly guests? Will guests be standing outdoors in a garden? Are you trying to time your kiss for a specific moment (like sunrise, or a favorite time of day?
Couples may write their own ceremony or provide enough of the ceremony to the celebrant that it can be easily organized for you.
You can certainly hire someone, such as your celebrant or another professional writer, to write a personal ceremony for you. Many celebrants have sample ceremonies you can choose from and may even allow you to use and edit them at no charge. Others may charge by the type of ceremony for personalization. You can also ask a friend or family member to write your ceremony on their own or to work with your celebrant.
HCO’s method – Humanist Celebrant Orlando has five pre-written original Humanist ceremony templates you can use as-is or edit as you’d like. They range from minimal/brief to a complete guide for a fully personalized ceremony that you craft yourselves or with your celebrant. Some guidance and assistance are built into the wedding package, or we can fully write an original, unique ceremony just for you (see Price List page).
Many couples are breaking from religious tradition and using secular ceremonies either because they are not religious themselves or because they have guests of diverse religious, secular, and spiritual backgrounds, and want a ceremony that will be meaningful and respectful to everyone there.
Humanist Celebrant Orlando specializes in non-religious ceremonies that are inspiring, compassionate, and personalized to you, honoring your journey as a couple. A Humanist Celebrant is not ethically able to use religious language, although we can weave religious elements into your ceremony through guest-led readings or songs.
Traditional wedding ceremonies may use language & order that assume antiquated binary gender “man and woman” identity. Not a web we need to be caught in. Even if you choose a template or pre-written ceremony, the order of names and use of pronouns can be adjusted.
Names. Many couples ask me to flip their names (e.g., “we’re here today to celebrant Ayden and Peyton…” and the next instance would be “Peyton and Ayden”). Others use alphabetical order rather than gender-biased order.
Pronouns. The ceremony can be written without pronouns, or incorporating each spouse’s pronouns where appropriate. E.g., “Peyton, take Ayden’s hand in yours and place the ring on zir finger as you repeat after me…”.
As mentioned above, there are only two requirements: declaration and signing. In fact, at a “sign & go” or “marry now” wedding, that’s all we do!
Beyond that, you have a Tabula Rasa – a blank slate – that you can use to create the perfect ceremony. There is no specified order and anyone can lead any section of the ceremony, but you want things to flow well. Your celebrant can help with reviewing a ceremony you write and making helpful suggestions. Some options include:
There are many ways you can exchange vows, from the most basic declaration ( e.g., “Do you take ___ to be your lawfully wedded spouse?”) to elaborate performances.
The declaration can be woven into your personal vows, or done separately with your personal vows to follow. For example, after “I do’s” are spoken, the celebrant invites each to share their personal vows or statements of love.
What’s the difference between “Vows” and “Statements of Love”?
Not much; they’re used in the same way in the ceremony. A vow is a pledge or a promise. Things you will do for one another throughout your life: love and honor, respect, etc. A statement of love might be more about what you love about that person and what you want for your future together. It may be the story of your love for the other rather than a promise to do certain things (although the declaration of lawful marriage consent must be included before or within the vows or statement of love).
This can be recited or read by each of the spouses or can be prompted by the celebrant. Or projected on a screen. Or prompted by a member or members of the wedding party or guest(s) in the audience. Be creative – especially if this is the only part of the ceremony that is personalized.
Standard vow example: I (name) take you (name) to be my lawfully wedded spouse, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part.
Here are some suggestions to help with writing your own vows or statements of love:
You can write them on your own or share your notes with your celebrant or a friend who can help you organize them.
If you’re writing your own vows – especially if keeping them secret from one another until the ceremony – it is a good idea to select one (or more) trusted friend or family member to review both spouses’ drafts. Your celebrant can also help – but someone who knows you well is a great choice. If meaningful to you, you may want to ensure that they are each about the same length and the same style and tone (e.g. humorous, whistful, or serious).
The memory of this day is yours. You’ll look back on it. If your celebrant provides a keepsake ceremony, you might read it to each other on anniversaries, or use it to renew your vows many years from now. Even a simple ceremony that takes only minutes becomes an important moment in your journey together.
How do you want to remember this day?
It is definitely the season when many couples become engaged, but it is also a wonderful time of year for your wedding ceremony.
The weather is getting cooler for outdoor events, and many have postponed weddings for a long time due to Covid. With family and friends visiting for the holidays, this may be the perfect time to walk down the aisle together. Holiday specials on jewelry and other needed items provide opportunities to save money. And if it fits your theme, the decorations can be a snap!
You’ll have the added bonus of celebrating your anniversary along with holiday celebrations which can make them even more memorable, meaningful, and special. You might celebrate your union on the holiday/observance, or on a day close to it – holiday-adjacent.
Some ideas include …
Your unique journey as a couple and the significance of the date you’ve chosen can be honored by your officiant, who can weave the spirit or history of the special date into your personalized ceremony.
For those planning a small wedding, the logistics are minimal: acquire your marriage license, gather some family and friends if you’d like, and engage a Celebrant to solemnize your union.
Couple-only weddings can occur anywhere (a park, coffee shop, your home). Bringing guests will require a little more planning for the venue (and may have a cost), but if you have 10 or fewer people the planning is minimal.
Many have been waiting so long to solidify their union. A couple-only or small wedding as an elopement can be followed later with a larger wedding ceremony or reception when travel is safer and more accessible for family and friends living further away. Maybe on your first anniversary!
A volunteer wedding at this time of year might be nice – you can embark on your journey together in the season of giving by making a difference for others. From blood drives to food bank events to park clean-ups, we can set up an amazing and memorable event for you. For minimonies (10 guests or under), Humanist Celebrant Orlando will include the wedding planning and often the wedding venue is included also!
What if your wedding could be a fundraising gala in honor of a family member who couldn’t be there with you for your special day?
For later-in-life marriages where the couple has what they need, consider a gift registry for a holiday gift drive or donations to a charity.
Consider the STEM Gift Drive – STEMGiftDrive.org!
For those planning a big wedding, the holiday season may prove to be a little more of a challenge – higher travel costs for guests, some guests may already have other travel plans, and some vendors may be difficult to book for holiday dates.
Yet if this is a special time of year for you, everything is figureoutable. 🙂
Call 407-608-9242 or click “contact” in the menu.
Let’s talk about your perfect wedding day!
Find LGBTQ+ wedding resources, vendors, and more in Watermark’s 2021 Wedding Guide.
Link: https://watermarkonline.com/2021/11/04/watermarks-wedding-guide-2021/
Beautiful day for a garden elopement!
While sometimes used interchangeably, there are differences in how the term “officiant” and “celebrant” may be used and perceived.
First, when viewed as the same denotatively (e.g., someone qualified to perform an official ceremony), the term “Officiant” is more common in the United States, while “Celebrant” is more common in other parts of the world, However, Celebrancy in general and Humanist Celebrancy specifically are growing professions with specific qualifications, training, and endorsement. The term “Celebrant” is becoming more common & recognized in the US.
“Officiant” may be more commonly used in association with a Notary service. Officiants might be thought of as someone who shows up, conducts a ceremony from a script, signs any legal paperwork, and leaves. In my Notary business, i use the term “Officiant”. That efficient, no-hassle service is exactly what some are looking for.
Officiants usually only perform wedding ceremonies where a license must be signed and filed.
A Celebrant may be endorsed by a program or school dedicated to developing celebrants and providing certification and accreditation. They are equipped to provide meaningful, authentic ceremonies for the clients they serve.
Celebrants are qualified to provide consultations, composition, and officiation for a variety of important ceremonies, such as
Humanist Celebrants are trained and certified as celebrants. They can serve anyone of any perspective, but are of the Humanist tradition and will only use secular language.
Humanism is a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism and other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity.
From Humanism and Its Aspirations
Humanist Celebrants are further recognized as clergy in all states and many countries, being accorded the same rights and privileges granted by law to priests, ministers, and rabbis of traditional theistic religions. This recognition includes the right to solemnize weddings in the eyes of the state.
Humanist Celebrants provide a meaningful alternative to traditional religious weddings, memorial services, and other life cycle events. We are trained to help humanists through the most important times in life including birth, love, loss, morality, and mortality.
We can further provide Humanist consultations to families regarding Humanist issues, such as Humanist values discussions or blending Humanist (non-religious) values and language with religious traditions in a ceremony inclusive of diverse participants/audiences. We can provide education to individuals and audiences about Humanism.
Serving the community as Humanist Clergy, we can provide visits to Humanists in hospitals or hospice care, prisons, shelters, and other places where clergy often provide support, guidance, and comfort.
We meet with families to compose a ceremony that is meaningful, personal, and professional with a humanist approach.
Learn more about Humanist Celebrants at The Humanist Society.
Visit Humanist Celebrant Orlando.
Life doesn’t always follow a traditional path, does it? Your journey as an individual and as a couple is unique. Someone recently reached out with their personal story and wondered if an officiant could marry them without having to do the “whole ceremony thing”.
Here are the options that a celebrant/officiant can help you with.
This is the traditional version – at the wedding ceremony the legal declaration is part of the ceremony and the marriage license is signed by the officiant then filed with the county.
It doesn’t have to have a large ceremony – sometimes called a micro wedding or minimony, a small gathering of even a few family and friends is sometimes the intimate setting that is perfect for that couple.
Some couples choose not to have a legal marriage; just a personal one. It may be that they cannot legally marry where they are, or perhaps they choose not to be legally married. Or perhaps they want to wait to be legally married later, but want to have their commitment ceremony now.
A commitment ceremony is exactly the same as any other wedding ceremony. The ceremony can contain any of the traditional elements and rituals including vows and exchange of rings – the only parts not included are the legal declaration & signing of the marriage certificate.
Some couples choose to be legally married without the ceremony. Whether they are just with a couple of witnesses to sign paperwork or even a small gathering of a few family members & friends, this option is the most minimal, economical, intimate, and practical. Sometimes it is called the “sign & go” or “marry now” option.
Some go to a courthouse and have it done there, but i’ve been told that can be too impersonal – and that sometimes they “force” a “ceremony” or religious language that isn’t wanted. Others choose to have a notary or celebrant come to them. I’ve sat with a couple at their kitchen table and completed their paperwork, met them in a park, or at a coffee shop.
Some couples choose to separate the two. They might get the legal aspect “out of the way” before heading to a destination wedding. They may want to have the legal paperwork in place to purchase a house together or some other practical reason, but want to wait for the “big ceremony” until a later date. During Covid, some couples chose to marry legally then plan a ceremony with family and friends later when they could safely bring people together again.