Trendspotting: Humble Servants

By Angie Argabrite, Wednesday, April 11, 2012, at 9:01 am.

Engaged couples today are more often turning to Web-blessed clergy to officiate their nuptials. Though many counties and states don’t keep records of officiants’ religious affiliations, both Ohio and New York City report that the number of people becoming ordained through websites like Universal Life Church, which claims to have certified 20 million ministers worldwide, has doubled in recent years. And in Vermont, 13.5 percent of couples were married by friends or family who had secured temporary permits. Wedding planners cite lots of reasons for the trend’s takeoff: Some couples aren’t religious and wouldn’t feel comfortable with a traditional ceremony, others find it more meaningful when a friend or family member performs the wedding, and as more couples marry later in life, the betrothed are less wed to old-fashioned ideals about weddings. Celebrities are in on the gig, too. Fran Drescher was just ordained in order to officiate the wedding of a gay couple on her TV Land show “Happily Divorced”; Conan O’Brien made light of how easy it is to be ordained online, chronicling the minutes-long process necessary to become a “minister”; and onetime “The Apprentice” villainess Omarosa has been ordained in the Baptist tradition after serving as assistant pastor of her Los Angeles church. And plenty of today’s millennials are working for more than just their bachelor’s degree; the number of ordained college students has doubled since 2006. This is taking the DIY movement to a whole new level.

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