More Couples Choose to Wed Their Way

Trotter requires six or seven sessions of premarital counseling before he will perform a ceremony, a fairly standard prescription in many denominations. Beyond that, he said, "my only requirement is that one of them has to be a Christian."

He marks 1970 as the approximate start of a trend toward experimentation with the ritual of religious marriage. Since then, couples have seemed increasingly emboldened to take liberties with the vows, the venue and the choice of minister.

Previous generations of brides and grooms married in the neighborhood church they had always attended. But now, many congregations are shrinking, and families are more transient. Worshipers are gathering online and redefining their faith in more personal terms.

The Rev. James Green Somerville of First Baptist Church in the District said he has grown accustomed to taking "cold calls from people that I've never met," who wish to marry in his church even though they have never set foot inside it. "It seems to be much more about 'This is a beautiful place to get married' than 'This is my family's congregation; I grew up here,' " Somerville said. Somerville always asks callers why they have chosen his church. Often, he said, "their answers are that shallow: 'It's a beautiful place. I think it would look good in the pictures.' "

Somerville discourages people from writing their vows or filling the service with pop songs that might not age well in the wedding DVD two decades from now. "We've been getting people married in churches for centuries now," he said. "We've kind of worked out what has to happen in that ceremony."

The Rev. Barbara Eberle, a nondenominational minister based in Darnestown, is considerably less restrictive. Her Internet site invites couples to "make your ceremony express all that you hold within your hearts and souls."

Whether that ceremony invokes God's name or not "is irrelevant to me," Eberle said. "Not that I won't do a religious ceremony. I will. I am here to fulfill the needs of the couple." Eberle performs 50 to 60 weddings a year and describes her ministry, Pathways of Light, as "a ministry without judgment."

Last weekend, Eberle married TiTi McNeill and James Schumm at Brookside Gardens in Wheaton. She's chief executive of an IT company; he's a DNA scientist. Neither wanted religion in the service. "We read her Web site," McNeill said of Eberle, "and I just liked the way she presented herself."

Another force competing with traditional denominations is the trend toward do-it-yourself ordination. The Universal Life Church of Modesto, Calif., has ordained from 18 million to 20 million people since 1962, chiefly for the purpose of officiating at weddings, said Andre Hensley, a director of the church. The Church of Spiritual Humanism, outside Philadelphia, has ordained more than 100,000 ministers since 2002.

"These are people who don't really fit into a regular traditional church, but they still have a sense of spirituality," said Richard Zorger, founder of the Church of Spiritual Humanism. "They want to have some kind of meaningful service, and meaningful, for them would be if their father or brother or college professor performs the service for them."

Hensley, of the Modesto church, said its rise correlates directly with the demise of the neighborhood church. "We've seen that since the '50s," he said.

Do-it-yourself clergy face less red tape in Maryland, where the courts will accept an ordination from any source on a marriage license, than in Virginia or D.C., where ministers must be approved by an officer of the court.

But ordination itself is not much more difficult than ordering a movie from Netflix. Zorger's church offers a Deluxe Clergy Pack for $89.95. Hensley's offers a Ministry-in-a-Box for $139. His church's Web site also offers, for $4.95, a Jedi Knight certificate.