Weddingbee boards

Hi all,

We met our officiant, Jane, through a mutual friend (Sarah) last year.  She's a great person, very friendly, and incredibly funny.  She's also a college chaplain and trained as a nun.  Our ceremony will be secular and outdoors, which she's fine with, and I think she'll do an amazing job because she's such a supportive and positive person in general.  If she weren't officiating, I'd still be thrilled to have her come as a guest. 

Anyway--we asked her to perform the ceremony a few months ago, before we had the date and location set in stone.  She seemed very enthusiastic about it.  Once we nailed everything down, I emailed her all the information, and told her we'd pay for her travel and hotel, etc. (it's out of state for her).  Everything seemed fine, and I heard from our mutual friend Sarah that they were thinking of driving out together and making it a big roadtrip.  Then this week I heard from Sarah that Jane didn't show up for a recent work trip (and gave no warning or explanation for it), leaving Sarah in the lurch with a huge project.  She also mentioned that Jane has become very flakey about lots of plans and suggested that we come up with a back-up plan for an officiant.  I had emailed Jane on Monday with some more information, but I haven't heard back from her.  Since I'm bad about email myself, I wasn't worried about it until I got the message from Sarah.  Since the wedding is out of state for them, presumably I'd have at least a few days advance notice if she doesn't start driving for California on time (or gets on a plane, or whatever), but now I have no idea if I should start contacting other local officiants to see if they're even available in June, or if we should try to get another friend certified online, or what.  To me, both these options seem disloyal and weird, but maybe I'm not being practical enough.  Any ideas? 

Thanks, Brianalaura!  I think you're exactly right.  I'm just being kind of wussy about it :)  Maybe I'll give it a week to see if I hear back from her, and if not, I think you're right that I just have to give up and find a replacement. 

I was hesitating about finding someone new because I'd still really love for her to do it for a few reasons: 1) we both really like her as a person 2) she's got experience doing this but can also make it really personal since she knows us, and 3) my family is Catholic, and altough they're being really supportive of everything, I wonder if they secretly wish we were having a church wedding with a full Catholic ceremony.  Since we're having a secular ceremony, I was very happy to tell them that we're having someone who trained as a nun as an officiant (I should point out that my family is incredibly supportive and has never said anything about us not getting married in a church . . . I just think they'd be secretly happy to have a former nun-in-training invovled!) 

Ugh.  But you're right.  If I don't do something about this very soon, I think it's just going to cause even more stress later on.  Thanks for the help!