There are a lot of wedding officiants right now who should not be writing wedding ceremonies. That sounds harsh and at the same time it is true.
Many of them do not have the experience, training, or ability to write something sincere. They have not spent years listening to couples. They have not stood in front of hundreds of families. They have not learned how words sound different when said loudly in a room of 200 people.
So they use AI.
These are what I call artificial officiants. They plug a few facts or stories about the couple into software, generate a ceremony, read it out loud, and charge couples as if they personally created something meaningful. Not only is that insincere, we believe unless the officiant is honest about using AI to write ceremonies, it is fraud.
If that is what you are paying for, you should stop. You could open ChatGPT and do the exact same thing yourself. For free. In ten minutes.
A wedding ceremony is not hard to write because of grammar. It is hard because it requires judgment. It requires knowing what to include, what to leave out, and how to speak in a way that sounds natural instead of scripted.
Artificial officiants deliver ceremonies that are technically fine and emotionally empty. They sound generic because they are generic. They rely on buzzy phrases and predictable structure. Nothing is wrong with the words, but nothing is truly right either. In an audience of 200 people, a quarter will realize and whisper about how the ceremony was written by ChatGPT. Don’t you deserve better?
A real wedding celebrant understands that a ceremony is a live moment, not a document. People are nervous. Parents are emotional. Friends are watching closely. The room has energy, and that energy changes minute by minute. We often add or skip parts based on how we read the room in that moment.
A professional wedding officiant knows how to write for that reality. We know how to pace a ceremony. We know when humor helps and when it distracts. We know when silence says more than another paragraph. Because we write our ceremonies we know what we can change. Most importantly, we know how to listen.
Here at the Dudeist Ministers we use AI for some things like creating an image for our website. AI is fine for superficial things like that. Using AI isn’t fine for when something should have heart and soul. When Ned, Bridgit or Jon (that’s me) write a ceremony, we don’t assemble it from templates or generated text. We don’t steal it from reddit. It is built from the conversations we have with our couples. From paying attention. From understanding who you are and how you love each other. That takes time and experience. There is no shortcut for it.
Artificial officiants are selling convenience and calling it meaning. That is not fair to couples. This is one of the few moments in your life where the words actually matter. If you want something produced by software, do not pay someone else to click the button for you.
If you want an authentic ceremony written by a real wedding celebrant and delivered by an experienced wedding officiant, that is what we do.
Your love is not artifical . Your ceremony should not be either.
