Reverend Kent ruined our ceremony and was our only and BIG mistake of the day.
Background:
We were looking for a non-religious officiant for our wedding. We chose to choose a pr...ofessional officiant because 1) we both know multiple officiants and didn’t want to chose between loved ones/didn’t want to break it to them that we didn’t want it to be religious, 2) we wanted a ceremony and can’t really do that when self-uniting 3) we didn’t have a mutual friend we loved/who met us both around the same time to officiate.
When we first met Reverend Kent, we thought he was very nice and was easy to talk to. We were VERY clear from the first meeting we wanted a non-religious ceremony with no mention of God or Jesus - all of which he was was okay with doing and said he’s performed non-religious ceremonies before. So we booked him. We actually preferred someone else but we respected that they said they wanted to still insert God and Jesus into their non-religious ceremonies during the blessing so we passed on them to go with Revered Kent.
Red flag number 1: during our final chat with Rev. Kent we said we wanted traditional vows during our ceremony ex. “in sickness and in health…”, “for richer and for poorer…” , etc. and his immediate response was “well send me your personal vows and I’ll make sure they match in tone and length, and then send it back to each of you privately tweaks”. For 1) we literally just asked for very straightford vows and told him why and he ignored that. Also, he didn’t give us any feedback on when we ultimately did do what he suggested, thus not fulfilling his promise.
Red flag two: not finding us before the ceremony to discuss the ceremony since he wasn’t at the rehearsal. Now when we first interviewed him, he himself rest assured us that he really didn’t need to be at the rehearsal because he’s done a million of them and felt like he didn’t need to be there. Had I known he was going to get all religious at our ceremony when we asked for non-religious.. I would’ve definitely had him come. He was no where to be found before the ceremony. Didn’t bother to come into the bridal suite to check in and review game plan before.
Third red flag: We were VERY Clear we wanted a nonreligious ceremony in the initial talks. And since we brought it up so many times, we didn’t think it needed to be brought up again in the final chat. And yet during the ceremony Reverend Kent made this whole big religious prayer and I’m looking at him the whole time like “Stop, what are you doing?! Please stop”. I almost put my hand on my now husbands mic and ask him in front of everyone “what are you doing we said no religious prayer”. We would’ve been fine with “please bless this beautiful day”, but not “our father, god, who let Jesus bless us..” literally what we discussed NOT TO DO and he didn’t pay attention... So you can see it in my face the whole video of our ceremony like “what are you doing?!” And visibly upset.
Fourth red flag: I asked him to announce us as “Mr. And Mrs. (X) and (Y) (last name)” so that both our families could here my first name paired with my now husbands last name for the first time… and he didn’t announce us as that. Just “husband and wife” because he forgot our names.
Fifth red flag: “who gives this bride away” - I asked him to change it during the ceremony to a non-misogynistic verbiage which I will give him credit he did do during the ceremony. But he gave me a problem about it during our final talk.