My friend is officiating the ceremony and I’m worried they will go rouge. How do I set boundaries without offending them?
Q: My friend is officiating the ceremony and I'm worried they will go rouge. How do I set boundaries without offending them?
answers:
You. Okay, so your best friend is officiating for you and you’re worried they’re going to go rogue and throw your timeline off track and make the whole thing maybe all about them. I’m Nicole. I’m a wedding officiate and have been for 15 years. So let’s talk about this. The way that you can help your friends stay within the boundaries of what you want them to do is there’s two options, I think one is contact your local officiates. We often will give a coaching session to a friend who’s officiating for you so you can tell us what you want those boundaries to be. And then we can be the bad guy, per se, and give your friend a coaching lesson on how to perform the ceremony, what the expectations are and what that day should look like for them, what their role truly is, knowing that we’ve gotten that information from you. But also we do this for a living, so we can give them very valid and important information for the wedding day that’s going to help the both of you. That is what I would say. If you don’t want to hire an officiant to give that coaching session, then I would say write down what your expectations are for that person so that they have it in writing, because oftentimes it can be overwhelming when you’re officiating for a friend and you don’t really know what the expectations are. So just tell them, say, hey, our venue allows for a 30 minutes ceremony time. We’re really hoping for, like, 2025 minutes. So, please, when you’re writing the ceremony, keep that in mind. Second, we want to see the ceremony, so when you have that written or if you’re helping them write it, when we’ve got that final draft, we want to sit down and go over that final draft together so you know everything you’re saying, we know everything you’re saying. There’s no surprises and everybody’s very comfortable with the day. So that way that will hopefully set some boundaries, but just in a soft way for you guys. Good luck.
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