The Complete Wedding Service Book: Ceremonies, Vows, Readings, and Practical Helps for Every Kind of Wedding

They asked you in March. The wedding is in June. And the date cannot move.

You have never run a rehearsal. You have never signed a marriage license. You are not sure where to stand, or what to do when the ring will not go on. And most of what you need between now and June, nobody ever taught you. Or perhaps you have experience, but no training.

This is the book for that.

The Complete Wedding Service Book is not another collection of ceremonies. It is the whole event, front to back — every script, vow, reading, and practical detail an officiant needs from the first phone call to the moment the license is in the mail.

Twenty complete ceremonies, printed word for word

• Traditional church, contemporary church, and the brief fifteen-minute service
• Outdoor, destination and beach, home and small venue
• Second marriage, blended family with the children included, later-in-life couple
• Vow renewal, blessing of a civil marriage, elopement with two witnesses
• Military, bilingual, interfaith, and a wedding with communion
• Civil-style with minimal religious content, and when one partner is not a believer
• Hospital and emergency weddings — and the eight-minute ceremony, for when that is all you are given

More than 150 interchangeable elements

Opening words, invocations, charges to the couple, declarations of intent, four sets of vows, thirteen ring exchanges, eight unity elements, prayers, pronouncements, and benedictions — indexed by first line so you can find the one you need in under a minute. Every vow is line-broken for feeding to a nervous groom.

Scripture arranged by theme, printed in full

Love, marriage and covenant, faithfulness, second marriages, and blended families — plus eight extended passages, all set out on the page so the reading you need is already in front of you.

Fourteen difficult situations, answered in two pages each

Divorced parents and who sits where. An estranged father. A couple you have reservations about. A pregnant bride. A family that wants no religion at all. A death in the family the week before. Each tells you what to say, what to avoid, and what to do afterward — including when to decline, and how to do it kindly.

A full section on the marriage license

What the license is and who handles it. Who signs, where, and when. Filing deadlines and what happens if you miss one. The ten-item check to run at the rehearsal, while there is still time to fix a problem. Your credentials to officiate, what online ordination does and does not cover, and how to register where registration is required.

Nobody publishes this. It is what new officiants fear most.

And the craft nobody teaches

How to run a rehearsal so it takes forty-five minutes instead of two hours. Where to stand so you are not in every photograph. Processional spacing that actually works. Being heard outdoors. What to wear. What to do when the music ends before the bride arrives, when a groomsman faints, or when you say the wrong name.

Includes reproducible planning worksheets, a ceremony checklist, a couple interview form, a rehearsal run sheet, a license record, printed instructions for ushers and attendants, a Scripture index, and a quick-find index to every element in the book.

Written for

Pastors and ministers of every tradition, wedding officiants and celebrants, chaplains, lay leaders — and the friend who was ordained online three weeks ago and has one shot at getting it right.

Barry L. Davis, D.Min., Ph.D., wrote his first wedding ceremony by copying the notes of a retired pastor friend. Thirty-five years later he is the author of more than forty books for preachers, lay leaders, and congregations. This is the book he wishes someone had handed him.

350 pages of ceremonies, vows, and readings you can use this month.