- Last summer, I got a part-time job as a deputy clerk for Utah County.
- I officiated almost 500 weddings as a deputy clerk over 11 months.
- Utah is unique because it allows online weddings, unlike other states and countries.
Last summer, I was a young college student looking for any job that paid higher than the one I had. Preferably, a job that didn’t involve serving food.
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So when I stumbled across an online job posting for a part-time position at the Utah County Marriage License & Passport Office, I was intrigued. The pay was good, and the job seemed interesting enough: “Become a certified Passport Acceptance Agent,” the listing advertised. “Assist and instruct the public in the application process for marriage licenses,” it said. There was also a short line about performing weddings.
The only requirements were a high school diploma and one year of customer service experience, both of which I had. I clicked apply.
After a successful interview, passing a drug test and proving my U.S. citizenship, I showed up for my first day of work and was sworn in as a deputy clerk, ready to start my public service.
The 5 o’clock ceremony
My boss called me into her office a few hours into the shift on my first day.
“Can you perform the 5 o’clock ceremony?” she asked.
I stared at her, eyebrows raised.
“Could I maybe watch one first?” I asked sheepishly. I knew officiating weddings was part of the job — it was mentioned in my interview, and I’d been shown the ceremony room. But I didn’t realize I’d be thrown into it on day one.
She graciously replied that my coworker would perform the ceremony at 5 p.m. and I could watch, then the 6 p.m. wedding would be up to me.
When the couple and their entourage showed up, I followed my coworker into the ceremony room. He was a fellow college student and only a few years older than me, but after working there for almost a year, he was a seasoned wedding officiant.
As we walked into the ceremony room, he leaned over and whispered, “This one’s in Spanish.”
Oh boy, I thought. I don’t speak Spanish.
I stood in the corner and watched him conduct the ceremony. As the guests listened intently to his words, they laughed, they cried and the couple said what I could only assume was “I do” in Spanish.
That was all the training I got.
The 6 o’clock ceremony
An hour later, it was my turn. The couple and their witnesses arrived, I made sure they had their marriage license, then I took them into the ceremony room, with its podium and desk and computer.
I stammered through the script and when I got to the “speech on marriage” part, I felt a little awkward reciting wedding advice since I was 19 years old and unmarried at the time. I think they were a little surprised, too, that I was performing their wedding.
But awkwardness aside, the most important parts happened. After telling them that marriage is both rewarding and challenging and that they should appreciate each other’s differences and learn to forgive (the script’s words, not mine), the couple said “I do,” the witnesses confirmed and I pronounced them legally and lawfully married.
It wasn’t long until performing weddings became second nature. I had the script memorized and could crank out ceremonies like clockwork. If couples had no rings or vows to exchange, they could be married in five minutes, after I verified their IDs and they got over their initial confusion that I would be performing the ceremony.
Some couples showed up in full suits and white gowns, while others walked in wearing jeans and T-shirts. Some brought their whole families plus friends, and others showed up with just the two required witnesses. Every so often, couples would arrive without any witnesses, and an unsuspecting person hoping to apply for a passport would become a wedding witness that day.
The laws of the land
Most couples I married never stepped foot in the Provo office. Some never even entered the state, or the country for that matter.
According to , the person solemnizing the marriage must be physically in the state at the time of the wedding, but the people getting married have no such requirements. After procuring a Utah County marriage license, which can be applied for and issued fully online, the couple can be anywhere in the world — even two separate places.
When I was scheduled on a shift to perform virtual ceremonies, I would sit in a room, look into the camera and perform a wedding via Zoom every half hour until the shift ended. That came out to 10 weddings per shift.
As long as the couple on the other end of the screen had a Utah County marriage license, a valid, government-issued ID — any government would do — and a way to pay, it was my job to use the power vested in me to help them get married.
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In the past year, Utah County issued 11,323 marriage licenses, and 5,161 of them were finalized by Utah County deputy clerks. It costs couples $70 for the license and $35 for the ceremony. At $105 per wedding the Utah County office performed, that’s more than $500,000.
Online weddings have been happening at the Provo office since the pandemic in 2020, and this article details a former Utah County deputy clerk’s experience. The author calls Utah “the new Las Vegas.”
Many other states enacted temporary laws allowing couples to get married virtually during the pandemic, but Utah is the only state that still allows virtual marriage, and Utah County is the only county in the state with an online process from start to finish. Nowhere else in the U.S. can you get married without leaving your couch.
The U.S. Constitution allows couples from other states to get married with a Utah County marriage license, even if virtual marriage is not legal in their state. Under the Full Faith and Credit Clause, online weddings are recognized because states must uphold “the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state.”
International love connections
The U.S. Constitution does not help couples getting married from other countries, though. Foreign governments have no obligation to recognize a Utah County marriage license, performed virtually or not. Those couples often order a $44 apostille along with their marriage license, which is an authentication from the Utah lieutenant governor’s office that allows a legal document to be recognized in another country.
During my 11 months as a deputy clerk, I performed 468 weddings, most of them virtual. I married couples from the U.S., Israel, China, the Philippines and beyond. With such varying time zones, couples from across the world would commonly join their wedding in the middle of the night.
Often, I married couples while one or both of them were deployed in the military. More than once, I married people who were on cruise ships with spotty internet service.
I married different-sex couples, same-sex couples, couples with large age gaps and couples who were sitting next to each other on a couch. I married people who were living hundreds of miles apart, and I even married people who had never met.
During one Zoom wedding, the groom was in California with his mom and the bride was in the Philippines with her mother. They barely spoke the same language, and the groom explained to me that they’d met online and would meet for the first time after the wedding, when she came to America. I smiled and nodded, then performed their ceremony.
It was my job to marry couples, not judge their unique situations.
There were also some weddings that didn’t work out. Sometimes, I’d start the Zoom call at the scheduled time, then awkwardly sit for 30 minutes with an excited, then stressed, then despondent bride or groom while we waited for their partner to join the call. If one of the parties didn’t show up, there were no refunds.
Just broken hearts.
What I learned from officiating weddings
I often wonder how many of those 468 couples are still together. One thing I learned is that getting married is much easier than getting divorced, and a lot of my time as a deputy clerk was spent answering the phone and transferring calls to the 4th District Court in Provo when people asked me how to get a divorce.
Listening to those calls sometimes made me feel like I was doing more harm than good at my job. One time I answered the phone and a father, worried his son was about to use our services to marry someone online who would steal all his money, asked me what he could do to stop it. My only answer was that he couldn’t, as long as his son was old enough, doing everything of his own free will and following the law.
Of course, that isn’t unique to a virtual wedding. That son and his fiancé could go to their local court and get married in person against his father’s wishes as well.
But overall, I think the majority of those unions were happy ones. I got to witness genuine love stories as I’d listen to couples exchange vows, in my own language or not, and see in their smiles and tears how much they loved each other. When couples asked to take a picture with me through the screen or emailed later, saying how grateful they were for our services, I felt like I was doing some good.
In the end, what I learned most was that no two couples are the same, and love can look a lot of different ways. Sometimes weddings are joyful and celebratory, and other times they can be complicated.
And they might take a few tries if someone doesn’t have great internet service. But once everyone’s cameras are working, countless couples get the chance to say “I do.”
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