Non-denominational ordained minister

Congratulations on your wedding plans and thank you for the chance to serve as your wedding ceremony officiant. The Secret Garden is my home office and I am an ordained minister. I perform marriage ceremonies and vow renewals starting at $250.00 at The Secret Garden.
Here are the ceremonies selections that I offer to choose from.
Please contact me for more details or with any questions about your wedding. I have performed marriages at many places in Orlando and central Florida besides The Secret Garden including Lake Mary Events Center, Leu Gardens, Lake Eola, Cypress Grove, Shingle Creek, Bok Tower, Maitland Art Center, The Secret Garden, Lake Nona Country Club, Dubsdread Country Club, Timacuan Country Club, and Embassy Suites in Altamonte just to name a few.

TYPES OF MARRIAGE CEREMONIES OFFERED
TRADITIONAL
NON-DENOMINATIONAL CHRISTIAN
RENEWAL OF VOWS

My new “Marry Me Now” package is an elopement package. It is similar to a courthouse marriage for a bride and groom except it is performed at my location known as “The Secret Garden” in Longwood. It is a beautiful outdoor garden setting and has the option to add up to 10 guests for an added fee. I offer this great deal for those who use my officiating service and are ready to get married. The Secret Garden “complete package” is perfect for up to 30 people maximum and other packages can be seen on the pricing page of this website.

Officiant Only service starts at $250.00.
Photography and Officiant package starts at $500.00 – digital files and copyrights included.

Email Rev. Gary Davids directly: RevGary@Proton.me

Click here to view my CEREMONY SELECTIONS
I provide nine different ceremonies to choose from with some additional readings that can be applied to any of these ceremonies so please review them and let me know which one interests you the most. Feel free to call me if you have any questions. After reviewing my ceremonies and you feel I would be the right officiant for your event, I will be happy to discuss my availability and pricing with you.
I will wear either a suit or robe at your request.

A decorative certificate is presented by Rev. Gary Davids

TESTIMONIALS

Here are some testimonials from some past clients! Thank you for your kind words.

Rev. Gary We just want to thank you for the wonderful ceromony. You did a tremendous job. It was just amazing that you were able to incorporate our personalities so well with just the short amount of time that we had with you. We both honestly think that you did just as well, if not better, than if we had our minister here perform our ceromony. Again thank you so much for making our day so very special. Thanks, Jill and Darin

Dear Rev. Gary,
There are not enough words to describe the wonderful experience we had with you and Marti. First, the online counseling and Skype sessions were invaluable. By the time we met face to face we felt like we had known you our whole life. My guests said the ceremony was spiritual, yet light hearted and humorous and just exactly the right length! The location is beautiful and the photographs were amazing. We will be happy to speak to any of your potential clients to let them know how perfect our wedding day was. We changed our mind about the date at least three times and Rev. Gary was flexible and considerate through out it all. He even councelled us via Skype at midnight to accommodate my husband’s work schedule. I would have strangled me myself by the time we finalized everything but he took it all in stride. They made recommendations for other venues, lodging, the licensing procedure, step by step he guided us like the good shepherd that he is. Note to the public, we are from out of town and got lost going to the wedding. Rev. Gary stayed on the phone and talked us into his driveway stoplight by stoplight. We were an hour late and still managed to have a full ceremony, photos and mingling and got to our reception with plenty of time to spare. When my friends back home saw our wedding photos, (aside from the jealousy), they were impressed with the service and the quality and the cost. My wedding rivaled Princess Di’s in terms of being a fairy tale wedding. I highly recommend this husband and wife team and thank God for their hospitality and business sense. This is a ministry in itself and I am glad that they are willing vessels. Andrea and Eric 7/19/12

Dear Reverend Davids,
We would just like to thank you once again for making our day extremely special. We are truly happy and blessed that we found you and that you were able to marry us on such short notice. The reason we are so elated at this occurrence is because Adrian’s father passed on June 9 and he was supposed to perform the wedding ceremony. He would have been marrying off his only son which would have made the occurrence even more special. So you see, I believe that we were led to you by something special. After the death of Adrian’s father I was extremely frazzled about who we were going to get to perform the ceremony on such short notice and also make the ceremony special for us. I had looked at so many different officiants in the Orlando area and had even spoke to one but there was something about your picture that sent a calm over me and there was just something about you that Adrian and I were drawn to and liked. It was amazing that we felt this way just from a picture and a website but once we talked to you we knew we had made the right choice. Meeting you in person only sealed the deal and relieved any underlying stress that we may have still been feeling. Reverend Davids, you truly made our day special and I wouldn’t change anything about the way you performed the ceremony. We will always be grateful for the role you had in sending us off on our new journey in life together. Thank You Tremendously, Laurin and Adrian 6/23/11

We need more stars to rate Rev. Gary! When my (now) husband and I decided to turn an already planned family vacation into a destination wedding I had no idea how amazing it would be thanks to Rev. Gary. Words can not express our gratefulness and how accommodating he was to our specific needs. The Secret Garden is Florida’s Best Kept Secret by far and is a secret to share with all. We only needed to speak to him a few times prior to the wedding-because he was able to answer all of our questions and go over everything we needed including where we would need to go and what we needed to do as Michigan residents getting married in Florida . My husband appreciated his attentiveness and the way that he followed up with us to see how things were coming along prior to the wedding and even since the wedding and our return to Michigan. We felt as if though we have known him for years and we look forwarded to staying in touch for many years to come! Mr. and Mrs. Roy Smith 07/15/2008

Rev. Gary,
Thank you so much! Thanks for every single thing that you did for us. As far as what you came up with, I love it and it’s perfect. It actually made me cry. Thank you so much for that. I really appreciate you and the work that you have done. You were wonderful and we’ve also heard many great things about your delivery from our friends and family. We cannot express enough how thankful we are of you. Thanks again for everything. God bless you and your family. Sincerely, Mr. and Mrs. F. 5/10/08

Rev. Gary Davids and Mrs. Davids are awesome!! They helped us put this special day together in less then a month..The set up they have for the ceremonies are beautiful! They are very sweet and willing to work with your needs and desires. We would definitely recommend them to marry any one else! They even played with our children while we were taking pictures. Great people and they did a wonderful job to make everything run smooth and the day couldn’t of been better! Mrs. A. 06/06/2008

Hi Rev. Davids,
Thank you so very much for doing such a wonderful job for us!! It was truly
an amazing time, it was definitely everything I could have ever wanted! We greatly appreciate you! Lauren Scutero 12/6/08

Dear Rev. Gary and Marti,
It is now three weeks since you married our daughter Jane to David and we, her parents, are back home in England. We just wanted to thank you both for the wonderful service you provided not just for Jane and David, but for us all. Your welcome and warmth were very much appreciated and I know that it made everyone relax and enjoy the whole day. The photography was absolutely perfect and we have had great delight in showing the wedding album to our friends and family. Several of them have commented that through looking at the photographs they feel that they were there with Jane and David on their special day. The actual service was very thoughtfully put together and meaningful to us all. I know now that we may be calling on you over the next few years to do the same for our other three children as they haven’t stopped talking about what a brilliant place and way to get married!!!! So we had better start saving now for the air fares!!! Once again many thanks for your kindness and your hospitality and may God continue to use you both as blessings to all those you meet. Can I also add that although your secret garden looks beautiful on the website, the reality of actually stepping into it for the first time really does take your breath away. Perhaps you should rename it the ‘breathtaking secret garden’!!! Julie and Peter Robson

Dear Gary and Marti,
We truly want to thank Gary and his wife Marti for making our wedding day such a special and wonderful event. On December 22, Gary married Paul and I at Kraft Azalea Park in a very heartfelt wedding ceremony. We were so clear and certain about our decision of getting married and we wanted everything to be perfect….because that day every little detail has a special meaning. From the moment we met Gary and Marti in the park and throughout the entire ceremony they made a huge difference in making our day even more special. They were extremely professional and yet extraordinarily warm, spontaneous and empathic and very quickly figured out what would work for us. There is a perfect example of that I want to share because it did mean a lot to us. We were looking for the perfect location for the actual ceremony in the park, and in that park there are so many great locations, it was hard to chose! At one point Gary came across these two great old Cypress trees joined at the base….and with a big smile on his face he turned to us and said – ‘what about this one?’. These huge Cypress trees looked as if they had been holding hands for centuries, the sun light was shinning between them pointing the place and adding a cathedral nave feel.It was the perfect location! Weddings can sometimes be overly structured, serious and boring, but Gary’s personal and genuine interest in creating a beautiful and meaningful ceremony for us, turned an official event into something so much bigger and incredibly special. And it allowed for all the joy and emotion we were experiencing inside to come across as if we were among old friends. And all the while Marti was taking fantastic pictures of it all! My whole family is in Portugal and unfortunately could not be present. But Marti (and Gary’s) photography pictured the magic of the place, the ceremony, the bursts of emotion, the total joy and fulfillment of our love. And my family was able to feel it (almost) as if they were present. The pictures are fabulous and everyone that has looked at them from across the ‘big pond’ tells us they were the most fantastic and magical wedding pictures they have ever seen. And we couldn’t agree more. Its all there! To Gary and Marti – our most sincere thanks for making our day a whole great experience.
Paul and Paula

Marriage license Information

The rules are simple:
To apply for a marriage license, you must be 18 years old or older; you and your fiancée must apply together in person, and you must both present either a valid driver’s license or a certified copy of your birth certificate. You must pay in cash or money order.
Who can apply?
·        Any male or female age 18 or over;
·        A minor whose parents are deceased and no guardian is appointed;
·        Minors who, under oath, swear that they are parents or expectant parents of a child. In addition, the pregnancy must be verified by a written statement by a licensed physician. When the fact of pregnancy is verified by the written statement of a licensed physician, a county court judge may, in his or her discretion, issue a license to marry;
·        A previously married minor; and,
·        A person age 16 or 17 with parental or guardian consent
Is consent of both parents required?
Unless the parents are divorced and the custody and control of the minor is assigned to one parent. Written consent of an incompetent parent is not required (Attorney General Opinion 49-122). All written consent must be notarized or signed before a deputy clerk.
Do I have to be a Florida resident or an American citizen to obtain a marriage license?
No. Residency and citizenship are not required.
Are blood tests and physical exams required?
No. The law requiring these tests was abolished October 1, 1986.
Must I apply for a marriage license in the county in which I live?
No, a marriage license may be applied for and solemnized in any Florida county. However, the marriage license must be recorded in the county where it was obtained.
Where can I apply for a marriage license in my County?
A marriage license may be obtained Monday through Friday in the courthouse or any one of the branch offices.
How long is my license valid?
Sixty days from the date the license is issued.
Who may perform marriage ceremonies?
·        A regularly ordained minister or other ordained clergy;
·        Elders in communion with some church;
·        All judicial officers (judges) of the State of Florida;
·        Clerks of Circuit Court and their deputies of the State of Florida;
·        Notaries Public of the State of Florida; and,
·        The law provides that marriages may be performed among “Quakers” or “Friends,” in a manner and form used or practiced in their societies.
Who is a regularly ordained minister?
He/she is a minister who has been recognized in the manner required by the regulations of the respective denomination to perform marriage ceremonies.
May a marriage be solemnized without a license?
No. Section 741.08 F.S. states that the party solemnizing the marriage shall require a properly issued license before performing the ceremony.
When and who should return the license to the clerk?
A marriage cannot be officially recorded until the license is returned to the clerk. It should be returned within 10 days after the wedding. The party who performed the marriage is responsible for returning the completed license.
Can I pay for my marriage license with a personal check?
Checks are not accepted for payment of a marriage license fee.
Changing information on documents
If your marriage means a change in name and/or address, remember to make the following important notifications:
·        Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, Division of Drivers License;
·        Your nearest Social Security office;
·        Your voter’s registration office;
·        Military Reserve commanding officer; and,
·        Beneficiaries: Members of your family are probably named as beneficiaries or joint owners on many of these documents and you may wish to list your spouse as the new beneficiary or joint owner.