Send to Friend  Bookmark  Print

Seven Questions To Consider Before Meeting With Your Interfaith Wedding Officiant

Return to the Guide to Wedding Ceremonies for Interfaith Couples.

 

You're about to meet with a rabbi or cantor or other clergy person to prepare for your wedding. How can you be ready to create a ceremony that is the best spiritual and religious fit? Our seven questions have no right or wrong answers — every couple who has written about their interfaith wedding for our site has answered them a little differently. We offer them to you as a way to ensure that your first meeting with clergy is a part of a positive interfaith wedding experience.

What about your religious and spiritual life has brought you to request clergy participation at your wedding celebration?

  1. How comfortable do you feel with religious institutions, ritual, prayer, and language about God?
  2. What do you want to accomplish by having Jewish clergy officiate at your wedding ceremony?
  3. What are some of the challenges you anticipate in preparing your ceremony with the inclusion of clergy?
  4. What are your hopes and concerns in creating a family? It would be best to discuss these together before you meet with clergy.
  5. What questions would you like your clergy to help you with as you prepare for your wedding celebration?
  6. Do you have any hard and fast "dos and don'ts" you want to communicate to your clergy person?
  7. Where do those requirements come from, and are some of them more important to you than others?
A member of the Jewish clergy who leads a congregation in songful prayer. ("Hazzan" in Hebrew.) Hebrew for "my master," the term refers to a spiritual leader and teacher of Torah. Often, but not always, a rabbi is the leader of a synagogue congregation.
Rabbi Lev Baesh

Rabbi Lev Baesh is the Director of The Resource Center for Jewish Clergy of InterfaithFamily.

Send to Friend  Bookmark  Print