Your wedding ceremony is one of the most intimate moments of the day. It’s the hour that sets the tone and mood for the party to come and it’s often a time for an exchange of words that will stick with you for a lifetime. So in order for your ceremony to be personal and something that makes you feel connected, it’s important to have a conversation with your officiant beforehand, so they know what you’d like them to say and what you’d like them to take out of the ceremony script. To get you started, here are 6 things you can ask your wedding officiant not to say during your ceremony.

1. Nothing too Personal
A lot of times, wedding officiants will add in a couple of personal stories to lighten up and add some humor to the ceremony. If you’d like to leave out personal background details or even make the ceremony shorter, you can ask the person leading the ceremony to shorten this part or not include it at all.

2. How You Two Met
Ask the officiant to leave out the “how the couple met” section of the ceremony if it’s something you two don’t like to chat about or even something you don’t want brought up on your wedding day. If not, the officiant may include this as a large part of the ceremony.

3. Cliché Love Quotes or Poems
If you want to keep your ceremony short or even make it personal, ask the officiant to leave out any standard love quotes or poems. Instead, send them song lyrics, quotes or poems that have personal meaning to you two.

4. Anything too Religious
If you’re trying to keep the ceremony nondenominational, ask to see the ceremony script beforehand and circle any religious parts that don’t fit your backgrounds.

5. To Skip the Vows
Eliminate the “repeat after me” parts and write your own vows instead. You can make them short or you can make them personal.

6. Ask for Any Objections
It’s a bit outdated for the officiant to ask wedding guest for any objections, but sometimes they do. Even though it’s unlikely that anyone will speak up, this is one part of the ceremony you can ask your officiant to press the delete button on.