Do your friends or family find you entertaining? Do they think you truly love and care about them and have special insight into their relationships? If so, prepare yourself, because they may ask you to marry them … to each other, I mean. Not to you, silly!
Marry me!
Online sites for ordination include: themonastery.org, getordained.org, amm.org, and spaghettimonster.org.
Estimates vary, but somewhere between 41 and 50 percent of marriages are performed by the couple’s friend or family member, who pay a small fee to become ordained online.
The OG of the ordination game is Modesto-based Universal Life Church (themonastery.org), but another Universal Life Church (getordained.org) split off and became its own organization when the OG got in hot water with the IRS. It’s since been resolved.
There’s also American Marriage Ministries (amm.org) or the entertainingly named Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (spaghettimonster.org).
“These credentials are suitable for presiding over social ceremonies such as weddings and baptisms, performing last rites, casting out false prophets, performing exorcisms, and so on,” the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster explains on its website.
Hm. That “false prophets” thing could come in handy these days.
Local singer-songwriter and commercial real estate agent Derek Senn performed his first and (so far) only wedding ceremony in 2025.
“I officiated my sister’s wedding on a boat in Lake George, New York, last summer. I am ordained as a card-carrying member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It’s like 60 bucks, and you get your little card. Suddenly I was off to officiate a wedding.”
Often couples have a lot of input into what they want in their service, but not Senn’s sister, Allison.
“She told me nothing,” he laughed. “She said, ‘Will you officiate the ceremony?’ And I said, ‘Yes,’ and I asked, ‘Are you gonna write vows?’ And she said, ‘No.’ She never asked me to say or do anything, so I felt I had carte blanche to do whatever the hell I wanted to do, but obviously, because she’s my sister and I knew her and Michael, I felt I was able to personalize it.”
Senn’s ceremony was witty, heartfelt, and a wee bit irreverent—exactly the kind of thing a clergyperson’s service wouldn’t be—and attendees loved it.
“There are always traditionalists at ceremonies like that and are probably a little bit put off and taken aback when you get a little bit cheeky with things,” Senn admitted. “But, you know, I wanted to put my own stamp on it.”
Senn and his wife, Melanie, a novelist, had recently attended another wedding that inspired his two goals for his service.
“My goals were to try to enunciate and speak up so everybody could hear what I was saying, and No. 2—try to make it very quick and lighthearted so we could get on because, you know, nobody’s there for the freaking ceremony. They want to move on to everything else.”
Credit: COURTESY PHOTO BY SOPHIE SEAY PHOTOGRAPHY
If you’re asked to officiate and you’re completely adrift, the newer version of Universal Life Church has an online wedding script generator.
“Are you officiating an upcoming wedding? Struggling to come up with the right words for the big day?” its website asked. “Don’t beat yourself up—creating a ceremony script from scratch is no easy task. That’s why we devised our very own wedding ceremony script generator for you to use! With this tool, crafting a professional, high-quality wedding script takes just minutes. Just input a few basic details, and we’ll take care of the rest!”
Oh AI, what can’t you do?
FYI, this probably isn’t what your couple is looking for.
Former SLO radio personality and current Ohio advertising creative director Fred Boettger got his start doing weddings in SLO in “2007 or 2008.” Must have been a helluva reception if you can’t remember what year.
“It was my youngest stepson, and I thought, ‘Ooh, my first one, a little pressure,’ because the whole family was there,” he recalled. “But it went well because I had done radio and had spoken in front of people a lot, so it wasn’t too scary.”
Boettger, ordained through Universal Life Church, has continued performing weddings over the years.
‘If you have some sort of personal connection, you can tell a story about the couple to everybody—because that’s really what the ceremony is.’
—Fred Boettger, former SLO radio personality
“San Luis was my very first one of many,” he noted. “I’ve had the fortunate privilege to perform a ceremony for both my nieces, my great niece, friends, people that I know well, family friends. The picture I sent you was some people that I’ve known for 20 years, and it was their kid, so I knew this kid since he was young.
“I think it’s a big advantage because if you have some sort of personal connection, you can tell a story about the couple to everybody—because that’s really what the ceremony is,” he continued. “Everyone’s there to witness some sort of personal connection. I always judge that, if there’s a little bit of laughing and a little bit of crying, then I feel like, ‘OK, things went well.’ If you can get some tears in there, it’s always nice.”
Credit: COURTESY PHOTO BY ANDREW CANNON AND ANDREW TUCKER
Oceano resident, 95.3FM The Beach radio DJ, and voice-over artist Jennifer Grant’s very first marriage ceremony was for her friends “the Andrews.”
“I call them ‘the Andrews’ because they’re both named Andrew,” she explained. “Andrew Cannon was my boss at another radio station, and he and his now husband, Andrew Tucker, ended up becoming my really good friends, so when they decided to get married—and it was finally legal to do so in the state of California—they messaged.”
Grant opened the message in the Vons parking lot in Grover Beach and screamed out loud she was so thrilled.
“I was super excited and happy for them,” she recalled. “I scared the crap out of the guy in the car next to me by screaming so loudly, and I’m not a screamer.”
She was also ordained by the Universal Life Church and married the Andrews in 2014, shortly after the passage of Proposition 8. They thankfully had a lot of ideas for their service, as did the couple of Grant’s second marriage ceremony, her father and stepmom, which she officiated at their home in front of 60 guests.
“I’m not a religious person, and neither was anybody involved,” Grant noted of both weddings.
Lack of religious affiliation can be another reason to go with a friend or family member as officiant.
“I was honored on both occasions to be asked,” she said. “I think it’s very sweet. If I ever get married … well, I got kicked out of Catholic school in the third grade, so thanks for playing. True. Wheaton, Illinois. But not being a super religious person, I still like the idea of there being some kind of ceremony and having somebody that you genuinely love and care about perform it. I think it’s kind of almost an extra blessing.” ∆
Contact Arts Editor Glen Starkey at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Weddings 2026.