MarriageChaplain.com

Secular, gorgeous, personalized ceremony. If you want that - then track down Frieda Hughes through Marriage Chaplain. They are awesome people to work with - they accomodate all kinds of religious backgrounds and they're super flexible!

How often can you find a personable, caring and outgoing officiant who is willing to Skype with you in Germany with a six hour time difference? We were fortunate to have been directed to marriagechaplain.com since we live in Germany, but were getting married at a country club in Ohio with no church affiliation. If you look at the website, you'll find quite a number of well-qualified ministers who can perform one of their services (samples online) or one you customize yourself. After an initial conversation, we matched up with Pastor Eastman whose joyful style of service and presentation skills matched up well with ours. This man was incredibly patient as "micromanager perfectionist me" wrote my own ceremony and went through several iterations with his help and my fiance's commentary. You would have thought I was scripting a Hollywood blockbuster, but he remained calm, patient and gave lots of helpful suggestions throughout. I hesitate to think how often and how long he was on Skype with us! On our wedding day, he came through with flying colors for us and we are very glad we sought him out.

My now husband and I had a hard time finding an officiant that was 1.) Reasonably priced and 2.) Willing to perform a non-religious ceremony. We learned of MarriageChaplain.com through another officiant we interviewed (who was wonderful but charged much more than we were willing to pay). I completed a form on the website and received a very quick response from Pastor Brian Eastman. We had a phone meeting later that week so that he could get a feel for our personalities and what we were looking for in an officiant. He matched us with Rev. Karen Heaster and we met with her in person during one of our planning trips to the area (we planned our wedding from another state).

Rev. Heaster is great. She's incredibly laid back and was very receptive to our ideas about the ceremony. We wanted to keep it short and sweet (30 minutes) and she did just that. The end result was a very touching, personalized ceremony that our guests seemed to enjoy. Overall, I would definitely recommend going through MarriageChaplain.com if you need help finding an officiant. They are VERY reasonably priced and have officiants from all different backgrounds/belief systems.