Who Should Officiate Your Wedding? Pastor, Friend, or Pro Officiant — The Ceremony Choice Brides Regret
episode
Wedding Planning Experts | Wedding Planning Tips, Budget, Vendors & Advice for Brides
42 min
3 speakers
4 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
You have your ceremony location selected, but you don't have an officiant, and you don't know what to ask. Maybe you don't want someone that's just been ordained on the almighty Google. Let's talk to Tom Hamill with My West Michigan Wedding. Welcome to the Wedding Planning Experts podcast, hosted by Dan and Andrea DeWard, owners of Full Circle Weddings. After 25 years in the wedding industry, owning and operating multiple wedding venues, hosting hundreds of ceremonies and receptions, we provide tips to help brides and grooms plan their wedding stress-free and on budget. So let's dive in and talk about all things weddings. So Tom, welcome to the Wedding Planning Experts Podcast. We are happy to have you here.
I've known you for a number of years. I met you about 12 or 13 years ago when one of our DJs got married and you were the officiator. And when I was there and a lot of our staff was there helping our DJ, but I had a chance to see you in action. You did such a great job. You immediately went on our referral list for all of our clients at our venues and everything. So welcome to the podcast.
Great to be here. It's hard to believe it's been that long.
I know it has gone fast.
It's been a great relationship.
It has. Yeah. You worked a number of weddings in our venues and they were always flawless. They always ran nice and smooth. The clients were happy. Our staff was happy. The guests were happy. So it's great relationship and we're thankful to have it. Great. Thanks so much.
Appreciate it. Absolutely. Yeah. So can you tell us how long you've been officiating and how'd you get started?
Well, I've been solely inefficient for 20 years. This is my 20th year. Prior to that, I was in full-time church work. So consequently, there's, as you would expect, there's things like weddings, funerals, baptisms, all those types of things that I was responsible for to a degree. After I retired, after about 25 years, My wife and I operated a bed and breakfast for about nine years, and I started just doing wedding ceremonies at that time. So it's been about 20 years. At the bed and breakfast? Well, it wasn't expected. That wasn't what our intention was, but we were along the shores of Lake Michigan, and people we noticed started immediately calling us to ask if we could host a wedding. Well, those were considered destination weddings.
People coming there were from out of state, even out of country sometimes. And my wife was able to provide all the other things you would expect, the meals and the decoration and things like that. But she just pointed to me and said, you're going to do the ceremony. And so like a good husband, I said, sure. All right. And so that started and I didn't have any intention really. of a launching from that and turning into what it has turned into. But over the 20 years that I've been involved in this solely doing weddings, occasionally a baptism and a funeral. But that's not my focus. It's grown from that first one to roughly Well, I've done over 3,500 weddings in the last 20 years.
Okay, yeah, that's a lot.
It is a lot.
Yeah, that's a lot. So typically, how soon are your clients reaching out to you prior to their event?
Well, it varies. I'm booking well into late 2027 right now. Obviously, 2026 is the peak in that graph. But I have people that will call me and say, hey, can you perform a wedding for us next week? And that can be for a variety of reasons, either the efficient that they had hoped to do it and oftentimes this is a relative or somebody that at the last minute just kind of gets cold feet and you know it is honest enough to tell the couple yeah I don't know if I'm up to this and so like I get a quick call and so I'll get things like that or there can also be some other constraints like maybe medical or mortgage issues and things like that where people need some license signing assistance or a small a home ceremony.
I did two home ceremonies last week for, for couples. So it can go from, you know, just a couple of days advanced notice to, you know, at least a year, sometimes two years.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–5:15
2
How did Tom Hamel start officiating and build MyWestMichiganWedding?
5:15–14:06
3
When do couples typically book an officiant and do you travel for destination weddings?
14:06–38:58
4
How does ceremony length and format affect guest experience?
38:58–42:40
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from Wedding Planning Experts | Wedding Planning Tips, Budget, Vendors & Advice for Brides
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