“What is an officiant?”
For many couples, the officiant is another box to check on a wedding to-do list, right alongside the planner, photographer, florist, caterer, and DJ. Someone has to sign the license and say a few words to get you from “single” to “married.”
But an officiant is more than that. Regardless of who they are or what tradition they come from, an officiant stands with you at one of life’s most sacred thresholds—a role with roots stretching back across centuries and cultures.
Long before the wedding “industry” became the $79-billion-a-year colossus it is today, people gathered to bless unions in the presence of their communities. In ancient times, tribal elders or shamans marked marriages with stories and prayers, linking the couple not only to each other but to their ancestors and their land. In Greece and Rome, priests and magistrates presided, blending civic duty with ritual. By the Middle Ages, the Christian church had claimed marriage as a sacrament, placing priests at the center of the rite.
In modern times, as the church’s authority waned, judges and secular celebrants stepped in, reflecting a more varied society. A welcome result of this change has been the recognition of same-sex and interracial marriages. Yet through it all, the hunger to stand before a community and vow love, fidelity, and trust has never diminished.
Across cultures, marriage has always been about more than paperwork. It requires a witness, a guide, and a voice. And to be truly satisfying, it leaves a lingering sense that someone has entered the journey with the couple—a presence that remains even after the ceremony ends.
For generations, pastors filled this role. In small towns and churches, they knew the couple, told their story, and rooted the vows in a shared tradition. Often they stayed for decades, marrying couples, baptizing children, and eventually burying parents. In the Iowa town where I grew up, that continuity was woven into the fabric of community life.
In Wedding Country, I cannot replicate the intimacy of a lifelong pastor. But by sharing the intimacy of a wedding, I enter into a couple’s life as a caring presence—one I hope will spiritually endure beyond the few moments of the service itself.
An officiant’s words become part of a couple’s inner landscape. They can be revisited like water in a dry time, a blessing that lingers.
As a high school student in Iowa, I once worked as a cement mason, helping a bricklayer build a new school addition. He told me with pride how he could point to a wall and say to his children, “I helped lay those bricks. Part of that wall is my creation.” A wedding ceremony is a little like that. I only lay a few bricks in what will hopefully become the foundation for a beautiful life together.
A wedding is not a performance or a transaction. At its core, marriage is a threshold. For twenty minutes or so, time slows, the world hushes, and the vows are spoken. Words and gestures become memory; memory becomes sustenance. In my own marriage, my wife and I have often recalled the phrase we chose: to “be happy more often than not.” That simple line has guided us through trouble and travail more times than I can count.
So, what is an officiant? Not just someone who signs forms or cues the kiss. An officiant is a companion at the threshold, a witness to the sacredness of the moment, and a voice that lights a flame for you to carry into your shared life.
In Wedding Country, I believe that flame still burns years later—whenever you recall your vows, the blessing spoken over you, and the sense that your marriage was not only recognized, but rooted in something enduring.