How to Get Ordained in Tennessee State Marriage Laws

First things first: photos! for privacy I tried to not include people's faces as much as possible.
Date: August 2019 Location: Nashville, TN, USA Vibe: minimalist, industrial, organic, champagne brunch Guests invited: 86 Guests attended: 63 (50 adults, 13 children, 2 no-shows) Initial budget: 10k Final total: ~13k Funding: My parents funded the venue/catering & half the photography; his parents covered rehearsal dinner, we took care of the rest. All costs include tips. Not included: courthouse ceremony in our hometown due to TN’s new law banning online ordinations, which is currently being contested in court. In total it ran us ~500.
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BREAKDOWN:
Rehearsal dinner: $900 on Friday night with catered barbecue and beer & wine for ~30. My in-laws graciously hosted this at their home so I don’t have a lot of details, but I know they were ultimately glad they went with a catering company. Also, it was my grandparents’ wedding anniversary that day and we got them flowers and sang “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” – it was amazingly sweet and meaningful, and I’m glad I got this private time with family and close friends.
Welcome party: $250 Since our Airbnb was strictly no parties, I called around to a lot of bars & breweries in Nashville to find one that could host an open-house style Friday night party. We got 2 reserved tables for $100 for 2 hours at an indoooutdoor complex, cash bar, and brought in catering trays from Publix for snacks. So many other places wanted a $800 minimum and I couldn’t guarantee or justify that, though with most of my invited friends showing up we might have hit it!
Venue & catering: $3950 I did a LOT of research on catering & venues, and it really paid off. Neither of us are big on design and we were planning from out of town, so we knew we wanted a venue that didn’t need a lot of décor and had indoor facilities (it’s August in the US south). We were also leaning brunch or daytime since neither of our families are big partiers. We ended up with a gorgeous restaurant that had a $2500 minimum for Saturday daytime and priced all the food and booze at $45/head (not including tax or gratuity). The restaurant provided the ceremony & reception venue plus cocktail hour, brunch, mimosa & bloody mary bar, and draft beer and wine. They were also able to accommodate our vegan & vegetarian friends with something more than dinner rolls and fistfuls of asparagus. Having a restaurant wedding made our day SO much simpler, I can’t imagine the hassle that would come with multiple venues & extra costs. I can’t recommend our venue highly enough, please get in touch if you want more info!
Cake: $215 for 96 cupcakes and 1 cutting cake, wrappers, take-home boxes, cake topper, and borrowed cake stands. One of my friends offered to make all our cakes, and I was so happy ‘cause I wouldn’t have time for a tasting and completely trusted her work. We went with a coconut cake with white chocolate ganache for cutting as well as 2 cupcake flavors, coconut and pink lemonade. They were absolutely delicious, and we ate all the cake in the 2 days after the event.
Photographer: $1400 for 6 hours of coverage, 600+ photos. Gotta be honest, I didn’t really vibe with our photographer but she took candid, vivid photos within our budget. I was worried ‘cause I didn’t see her at ALL during the ceremony or reception, but she was just super sneaky!
Day-of-coordinator: $500 Our coordinator helped tremendously and I really should have treated her better by being more prepared. She got all of our décor the day before during the rehearsal & set it up with the help of the restaurant on the morning-of. Our original photo booth vendor dropped out the Monday before the wedding, and she wasted no time in networking & finding other available vendors. I took care of the booking & initial communication with vendors, while she took over ~1 month before the wedding. We also chose a coordinator who is just starting out & saved considerably, but I might have benefitted by having a coordinator that asked me to be a bit more organized. For instance, I forgot to send the playlist to her until the morning-of, and as a result the venue played the wrong playlist most of the reception, which resulted in very little dancing. In the future I’d look for a vendor to provide a list of detailed things a bride may/may not want for a wedding and would work with me to make sure they are provided.
Flowers & bud vases (doubled as favors): $1,030 One of my college friends is an artist & ceramicist and we commissioned him to make bud vases for the wedding. At $500 for 75 handmade bud vases, he obviously cut us a deal. I really, really wanted to have his work at our day and could think of no better gift for our guests than to take some home. He made us 75 bud vases and a Quaich/loving cup for our ceremony last minute.
Our wedding is also a Flower Moxie success story! I found the booking process pretty easy and after some initial wavering because my order was rose & carnation-heavy, I ended up loving the whimsy the hypericum berries, solidago, and ranunculus provided. We ordered enough for 1 bridal bouquet, 1 bout, and 75 bud vases, and ended up also making 3 flower crowns for my flower girls. Definitely have a team of people to help you with flowers, if you go this route!
Funny aside: We had tons left over from Flower Moxie, and it was a good thing since I LEFT MY BOUQUET AT MY IN-LAW’S HOUSE before the ceremony! This is SO me, I can be crazy forgetful about the most obvious stuff (there’s a funny story about me “losing” my cell phone in a zippered pocket of my purse for a month…) anyways, I figured I would just walk down without flowers, or holding a bud vase, no big deal. I did text my friends in a panic, who were staying with us at the Airbnb only a couple of blocks from our venue. They RUSHED back to the house, threw a rose & olive branch bouquet together, and ran back to the venue! And it was BEAUTIFUL! I was shocked and felt so, so loved by my chosen family that I almost cried before walking down the aisle.
Other décor: $75 The venue provided candles at tables, but we bought a guestbook via Etsy and created a kids table with butcher paper, crayons, coloring books, and temporary tattoos. I found a fancy cake knife and server through my local Buy Nothing group and my mom brought a rug from home for the ceremony.
Photo booth: $500 Can’t recommend this highly enough, especially for daytime weddings or for a crowd that isn’t into dancing! Our vendor was all-inclusive with printed & digital photos, a personalized logo, green screen background, props, and an attendant.
Musicians: $400 We weren’t looking for typical wedding music, so we didn’t search for a typical wedding music vendor. One of our close friends in Nashville recommended a jazz keyboardist & stand-up bassist who play at the local jazz clubs. They played jazz and soul standards and a couple of songs we specified for the ceremony, and did a great job setting the classy, relaxed tone for our day.
Officiant: $0 We asked a mutual friend to officiate and it was perfect. We wrote the majority of the ceremony using internet resources, had our officiant add in info about us, and asked a couple of family members to do a poetry reading and a short David Sedaris piece. Also our nieces were our flower girls and they absolutely stole the show!
Bridal wear: $770 This includes the rehearsal dress, bridal dress (Adena from BHLDN), alterations, shapewear, shoes, and accessories. I went through a TON of shapewear and never found anything I was completely happy with, so shapewear ended up costing just as much as my dress and alterations combined. I had a lot of stress with alterations, including one tailor that wanted to add a panel across my chest in addition to shortening the straps and suggesting I buy other shapewear for my body (girl…like I haven’t tried), but I finally found one that wasn’t going to shame me & still alter the dress as needed.
If you can, go to a tailor with a friend and don’t make any alterations you are completely uncomfortable with!
Bridal face & body: $595 includes sugaring, nails, chemical peel, haircut, and day-of hair & makeup. Loved my makeup artist, less love for my esthetician who brought blood to my privates...
MoB/MoG makeup: $190 Since I didn’t have a wedding party, I wanted to treat my Moms to make-up on the day of.
Groom’s attire: $235 He rented the suit and shoes from The Black Tux and ordered some accessories from The Tie Bar. We love the accessories but can’t recommend The Black Tux. They outsource a lot of their customer service and even after a fitting at a Nordstrom 2 hours away, one of his suit sleeves came a half-inch longer than the other. Thankfully you can’t tell in the photos, but trying to get this remedied caused a lot of stress before the event.
Paper: $145 including stamps, invites, and thank you notes. A friend who is a designer by trade made the invites and emailed save the dates. We did online RSVPs with Zola and with a smaller guest count it seemed to work well. Our invites were through Paper Culture (which often has Groupon discounts) and Papyrus for thank you notes.
Rings: $118 We knew we wanted silicone rings for everyday, but felt pressured to get metal rings for day-of and future fancy events. We got silicone rings from Enso, sterling silver rings via Overstock.com, and a ring box from Etsy.
Hotel + food for friends: $1350 My would-be MoH said it would be a good idea to stay near the venue, and she was completely right. There were no hotels in walking distance of the venue, so I got a large Airbnb that housed many of the out-of-town friends that were helping with the wedding. At the Airbnb we baked cakes, assembled flowers, had communal dinners and breakfasts, and had an impromptu after party in the back yard. We ended up gifting food to people who were driving home and to my local in-laws. We could have spent less here, but I don’t regret this splurge. I’d definitely get a local Airbnb again and would recommend it if you are doing a fair bit of DIY.
Transportation: $190 for a week-long rental car and gas tank.
Gifts: $230 I gifted my would-be MoH, invite designer, and pastry chef some goods from Thistle Farmsand a local chocolatier, and our officiant a family portrait that we designed from the Stay Home Club.
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Recommendations/favorite choices:

• Toasts: we asked our would-be maid of honor and best man for these and they were the most heartfelt toasts, we both sobbed!
• Shoe Game: another must for a non-dancing wedding!
• Kids table: but, temporary tattoos aren’t just for kids!
• Incorporating friends into the wedding: they helped with all aspects and that’s one of our favorite memories of our day so far.
• Restaurant wedding: good food goes a long way
• Photo booth

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What we skipped/weird choices:

• Lots of traditional trappings: wedding party, Dad walking me down the aisle, dancing, bouquet toss, garter, etc.,
• Table numbers/seating chart: I wish we had done this, we just ran out of time. I don’t regret skipping programs, though!
• Send-off: no structured music meant people were leaving the venue a bit early anyways
• Hotel block: Feedback from my friends was they likely wouldn’t use a hotel block anyways, as I couldn’t find one in Nashville proper for less than $170/night.
• Friday before the wedding I had a mini-bachelorette party at a day spa, the rehearsal, rehearsal dinner, and welcome party. We also finished flowers in the morning. It was a LOT.

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Personal Reflection: In honesty, I have mixed feelings about my wedding day because of my personal mental health. Planning and hosting a wedding really exposed some of my anxieties. I could not relax because I was so, so worried & felt responsible that everyone have a good time. Even though I had tons of help and love all around me, I could not say that I really enjoyed any part of the wedding itself. My husband thinks this was partially because I did not believe I deserved so much love, and that thought makes me so sad that I think it might be true. In the long run I think I will be happy that I had a formal wedding, but in the moment it felt truly like one of the worst times of my life (and I’m old enough to have had other truly stressful moments in my life). After hearing our attendees’ experiences and seeing our photos, I know that the negativity I’m putting on the whole weekend is completely unfounded, but that doesn’t change how I felt. So, I have some ripe new content for my therapist for the next few months!
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Summary:
Rehearsal dinner: $900 Welcome party: $250 Venue & catering: $3950 Cake: $215 Photographer: $1400 Coordinator: $500 Flowers & favors: $1030 Other décor: $75 Photo booth: $500 Musicians: $400 Officiant: $0 Bridal wear: $770 Bridal face & body: $595 Mothers’ makeup: $190 Groom’s attire: $235 Paper: $145 Rings: $118 Hotel & food: $1350 Transportation: $190 Gifts: $230 TOTAL: ~13K

Dudes & Lady-Dudes,
I've been ordained in the Church of the Latter-Day Dude for a little while now, as my sister has asked me to officiate her wedding in the Smokies this fall (important details, all). I'm not sure if you've all heard about this recent bit of news, but according to the very un-dude people in the Tennessee Legislature, my ordination is not Dude-ly enough to preside over a proper wedding as of 7/1.
Now, I'm not an attorney and I need to read the chapter and verse, but my rough understanding is that an officiant can be a religious minister / priest / rabbi / leader / whatever who "has the care of souls," and in order to get this, one must be ordained, and ordination is partially defined as a "conscious, deliberate act" which they feel does *not* include clicking a mouse for the Universal Life Church, so they've carved online ordination explicitly out of the law.
I'm wondering aloud whether the time has come for us to find a friendly bowling alley that doesn't mind cosplay and see about incorporating a bricks-and-mortar location of the Church of the Latter-Day Dude. This would have to strictly be a non-profit venture, solely aimed at bringing like-minded dudes together, and more importantly, ordaining me in person in time to officiate the wedding in November, as well as stymying some super douchebags who have the temerity to use the state to decide whose marriage is real and whose isn't.
Are there any Tennessean (particularly Nashville) dudes around who would be interested in helping with such a venture? An attorney would be clutch in this scenario. Or perhaps the owner of a slightly retro bowling alley that could use some foot traffic and has a liquor license?
(I'll be cross-posting a version of this in nashville)
Thanks

Okay. Don’t laugh, but I’m kind of jazzed. I’m now legally able to perform marriages. On second thought — laugh all you want. I’m so pleased I’m giggly myself.
I signed up because I read about my home state’s new law that goes into effect on July 1, forbidding online-ordained ministers from performing marriages (which is the path I took). I can’t claim to read minds, but I would bet cold hard cash this legislation was designed to make it harder for LGBTQIA+ people to wed. (Ministers and judges — as well as legislators who register for this — can still perform marriages, but so many people refuse to wed people from marginalized groups.) This kind of sly backdoor legal maneuvering is so smarmy. It offends me to my core.
So I’m here to tell you that I will happily perform weddings for ANY loving couples in Tennessee through June — and in neighboring states anytime else. Gay. Straight. Whoever you are.
And you can do this too. I’m posting this to suggest that more GRSM allies get ordained like this. You can make a difference. I can’t wait!