Advice from Chicago Wedding Pros #5

Rev. Tom Perrucci – How to Hire an Officiant 

The wedding ceremony sets the entire tone of the wedding. A well-conducted ceremony gets the wedding off an optimistic start, just as a poorly performed wedding can ruin your entire day. Of all the details involved in planning a wedding choosing your wedding officiant is the most important. Unfortunately, choosing a wedding officiant is nowhere near as exciting as shopping for wedding dresses or picking the wedding flowers!

The overall feel and style of your wedding will help determine the personality and style of the wedding officiant. A dignified, conservative wedding officiant would be better suited performing a formal, large-scale wedding, while a wedding officiant that is lighthearted and relaxed would be more at home in a casual setting. That is not to say you can’t have a serious wedding officiant at a smaller, intimate wedding or a jovial officiant at a traditional wedding. Your personality and that of the wedding officiant should complement one another. You’ll be spending a lot of time planning the ceremony with your wedding officiant, so make sure it’s someone you enjoy working with.

The single most important aspect when choosing your wedding officiant is trust. Is this someone you can trust to perform your wedding ceremony proficiently? For all intensive purposes you’re entrusting your wedding ceremony to a stranger. And most important of all – trust you instincts. You’ll know when it feels “right”.

Given the amount of time that goes into planning the wedding ceremony the actual ceremony takes less than half hour or so to complete. Despite the wedding ceremony’s significance, the officant’s fee can be surprisingly affordable. On average an officiant’s fee in the Chicagoland area ranges from $400 to $1200. The actual amount will vary depending on location, time of year, city or suburb. As always, expect to pay more for experienced and well-regarded officiants. The more in demand the officiant, the busier their schedule – either book your ceremony early or be willing to comply with their schedule.

Hiring the best officiant is well worth the extra cost and effort; an exceptional officiant is the key to a successful and memorable wedding ceremony.

To learn more about Fourth Estate Audio’s incomparable Chicago wedding DJ service, call me at 630.654.4440. I’m here to help.

© Fourth Estate Audio, 2014 – Jay Congdon is president of Fourth Estate Audio, a professional Chicago DJ and Chicago Wedding DJ company.

comments powered by Disqus