Host: Do I need to invite my wedding officiant to the rehearsal dinner or reception? Bill Cochran: Well, officiants do need to eat, but you know what, we don't need to eat at your expense. If given the choice, I prefer to go to the rehearsal dinner. It gives me one last opportunity to meet the family and the participants in the wedding to kind of pull stories out of them that will probably show up in the wedding the next day. It gives me opportunity to get to know more intimately the bride and the groom and the setting from which they have come from and so I prefer that. But even then, you don't have to invite an officiant to the wedding rehearsal and many folks don't and an officiant should be okay with that. As far as the reception, I used to go to all of them I could until I started putting on way too much weight and discovered that at wedding receptions you have the richest, most fattening foods you can find. So I try to stay away from them for my health sake. I do offer to stay around to offer a blessing for the dinner or anything that is expected of me from the bride and groom and generally, that's through the cocktail hour or maybe just into the dinner, but I generally don't stay for the meal and I think most wedding officiants feel about the same way.