Simple and short
A short wedding ceremony script, start to finish in ten minutes
A short wedding ceremony runs about 10 minutes and holds nine parts: the processional, a welcome, a short passage on why everyone is here, the declaration of intent, the vows, the ring exchange, the pronouncement, the kiss and the recessional. Everything else — the reading, the couple’s story, the reflection on marriage, any ritual — is optional, and taking it out is what makes a ceremony simple rather than fast. This page carries that order minute by minute and the whole of it written out word for word.
Short is a decision about the decoration, never about the promises. A twenty-two-minute ceremony and a ten-minute one contain the same load-bearing parts. The difference is a reading and a story — five minutes of the longer one — and the pace of everything that stays: the walk in at one minute instead of four, the reflection at one instead of three, the vows at two instead of three. Take the optional beats out, keep the pace honest, and nothing structural has moved.
The trap is shortening the wrong things. The parts that cost the fewest minutes — the walk in, the pause after each vow, the second of silence before the pronouncement — are the parts carrying almost all of the weight. Cut those to save forty seconds and a ten-minute wedding turns into an appointment, which is the one failure a short ceremony has.
The ten-minute order, minute by minute
Clocked from a 4:00 PM start — slide the whole column to match whenever this one begins.
Processional
They walk in. Nobody speaks.
Welcome
The room is seated and the couple is named.
Why we are here
One short passage giving the ten minutes their weight. This is the beat most often cut, and cutting it is what makes a short ceremony feel like an errand.
Declaration of intent
The two questions and the two answers. Stays in every ceremony, at every length.
Vows
Repeated line by line, or read from a card. Stays.
Ring exchange
Comes out if there are no rings. Nothing replaces it.
Pronouncement
The line the room came for. Stays.
The kiss
A sentence and a step backwards.
Recessional
They walk out. The license gets signed afterwards.
What comes out, and what does not
Safe to cut, in roughly this order: the housekeeping and thank-yous at the end, any unity ritual, the reflection on what marriage asks, the couple’s story, the reading, and the charge to the couple. That is twelve minutes and six separate things to organize, and a ceremony is not diminished by their absence — it is simply about less.
Not available to cut: the declaration of intent, because it is the moment the couple consent out loud in front of whoever the state asks to be watching; the vows, because a wedding without them is a party with a good speech in it; the pronouncement, because it is the line every person in the room is waiting for and the one that names the authority the ceremony is happening under; and the signing of the license afterwards, which is not part of the ceremony at all but is the reason any of it has legal effect. What has to happen to the license, state by state, is here.
A ring exchange comes out cleanly if there are no rings, and nothing needs to go in its place. It is the only optional part of the nine above.
A complete ten-minute ceremony
Bea, Tomas and Neil are invented — we wrote all three, and the eleven years, so a whole short ceremony could be read here start to finish without any of it coming from somebody’s real wedding. The words are ours and they are free to use.
Anything in italics, inside brackets, is a direction and is never read aloud. A slash marks where to stop and let a repeated line be repeated. The clock down the left is the same one in the table above.
[ A short ceremony is not a fast one. Let them walk at the pace they would walk at a long wedding, and do not open your mouth until the music has finished. ]
[ Look at the back of the room. One breath before the first word. ]
Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for coming. Please, take your seats. We are here for Bea and Tomas. My name is Neil. They have asked for a short ceremony, so this will be short — but I want to be clear that short is not the same as small. Everything that matters is in the next ten minutes. There is simply nothing in them that does not.
Bea and Tomas have been together eleven years. Nothing that happens in this room in the next ten minutes will make them any more sure of each other than they were when they woke up this morning. What it will do is make it public. That is the whole function of a wedding, and it is why you were all asked to be here rather than told about it afterwards. You are not an audience. You are the witnesses.
[ Turn to each of them in turn. Wait for the answer. This one is never hurried. ]
Bea — do you come here freely, and do you take Tomas to be your husband, from today, for as long as you both live? — I do. Tomas — do you come here freely, and do you take Bea to be your wife, from today, for as long as you both live? — I do.
[ Feed them six or seven words at a time and pause at every slash. If either of them cannot get through it, wait. The waiting is not a problem to be solved. ]
I, Bea, / take you, Tomas, / to be my husband. / I will be honest with you, / I will be kind to you, / and I will be here — / on the good days, / and on all the others. I, Tomas, / take you, Bea, / to be my wife. / I will be honest with you, / I will be kind to you, / and I will be here — / on the good days, / and on all the others.
[ Have both rings in your own pocket unless somebody has been given the job and rehearsed it. If a ring sticks, keep talking. ]
Bea, put the ring on Tomas’s finger and say after me: With this ring, / I marry you. Tomas, put the ring on Bea’s finger and say after me: With this ring, / I marry you.
[ Louder than everything before it. Head up. Do not read this one off the page. ]
Bea and Tomas, you have said it in front of everyone who needed to hear it. So by the authority vested in me by the State of Colorado, it is my great pleasure to pronounce you married.
[ Step well back. Let the room make its noise. ]
You may kiss.
[ Wait for the noise to drop before presenting them, then get out of the aisle. Signing the license happens after this, not during it. ]
Everyone — it is my privilege to present Bea and Tomas.
Questions
How short can a wedding ceremony be?
Ten minutes is short and still feels like a ceremony. Four is the floor: the declaration of intent, the vows and the pronouncement, said properly, take about that long and nothing else is structural. Below four minutes the parts that are legally doing work start getting rushed, which is the one place in a wedding where speed costs something. Between four and ten, every extra minute buys back a piece of the occasion.
What is the minimum an officiant has to say?
It varies by state, and it is set by statute rather than by custom. Most states expect the couple to declare in the presence of the officiant, and of any witnesses that state requires, that they take each other as spouses — which is what the declaration of intent is for. Beyond that, the wording is generally open. This is informational rather than legal advice: confirm what is required, and what has to happen to the license afterwards, with the office that issued it.
What can be cut from a wedding ceremony?
The reading, the couple’s story, the reflection on marriage, any unity ritual, the charge to the couple, the acknowledgements, and the housekeeping at the end. That is most of a full-length ceremony by minutes, and none of it is required. What stays is the welcome, the declaration of intent, the vows, the ring exchange if there are rings, and the pronouncement.
Does a simple wedding ceremony still need a reading?
No. A reading is two to three minutes and a second person to brief, and a ten-minute ceremony that includes one is really a seven-minute ceremony. If the couple wants one anyway, it is worth the time — but it should be a deliberate trade against the length, not an assumption carried in from longer weddings.
Why do short ceremonies sometimes feel rushed?
Because the wrong things get shortened. The processional, the pauses after each vow, and the silence before the pronouncement cost almost no minutes and carry almost all of the weight — while the reflection on marriage costs three minutes and carries very little. A ceremony that walks in at normal speed and then says eight sentences reads as composed. One that hurries the aisle to save forty seconds reads as an appointment.
Ten minutes, about the two people it is actually for.
Answer questions about them and the whole ceremony comes back written at the length that was asked for — their vows where the vows go, their names in every line, nothing padding it out — with a run-sheet that knows what each part costs in minutes, cue cards for the front of the room, a rehearsal checklist, and that state’s license duties on one page.
Also here: an elopement ceremony script for a wedding of two to ten people, a non-religious ceremony, the full-length wedding ceremony script, and the order of a wedding ceremony.