Let’s be really honest – all you really need to get married is two people in love, a marriage license, a couple of witnesses, and a marriage commissioner*. Everything else is really all extra.
In this blog, we are going to focus on how to find a marriage commissioner, what to look for, and some of our favourite marriage commissioners in Calgary. Note that this blog is tailored to
Who can perform weddings in Alberta?
For Alberta weddings, you have a couple of options for who can marry you.
The first option is using a marriage commissioner or registered religious clergy. You can search for marriage commissioners using the Government of Alberta website to find commissioners near your wedding location. For religious clergy, a public list is not available as there are over 10,000 registered in the province – discuss with your religious organization to see who is licensed. The second option is to have a close family member or friend become a temporary marriage commissioner.
How to pick your marriage commissioner?
The first decision is whether you want to go with a family member or friend or with a provincially-appointed marriage commissioner. If you want to do the family member or friend, we suggest picking someone responsible, has public speaking ability, and pays close attention to the details. You will have to be much more involved going this route. When we plan weddings with family and friends officiating, we have a document that we send them to make sure that they have built their ceremonies correctly and know of the nuances during the ceremony.
A much easier alternative that isn’t any less personal would be to go with an appointed marriage commissioner. Many of these people are incredible at getting to know you and reflecting that in your ceremony and can craft your ceremony to be exactly what you want (while hitting all of the legal stuff). You also benefit from their experience performing hundreds of ceremonies and their ability to public speak and direct your ceremony with ease.
No matter which way you go, we always suggest that you pick someone who you have a connection with. This is one of the most important and personal roles during your wedding and the selection of this person will go a long way. It will make the process easier and you will receive the ceremony that you want.
Once you have met and selected a marriage commissioner, it is important to set your ceremony time AND not change it without approval from your marriage commissioner. Because many commissioners will perform more than one wedding ceremony especially during the peak season, it is important to let them know of any changes to your plans and whether they can accommodate those changes and what it means to the rest of your wedding day.
Who do we love to work with?
We know that it can be difficult to narrow down the selection of marriage commissioners in Calgary because there are quite a few that are appointed in this area and many of them also go to Canmore and Banff to perform ceremonies. Here are some of our favourite Calgary marriage commissioners to work with:
We breathe a sigh of relief when we know that Sharon is on the team for a wedding. For our clients, she provides in-depth knowledge of the ceremony building process and expertly guides them through that process with a small workshop. She infuses her ceremonies with meaningful, heartfelt moments that are balanced with humour and great storytelling. From our perspective as wedding planners, we love that she provides us with the verbal cues for music and processional that we need to produce a seamless ceremony.
Cole has a natural ability to integrate levity and profound emotion in a single ceremony. One minute the guests are smiling and laughing and the next tears are sitting at the corner of their eyes. He also has an extensive questionnaire that allows him to connect with our clients and create memorable ceremonies. From our wedding planner perspective, Cole comes in for the ceremony knowing exactly what he needs to check in on, makes sure to connect for cues, and then is ready to go.
Brad Brownell at Enduring Promises
Brad can perform both faith and non-faith ceremonies and can customize your ceremony depending on how much of your faith you wish to integrate. If you don’t have a wedding planner, we highly recommend hiring Brad to also guide you through your rehearsal. His rehearsals are well run and goes over all of the details, which makes for an easy, breezy wedding day. We love having Brad on-site because he has this wonderful ability to direct people with the smallest hand movement and is reassuring to our couples.
Tamara is fantastic at connecting with couples, getting to know them, and integrating this into her ceremonies. Her ceremonies do a great job of storytelling that connects her to the couple and to the guests. She is so calm on the wedding day that she even brings down our stress levels as wedding planners because we know exactly what is going to happen.
Jane is knowledgeable about the whole ceremony process which makes it is so easy to work with her to make sure all of your bases are covered. Plus, she tailors your ceremony to exactly what you want and need, and includes the rehearsal in her base fee. When Jane is at one of our weddings, we know that everything is going to run smoothly and that we don’t need to worry about much.
*To keep things streamlined in this blog, we refer to both provincially-appointed marriage commissioners and religious clergy as marriage commissioners.
If you're into beautiful weddings, behind-the-scenes, and you'd like to get married in Calgary or the Rockies, you've come to the right place.
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