Wedding

Due to the size of our church and the number of requests for weddings we have designed an approach to conducting weddings that ensures that we can meet the needs of our people by sharing the weddings across our qualified staff. We have a Wedding Approval Process to facilitate a reasonable schedule for our pastor and staff in respect to conducting weddings.

The vast majority of weddings require a 15-20 hour investment per couple, as follows:

• Meeting to discuss your readiness for marriage, outline the pre-marital counselling session and discuss specific desires for the wedding ceremony.
• Pre-marital counselling sessions (8 – 10 meetings) designed to equip and prepare you for a Christ-centered marriage.
• Wedding rehearsal.
• Actual wedding.

Pastors

This process is very simple. If you would like an officiant from our church to perform your wedding ceremony, please fill out the wedding application. No congregant or pastor/elder is allowed to by-pass this process. All wedding requests must go through the Wedding Approval Process and individual staff members cannot agree to perform a wedding apart from the approval of the elders. We would ask that you not approach staff members directly with wedding requests as we want to care for our staff by carefully ensuring all weddings balance with their work and personal schedules. As a means to protect our staff members’ family commitments as well as their overall health and balance, we limit the number of weddings each can perform in a given year (4-5 weddings in a typical spring/summer/fall season). In addition, Hope Pastors will only perform weddings for couples who are full-time attendees of Hope Bible Church Niagara.

During the Wedding Approval Process, you will be assigned an officiant for a wedding based on the following four criteria:

1. Schedule availability of pastor/elder
2. Number of weddings already assigned
3. Request for a particular pastor/elder by the couple
4. Relational connectedness of pastor/elder to couple

To be assigned a pastor/elder and thus receive Hope leadership approval for a Hope wedding you must complete this application in full, and submit it to the office. A reply will be returned within 2-4 weeks indicating acceptance and the pastor/elder assigned.

Additional Staff

Please note – additional staff involvement in your wedding (music, production, etc) is not an expectation and will be your responsibility to arrange. Weddings are not considered a part of the staff role.

We realize some weddings are planned far in advance and some are last minute (hopefully not many). For our own planning purposes (officiates and churches) we require that requests not be submitted more than one year prior to the wedding day nor less than two months prior to the wedding day.

Hope Bible Church's facility located at 10 Arlington Ave is not available at this time to host weddings.

The following items should not be expected at a Hope wedding:

• Office equipment/supplies will not be made available to produce handouts or programs for the wedding (ie. the office/photocopier).
• A/V equipment for venues outside of Hope is not included. Couples are responsible to organize their own and should not expect Hope staff to make these arrangements.

Some Biblical injunctions regarding how to treat and care for pastors/elders as they give themselves to various ministry calls and requirements are found in 1 Timothy 5:17-18, Romans 4:4, and 1 Corinthians 9:3-18. In light of these considerations Hope leadership asks that you be gracious, kind, considerate, and generous to the pastors who are walking with you through your wedding plans. With this in mind, we have not established mandatory fees for our staff officiating your wedding, but simply ask that you appreciate their time away from their families, hard work and investment in your lives with an appropriate honorarium. The same is true of any staff assisting you on your special day, in proportion to their involvement.