Wedding Officiate?

Hi, I just got on here but I have just recently been looking up exactly these issues. In Virginia specifically... Civil Marriage Celebrants can not charge more than $50 for a ceremony and are allowed to charge an amount for travel which is dictated by the Code.

However, many couples do tip on top of the fee you can charge. Usually if it is civil the couple will tip directly to the officiant but often in religious ceremonies they will make a larger donation to the church. Hope this helps.

 

Here in Fl the rules are not the same. Most NP's charge 100.00 and wedding ministers at least double that. We are offering packages and the first wedding I booked was for 650.00 (1 pagan ceremony + wedding sound and 2 hrs karaoke extra hrs will be 100.00 per hour) as my friend says after the first few the price will go up. She does packages with no sound (wedding, chairs,altar and photos and leads on flowers,catering ect) starting at 1400.00 up to 2500.00 and books 6-8 a year with her website:biggrinpill:

 

June, welcome, and thanks for the info! I freakin' LOVE the avatar! :winkpill:

 

Thank you much. One of my buds found it for me and as I am the biggest Trek person he knows he donated it to my cause. Ha ha.
The whole concept of officiating a ceremony is cool, but I have seen some pretty poorly done weddings as of late. I wouldn't want to have to be responsible for doing the ceremony and DJing as well. I have a hard enough time getting the couples to give me the song lists far enough in advance let alone what wording they would want for the ceremony. I could see having it as an option for people who are looking for it would make sense though. I guess if I was doing the ceremony and a co worker was doing the music it could work as a nice add on. Plus you would have someone there to load/unload equipment. And the extra money wouldn't hurt. In Virginia at least $50 is not too bad.

 

June that is what I like about the wedding ministers group/church we were ordained in...it has every possible type of wedding tradition listed on the website and the brides and grooms pick and choose exactly how they want the ceremony to go. We have not had any problems getting song lists from the wedding partys but that may be because we do VERY little DJ work and mainly karaoke. Thank you for your info as well:biggrinpill: