Officiant

An Officiant is legal who can sign the papers unless its a court wedding done and someone just saying the same service and no signatures are taking place. The cost of asking someone to get their license online is expensive. We had an Officiant present who took care of the license handed over after paying at the city hall. He had the book for witnesses to sign and the information to get before the ceremony.

An officiant would know the ins and outs of the paperwork, they'll have performed other weddings and likely have a few scripts or ceremony outlines already, and be more comfortable in front of a crowd. Those would be my only big pros of an officiant vs a friend or family member.

View quoted message Yeah! The only reason I was going to have the officiant there is because they take care of all the paperwork for you! Which I thought would be nice! They also would help whoever with writing the ceremony so they don't miss anything which I thought was super nice!

Just FYI I believe in Manitoba you can get a day license to officiate a wedding so you wouldn't need a formal officiant there to witness and make it legal.

I guess pros of a formal officiant are that this is literally their job and they will know what to do. You're less likely to have hiccups and you shouldn't have to think about the ceremony too much to make sure everything is going to plan. But cons are that it might feel less personal. At my sister's wedding her officiant actually pronounced her name wrong which was unfortunate.

With a family member or friend becoming a temporary officiant you run the risk of them missing something important or they might just get nervous and not do a good job. For example my brother and SIL got her brother to officiate and although he did a good job at performing the ceremony, he never told everyone to sit after they walked down the aisle. So unfortunately everyone stood awkwardly for the entire ceremony (thankfully it was short) and people past like row 3 couldn't see anything that happened. I'd like to think a formal officiant would catch that mistake early on and tactfully tell everyone to sit down.

We are having my aunt officiate our ceremony. Especially with everything going on in the world right now we thought it would be great to have it personalized! And our wedding vision has changed dramatically since our original wedding was planned for June 2020. But now we are having a much smaller intimate wedding in May and are really excited to have someone important do it for us.

My fiance and I decided on officiant. When we first spoke to our pastor, we had a great connection and we felt great with the conversation we had with him and not to mention that he's been doing this for years, instead of someone we know who has maybe only done it once or twice or not even at all. We don't have to worry about things getting messed up

We decided against having someone who know do it, because we wanted someone with experience to make sure things go smoothly. Someone who has never officiated a wedding may get nervous and mess up some things