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Hi Amysue!
Well, you know I just posted about this, but I did want to share something about the person officiating.
It happens to be that he is a judge and is a friend of Mr. Petunia's family BUT -- my understanding is that he does this regularly (not just for us).
In fact, I was told that he keeps a binder/notebook with all kinds of ceremony wording, etc.: couples come in and pick and choose what they want and then he'll read just what you want him to. In other words, if you don't want him to say God, he won't.
Now, at least in South Florida, anyone can pay extra to not just go to court to get the license, but also to have the wedding take place there. I would imagine then, that many of these judges could also go to a ceremony site and perform. I also understand that by law, there are rules about how much they can charge: in other words, not much.
Perhaps you could inquire at your local courthouse, with the people who handle marriage licenses, and see if there are judges available who would officiate and then ask those people individually how you can go about submitting your chosen wording?
Hope this helps! 
I think the questions you just asked about whether you can incorporate your own readings and wording into the ceremony are exactly the questions you should ask potential officiants. I am certain you will be able to find a civil officiant who will let you incorporate your own readings and not mention God. My officiant, for example, will let us write the whole ceremony ourselves exactly as we want (we just have to run it by her first of course) and her one stipulation is that since she's a civil officiant, she doesn't mind if we want to incorporate religious aspects to the ceremony, but we would have to appoint a reader for that. She is not allowed to do anything religious in the ceremony.
I'd suggest trying to find an officiant by looking to see who other brides in the area used and asking for suggestions. I hesitate to say try the Knot boards but it might be worth a shot...
We are using a local judge as our officiant.When we met with him I was surprised in how many options he had for the ceremony. Ranging from very religious to not at all. He also had a variety of different readings and ideas that he could do or we could have someone else read at the ceremony.For some reason I went in having the idea that we wouldn't have many options at all, to having too many.
I am not sure what the marriage laws are where you live, but I was able to go the county website where we are getting married and they listed a bunch of officiants that are willing to perform marriage ceremonies off-site. In my case most of these were either local attorneys or retired/semi-retired judges. We called a few of them and found the perfect fit for us.
We had DH's uncle get ordained online to do our ceremony. Originally, his great aunt and uncle (both UCC ministers) were going to perform the ceremony, but it conflicted with their 50th wedding anniversary. Anyway, for us it ended up being better to have a completely personal ceremony with some traditional elements, rather than a traditional ceremony with some personalized verses (we're not religious either, and all of the religious references in the UCC ceremony made us uncomfortable). We also loved having someone so dear to us, who knows us so well and whom we really respect perform the ceremony. And he did such a good job that most of my family thought he was our minister! Anyway, it was very easy to get him ordained (in Ohio) and we got to have the ceremony we wanted (spiritual and personal) without it being specifically religious in a way that made us uncomfortable. And it didn't feel any less 'real', only more meaningful.
Thank you, guys. These are all great suggestions. I feel much less overwhelmed by this now!
One more suggestion--our officiant was actually a Unitarian Universalist minister, and he was well accustomed to the exact situation that you described--it happens to be almost identical to ours! Anyway, he was more than happy to work with us and helped us design a ceremony that was still (I think) respectful to our parents' beliefs, without us having to 'give in' to them. We were really happy with the result! Perhaps contacting a UU minister could help you, too :-) From my experience, they're very open minded and accommodating!
Good call, blueberry. I'd thought about the Unitarians, but I wasn't sure how they'd feel about the fact that we were from out of town, wouldn't attend any of their services, etc. The congregations I've encountered in the past have always been very welcoming and understanding, though. I'll add that to our list of avenues to investigate! :)
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Ok - I posted a comment about this on the main blog but, remembering that there are boards now (yay!), I figured I'd get some feedback here.
My fiance is not a religious person and he does not ascribe to any sort of otherwordly deity of any sort. I am no longer religious (although I was in my past) and don't think it's important to have a religious ceremony, even though I'd like there to be some talk of the more spiritual, emotional side of love, marriage, etc. He's open to that, but putting any sort of definitive religious touches on things will be enough to make him (and me, by proxy) uncomfortable and unhappy. We'll have guests from a lot of different traditions and we don't want anyone (including us!) to feel alienated.
I know that our parents want us to have ceremonies that, if not religious, at least mention God once. I don't know that that's going to happen, though, and I've already begun that dialogue with mine. My question, really, is how we go about picking an officiant. Neither of us goes to a church and the situation is complicated by the fact we're getting married in another city (Dallas). Once we pick a date/location, what should we do? Should we just start calling people who advertise? Would a simple Justice of the Peace allow us to incorporate our own readings into a ceremony and be able to do something more than a basic, legal event, or would we need to get a nondenominational minister for that?
I'm worried that if we pick a minister of any sort, he (or she) will insist upon working God into things. We've been to a bunch of ceremonies where couples have been surprised by what the officiant says, and that would make us really unhappy.
Anyway, has anybody else been in this situation? Even if you had a religious ceremony, how did you go about picking who did it? Is it fair to ask to see copies of what they usually say at weddings, etc?
Thanks ladies!