The New York Times story was not news, exactly. It is also due to the easy accessibility and immediate availability of online ordination into religions which require no creedal commitment, such as the Universal Life Church, which the article highlighted as the “oldest and best known instant ministry.” Andre Hensley, the church president, told the reporter that 80% of its ministers join to officiate weddings for loved ones, and that the church had ordained over 100,000 new ministers in the prior year alone. Rachel Lehmann-Haupt, the reporter, listed several reasons for the growing use of peers as wedding officiants: “the large number of interfaith couples the desire to be married by someone loving and close rather than by an impersonal official and some couples’ conviction that they have less need of the imprimatur of a religious authority and instead draw their sense of community from their own circle” ( 2003). I’m brother, and because of that relationship there was a lot to draw on.” According to the article, these officiants and couples reflect a new norm for American wedding culture. Donal MacCoon, also quoted in the article, said, “I’m not an anonymous priest. One bride, who was described as not religious, said, “If you have no church, then you create your own authority figure” who can perform the ceremony. The article featured the stories of several couples who desired a personal relationship with their officiant, a friend or relative who would share their worldview and perform a more intimate, meaningful ceremony. In 2003, the New York Times reported that couples increasingly sought someone they knew to officiate their wedding, rather than a traditional religious cleric or secular civil official (Lehmann-Haupt). My examination of ULC membership and weddings reveals not only the diversity of non-theistic self-identification and lifecycle ritualization, but also how constructs such as “religious” and “secular” can be co-constitutive rather than purely oppositional. This article explains why “secular” people select ULC ministers for their weddings, how ULC ministers see themselves as “non-religious” while being members of a legally-recognized religion, and how ULC ministers and couples married by them label and valuate their “non-religious,” personalized wedding ceremonies. These “secular” or “spiritual” wedding ceremonies reveal non-religious couples’ desires for an alternative apart from bureaucratic civil ceremonies or traditional religious rites. According to my original survey, interview, and participant observation data, both ULC ministers and the couples who engage them typically self-describe as non-religious, usually as spiritual, seekers, humanist, or generically “not religious.” Similarly, they describe their weddings in “non-religious” terms, emphasizing the personalization of the ceremony to match their particular beliefs and tastes as well as the conscious exclusion of most “religious” language. To date, there has been no focused study of the ULC or lifecycle rituals conducted under its auspices. The primary organization licensing these ministers, and thus authorizing these weddings as legally valid, is the Universal Life Church (ULC), which has ordained over 20 million people since 1962. National media outlets have observed that weddings in the United States, especially for young educated people, are increasingly performed by ministers who are friends or relatives of the couple and who become ordained online just for that purpose.