June 18, 2025 • 14 mins
Send me a message or any questions!
Amanda shares a unique wedding scenario where she conducted a non-legal commitment ceremony for a couple who were still married to other people. Let's explore the ethics and practicalities of commitment ceremonies versus legal marriages, unpacking various reasons couples might choose this path.
• Couples requested a budget ceremony on the opposite side of Pennsylvania
• They revealed they wanted a non-legal commitment ceremony via Zoom
• Both individuals were still legally married to other people but in the divorce process
• Amanda carefully explained the non-binding nature of the ceremony
• Commitment ceremonies serve many purposes beyond cases like these
• Financial considerations often drive decisions about legal marriage
• Immigration status can prevent couples from legally marrying
• Amanda conducted the ceremony via Zoom as they stood by a lake with candles
• The podcast theme "We listen and we don't judge" guided the approach
If you have a question you'd like me to answer on the podcast, email theweddingwherepodcast@gmail.com. For officiating services inquiries, reach me at officiatingbyamanda@gmail.com.
Thank you for sharing the podcast with others who may enjoy it! Share your funny wedding stories with me at theweddingwherepodcast@gmail.com. Any links referenced are on linktree.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Amanda (00:04):
Welcome to the Wedding Where, with officiating by
Amanda.
the Wedding Where.
.
..
They were still married toother people.
Hi, everybody, welcome back tothe wedding where you know now
(00:33):
in a theme of the podcast wherewe listen and we don't judge.
So the last two episodes I didbefore we Verlyn on on, were all
centered around this theme of"we listen and we don't judge,
like when the groom has a blackeye or when the mother of the
bride is drunk.
Just looking into some of themore unconventional,
(00:56):
eyebrow-raising, plainsurprising weddings that I've
been a part of and really havehad to remind myself we listen
and we don't judge.
We were hired to sign theirpaperwork or officiate their
ceremony and not cast anyjudgment.
So this one it's definitely afunny one.
(01:19):
You'll find I do it with a lotof them.
I you'll find I do it with alot of them.
Some things seems just a littlehinky or a little off from the
booking process and I call mymom Always happens, and this one
they were still married toother people.
So many questions were had bymy mother and I, but we kept
(01:45):
them between ourselves and wegot it all taken care of.
So let me tell you a little bitmore about what happened.
The couple reached out andasked if I would be willing to
officiate a ceremony on theother side of Pennsylvania in
December.
I'm like, hmm, that's a lot.
I mean, I would gladly do itfor the right price, but the
(02:09):
logistics running around, thetravel, the time making it work
for my schedule I was, you know,really trying to crunch the
numbers.
They said that they reallywanted like under $200.
I'm like, oof, oof, that's notgoing to be possible.
We talked a little about maybeZoom as an option and then they
drop in.
The little caveat that reallykind of changed all things and
(02:33):
made me not run out there to dothis wedding is that it wasn't
going to be a legal marriage.
They just wanted to have acommitment ceremony and they
wanted it as quick as possibleand they didn't mind if I did it
over Zoom or called them.
Just say the pretty words andhelp us celebrate our love
(02:53):
together.
Having just a commitmentceremony is not at all unusual.
It's not as seen as often as itwas before same-sex marriage
was legalized, but it stilldefinitely happens.
I've done a few that have justbeen commitments.
They did not apply for alicense, they don't plan to
(03:13):
apply for a license.
They have no paperwork for meto sign and there's a lot of
different reasons for that.
Sometimes there's stillfinancial benefits coming in
from a previous marriage, likealimony, that there's a clause,
you know, if the spouse gotremarried they would have to
give up the alimony separately.
(03:46):
There's different paperworkthere.
Maybe if one person has oh, Idon't know a small officiating
business and they want to keepthe taxes a little separate out
from their spouse just forprotection levels, there's
student loan debt, medical debt,a whole bunch of things in the
debt category that you don'twant to sign your spouse up for.
And if you're not legallymarried you don't want to sign
(04:06):
your spouse up for.
And if you're not legallymarried especially in
Pennsylvania, which does notrecognize common law marriage,
which is just like cohabitationfor a period of time used to
equal a common law marriage andequal division of property and
assets yeah, pennsylvaniadoesn't recognize that anymore
and hasn't for many, many yearsSimilar things with debts.
You can live together 25 years,30 years, you can share a house
(04:28):
, you could buy your carstogether, raise your kids
together.
If you're not legally married,there's not a lot that can be
done from a debt or collectionside of things.
Sometimes commitment ceremonieshappen for individuals who are
immigrants and they are not ableto get a marriage license.
(04:53):
Maybe the visa hasn't processed, green card hasn't, whole bunch
of lots and lots of paperwork,and they just want to again
still celebrate that they loveeach other and that intention is
there, that they would marry ifthey could.
But now is not the time, theopportunity isn't there, and I
know for a lot of women there'sconversations about name changes
(05:16):
and if you already have anadvanced degree or medical
license, cool, I'm not changingmy name and I still want all my
college debt under me and I ownmy stuff.
I don't need anything from him,he doesn't need anything from
me.
Why get legally married?
Let's just say that we loveeach other and do it publicly,
(05:38):
in front of people, and perhapsdo unities that are again not
legal.
Hand fasting was the olden daysversion of marriage and now it
doesn't legally count for athing.
But for couples who want to docommitment ceremonies, that
could be really, really cool.
I understand Legal marriagesometimes isn't what a couple
(05:59):
wants and you can have weddingswithout having marriages and you
can have marriages withouthaving big to-do.
Typical weddings like elop, likeoh yes, it was our wedding day,
but you get a marriage at theend or vice versa.
(06:33):
You can have a very large party, invite everybody, a cake, the
dances, the hoopla, that's awedding.
But, as we talked about in aprevious episode, if you didn't
get your license or you forgotto bring your license or you are
too drunk to consent to sayingI do and I do not sign the
license, you can't say you havea marriage, so a couple.
Things kind of all go into playAfter adjusting a little bit of
(06:56):
like.
Okay, so you don't need me tocome all the way out six hours
to the other side of the state.
You just want a commitmentceremony, you just want to have
a little celebration.
You want me to print you off alittle document from Staples
that is not legally binding inany sense.
It's like a participationcertificate.
(07:17):
Essentially.
That I can do.
And they didn't initially tellme why they didn't want it to be
legal, or rightly so, why itcouldn't be legal.
And then they clued me in.
They are both already married,not to each other.
(07:40):
We listen and we don't judgeother.
We listen and we don't judge so.
And I've just binge-watched alot of Sister Wives, so knowing
that bigamy is illegal in theUnited States, meaning you
cannot be married to more thanone person at a time and
(08:03):
polygamy as well.
If you have legal marriages,you can't have that.
That is no bueno.
This is not at all what thecouple was aiming to do.
They're in the process ofgetting their respective
divorces, but they didn't wantto wait for the courts to kind
(08:27):
of pick a day and say this dayis important to us and maybe
they could have celebrated theday in a different way than hey,
we want to get ceremoniallymarried and you know, won't you
help us with the wedding?
And you know, won't you help uswith the wedding?
(08:48):
You know, call it yourengagement date, call it
something really special.
But, alas, that is what theywanted to do, and so I really
kept reiterating at nowunderstanding, okay, they are
married to other people, this isnot just oh, you know, maybe
they'll get married later on atsome point.
Like, no, they legally couldnot even get a license because
(09:10):
their licenses are already validwith other people.
So I had to keep reallyreiterating more.
So, for my side of things, justto cover my back, make sure all
was good is I can't legallymarry you.
However, I can do a symboliccommitment ceremony.
(09:32):
There's no legality, there'snothing behind it.
You can't use anything I say orany certificate of
participation I provide to youas grounds for a legal name
change or, you know, potentiallyadding one another on insurance
, because your spouse is alreadyperhaps on your insurance.
(09:56):
There's a lot of murky, murky,gray water here and all states
are different, how places aredifferent, so each is best
researched independently and ontheir own of what would be
allowed.
Nothing would be bindingoutside of your words.
If your words have theintention and meaning that you
(10:18):
want them to and you both putgood faith into your words, as
you always should, then, yes, Iwill gladly do a commitment
ceremony with your own vows andyou can mean it in your own way
and celebrate the day as you seefit, that this is what mattered
to you and that is exactly whatwe did.
(10:39):
In the middle of the night, Izoomed to them as they stood in
the cold in December by a lakeand candles lit all around them.
I could barely see them in itand they said some great words
(10:59):
and I said some great words andI mailed them out a certificate.
And that's the life thatthey're living.
We listen and we don't judge andwe don't know everybody's story
.
Maybe their marriages were longover emotionally.
Maybe things are held up forreasons that we don't know or
(11:25):
can't understand.
Maybe they just wanted to beable to start, you know, a new
year with some love and supportand celebration, some brightness
of saying hey, no matter what'scoming our way, we just
committed ourselves to eachother and we're going to do this
, we're going to get throughthis year.
They just don't have themarriage license to make it all
(11:45):
legal yet.
Suffice it to say, I'll bereally intrigued and excited if,
in you know, six months, a year, a few years from now, I get
contacted by them again and getasked to make it legal, legal.
You know, we have the paper, weare ready to go.
Obviously can't backdate it oranything, but I don't know.
(12:09):
There's a lot of ways we canmake that really, really cute
and have some good tie-ins tothe first time.
If they wanted to.
What would you do in thissituation?
Or rather, if you've got yourfriend, your friend is married.
You know, imagine whateversituation you want between them
and their spouse and they aretalking to you on a Monday
(12:30):
morning and they're like oh yeah, I got married over the weekend
.
What would you think?
What would you say to them?
Would you instantly be likepicking up the phone, calling
the cops and being like I thinkmy friend just married another
guy while they're alreadymarried?
Would you clarify, like wait,how does one do that?
How do you marry two people?
Would you really dig in orwould you just, oh, sounds cool,
(12:53):
man, sounds, sounds cool.
I think it's really importantthat we just we always pause.
There's always something moreto a story, there's a reason,
there's a method to a madness.
I don't always need to agreewith it, I don't always need to
only know it or understand it,as long as, at the end of the
day, in my world, x plus Yequals Z, or one marriage
(13:18):
license is provided, one plustwo equals three.
One marriage license plus twowilling participants equals a
wedding Well, a marriage,because we talked about that.
So I'm kind of really lovingthis we listen and we don't
judge aspect.
I did think of another few, sowe're gonna have to dive into
(13:43):
those in the coming weeks, andsome of them actually inspired
me for my own wedding plans.
I know, I know I thought I hadit all set and then I went to
one wedding and went oh, I don'tlike that, no, thank you.
So thank you so much forlistening and I will catch you
guys next week.
(14:04):
Thank you for listening to thewedding wear with officiating by
Amanda.
I hope you enjoyed today'sepisode and found some
inspiration or insight for yourown special day.
This podcast is hosted onbuzzsprout and can be found on
all major platforms.
If you haven't already, pleasesubscribe, like, comment and
share to help us reach even morelisteners who might laugh a
(14:25):
little at the wedding wear.
For the links referenced in theshow, visit Linktree at
Officiating by Amanda.
You can also follow thebusiness on Facebook,
weddingwire and the Knot to stayup to date on everything going
on.
If you have a question you'dlike me to answer on the podcast
, just send an email totheweddingwherepodcast@ gmail.
com, and if you're ready toinquire about officiating
(14:47):
services for your own big day,you can reach me at
officiatingbyamanda@ gmail.
com.
Thank you so much for tuning inand until next time.
This has been Amanda.
Welcome to the Wedding Where, with officiating by
Amanda.
the Wedding Where.
.
..
They were still married toother people.
Hi, everybody, welcome back tothe wedding where you know now
(00:33):
in a theme of the podcast wherewe listen and we don't judge.
So the last two episodes I didbefore we Verlyn on on, were all
centered around this theme of"we listen and we don't judge,
like when the groom has a blackeye or when the mother of the
bride is drunk.
Just looking into some of themore unconventional,
(00:56):
eyebrow-raising, plainsurprising weddings that I've
been a part of and really havehad to remind myself we listen
and we don't judge.
We were hired to sign theirpaperwork or officiate their
ceremony and not cast anyjudgment.
So this one it's definitely afunny one.
(01:19):
You'll find I do it with a lotof them.
I you'll find I do it with alot of them.
Some things seems just a littlehinky or a little off from the
booking process and I call mymom Always happens, and this one
they were still married toother people.
So many questions were had bymy mother and I, but we kept
(01:45):
them between ourselves and wegot it all taken care of.
So let me tell you a little bitmore about what happened.
The couple reached out andasked if I would be willing to
officiate a ceremony on theother side of Pennsylvania in
December.
I'm like, hmm, that's a lot.
I mean, I would gladly do itfor the right price, but the
(02:09):
logistics running around, thetravel, the time making it work
for my schedule I was, you know,really trying to crunch the
numbers.
They said that they reallywanted like under $200.
I'm like, oof, oof, that's notgoing to be possible.
We talked a little about maybeZoom as an option and then they
drop in.
The little caveat that reallykind of changed all things and
(02:33):
made me not run out there to dothis wedding is that it wasn't
going to be a legal marriage.
They just wanted to have acommitment ceremony and they
wanted it as quick as possibleand they didn't mind if I did it
over Zoom or called them.
Just say the pretty words andhelp us celebrate our love
(02:53):
together.
Having just a commitmentceremony is not at all unusual.
It's not as seen as often as itwas before same-sex marriage
was legalized, but it stilldefinitely happens.
I've done a few that have justbeen commitments.
They did not apply for alicense, they don't plan to
(03:13):
apply for a license.
They have no paperwork for meto sign and there's a lot of
different reasons for that.
Sometimes there's stillfinancial benefits coming in
from a previous marriage, likealimony, that there's a clause,
you know, if the spouse gotremarried they would have to
give up the alimony separately.
(03:46):
There's different paperworkthere.
Maybe if one person has oh, Idon't know a small officiating
business and they want to keepthe taxes a little separate out
from their spouse just forprotection levels, there's
student loan debt, medical debt,a whole bunch of things in the
debt category that you don'twant to sign your spouse up for.
And if you're not legallymarried you don't want to sign
(04:06):
your spouse up for.
And if you're not legallymarried especially in
Pennsylvania, which does notrecognize common law marriage,
which is just like cohabitationfor a period of time used to
equal a common law marriage andequal division of property and
assets yeah, pennsylvaniadoesn't recognize that anymore
and hasn't for many, many yearsSimilar things with debts.
You can live together 25 years,30 years, you can share a house
(04:28):
, you could buy your carstogether, raise your kids
together.
If you're not legally married,there's not a lot that can be
done from a debt or collectionside of things.
Sometimes commitment ceremonieshappen for individuals who are
immigrants and they are not ableto get a marriage license.
(04:53):
Maybe the visa hasn't processed, green card hasn't, whole bunch
of lots and lots of paperwork,and they just want to again
still celebrate that they loveeach other and that intention is
there, that they would marry ifthey could.
But now is not the time, theopportunity isn't there, and I
know for a lot of women there'sconversations about name changes
(05:16):
and if you already have anadvanced degree or medical
license, cool, I'm not changingmy name and I still want all my
college debt under me and I ownmy stuff.
I don't need anything from him,he doesn't need anything from
me.
Why get legally married?
Let's just say that we loveeach other and do it publicly,
(05:38):
in front of people, and perhapsdo unities that are again not
legal.
Hand fasting was the olden daysversion of marriage and now it
doesn't legally count for athing.
But for couples who want to docommitment ceremonies, that
could be really, really cool.
I understand Legal marriagesometimes isn't what a couple
(05:59):
wants and you can have weddingswithout having marriages and you
can have marriages withouthaving big to-do.
Typical weddings like elop, likeoh yes, it was our wedding day,
but you get a marriage at theend or vice versa.
(06:33):
You can have a very large party, invite everybody, a cake, the
dances, the hoopla, that's awedding.
But, as we talked about in aprevious episode, if you didn't
get your license or you forgotto bring your license or you are
too drunk to consent to sayingI do and I do not sign the
license, you can't say you havea marriage, so a couple.
Things kind of all go into playAfter adjusting a little bit of
(06:56):
like.
Okay, so you don't need me tocome all the way out six hours
to the other side of the state.
You just want a commitmentceremony, you just want to have
a little celebration.
You want me to print you off alittle document from Staples
that is not legally binding inany sense.
It's like a participationcertificate.
(07:17):
Essentially.
That I can do.
And they didn't initially tellme why they didn't want it to be
legal, or rightly so, why itcouldn't be legal.
And then they clued me in.
They are both already married,not to each other.
(07:40):
We listen and we don't judgeother.
We listen and we don't judge so.
And I've just binge-watched alot of Sister Wives, so knowing
that bigamy is illegal in theUnited States, meaning you
cannot be married to more thanone person at a time and
(08:03):
polygamy as well.
If you have legal marriages,you can't have that.
That is no bueno.
This is not at all what thecouple was aiming to do.
They're in the process ofgetting their respective
divorces, but they didn't wantto wait for the courts to kind
(08:27):
of pick a day and say this dayis important to us and maybe
they could have celebrated theday in a different way than hey,
we want to get ceremoniallymarried and you know, won't you
help us with the wedding?
And you know, won't you help uswith the wedding?
(08:48):
You know, call it yourengagement date, call it
something really special.
But, alas, that is what theywanted to do, and so I really
kept reiterating at nowunderstanding, okay, they are
married to other people, this isnot just oh, you know, maybe
they'll get married later on atsome point.
Like, no, they legally couldnot even get a license because
(09:10):
their licenses are already validwith other people.
So I had to keep reallyreiterating more.
So, for my side of things, justto cover my back, make sure all
was good is I can't legallymarry you.
However, I can do a symboliccommitment ceremony.
(09:32):
There's no legality, there'snothing behind it.
You can't use anything I say orany certificate of
participation I provide to youas grounds for a legal name
change or, you know, potentiallyadding one another on insurance
, because your spouse is alreadyperhaps on your insurance.
(09:56):
There's a lot of murky, murky,gray water here and all states
are different, how places aredifferent, so each is best
researched independently and ontheir own of what would be
allowed.
Nothing would be bindingoutside of your words.
If your words have theintention and meaning that you
(10:18):
want them to and you both putgood faith into your words, as
you always should, then, yes, Iwill gladly do a commitment
ceremony with your own vows andyou can mean it in your own way
and celebrate the day as you seefit, that this is what mattered
to you and that is exactly whatwe did.
(10:39):
In the middle of the night, Izoomed to them as they stood in
the cold in December by a lakeand candles lit all around them.
I could barely see them in itand they said some great words
(10:59):
and I said some great words andI mailed them out a certificate.
And that's the life thatthey're living.
We listen and we don't judge andwe don't know everybody's story
.
Maybe their marriages were longover emotionally.
Maybe things are held up forreasons that we don't know or
(11:25):
can't understand.
Maybe they just wanted to beable to start, you know, a new
year with some love and supportand celebration, some brightness
of saying hey, no matter what'scoming our way, we just
committed ourselves to eachother and we're going to do this
, we're going to get throughthis year.
They just don't have themarriage license to make it all
(11:45):
legal yet.
Suffice it to say, I'll bereally intrigued and excited if,
in you know, six months, a year, a few years from now, I get
contacted by them again and getasked to make it legal, legal.
You know, we have the paper, weare ready to go.
Obviously can't backdate it oranything, but I don't know.
(12:09):
There's a lot of ways we canmake that really, really cute
and have some good tie-ins tothe first time.
If they wanted to.
What would you do in thissituation?
Or rather, if you've got yourfriend, your friend is married.
You know, imagine whateversituation you want between them
and their spouse and they aretalking to you on a Monday
(12:30):
morning and they're like oh yeah, I got married over the weekend
.
What would you think?
What would you say to them?
Would you instantly be likepicking up the phone, calling
the cops and being like I thinkmy friend just married another
guy while they're alreadymarried?
Would you clarify, like wait,how does one do that?
How do you marry two people?
Would you really dig in orwould you just, oh, sounds cool,
(12:53):
man, sounds, sounds cool.
I think it's really importantthat we just we always pause.
There's always something moreto a story, there's a reason,
there's a method to a madness.
I don't always need to agreewith it, I don't always need to
only know it or understand it,as long as, at the end of the
day, in my world, x plus Yequals Z, or one marriage
(13:18):
license is provided, one plustwo equals three.
One marriage license plus twowilling participants equals a
wedding Well, a marriage,because we talked about that.
So I'm kind of really lovingthis we listen and we don't
judge aspect.
I did think of another few, sowe're gonna have to dive into
(13:43):
those in the coming weeks, andsome of them actually inspired
me for my own wedding plans.
I know, I know I thought I hadit all set and then I went to
one wedding and went oh, I don'tlike that, no, thank you.
So thank you so much forlistening and I will catch you
guys next week.
(14:04):
Thank you for listening to thewedding wear with officiating by
Amanda.
I hope you enjoyed today'sepisode and found some
inspiration or insight for yourown special day.
This podcast is hosted onbuzzsprout and can be found on
all major platforms.
If you haven't already, pleasesubscribe, like, comment and
share to help us reach even morelisteners who might laugh a
(14:25):
little at the wedding wear.
For the links referenced in theshow, visit Linktree at
Officiating by Amanda.
You can also follow thebusiness on Facebook,
weddingwire and the Knot to stayup to date on everything going
on.
If you have a question you'dlike me to answer on the podcast
, just send an email totheweddingwherepodcast@ gmail.
com, and if you're ready toinquire about officiating
(14:47):
services for your own big day,you can reach me at
officiatingbyamanda@ gmail.
com.
Thank you so much for tuning inand until next time.
This has been Amanda.
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