Massachusetts Weddings Can Enjoy an Amateur Ring : Marriage: Under state law, anyone can officiate if he or she fills out some forms and pays $25.

MEDFORD, Mass. — The bride joined the groom under the tent at a park as Francis X. Coakley began the ceremony.

“We’ve come here today to witness and to celebrate and give our blessing to the marriage of . . . “

He paused. It sounded as if he had forgotten the groom’s name.

“John!” guests shouted. Coakley smiled. He didn’t have to be reminded. The groom was his son.

The hesitation was understandable. Coakley, a retired telephone company employee from Ocean Township, N.J., was conducting his first and only wedding.

Under Massachusetts law, he only had to fill out some forms and pay $25 for the privilege.

In the state’s bureaucratic parlance, it’s called Designation to Solemnize a Particular Marriage on a Particular Day. So far this year, more than 500 people have received the designation, usually friends or relatives of the bride and groom.

“More and more it seems that people are doing it,” said Michael Matarazzo, state director of community affairs. “If it’s going to be a civil ceremony, they prefer that it’s going to be someone close to them performing the ceremony.”

The one-day authorizations have existed for years, but the fee was $250, and anyone wanting to perform a wedding needed specific approval from the Legislature. Two years ago, the price was cut and the process simplified.

Some states make it fairly easy to get certified as clergy or notaries public--positions that sometimes allow people to perform weddings.

But Gerard G. Monaghan, president of the Assn. of Bridal Consultants in New Milford, Conn., said he is not aware of any state besides Massachusetts that offers the one-shot wedding authorization.

When John Coakley and Teresa Triana decided they wanted a civil ceremony in August, Triana suggested that Coakley’s father marry them.

“I prefer a person who we know, who cares a lot about us, and who loves us to perform the ceremony,” Triana said. “We’re not just two more people and it’s not his job. It would be like a labor of love.”

The practice hasn’t evoked warm-and-fuzzy feelings from the state’s 1,700 justices of the peace, who don’t like the competition. They receive at least $45 for officiating and must demonstrate they perform weddings regularly to keep their commissions, said Walter McAlvoy, president of the state Justices of the Peace Assn.

“A person could walk off the street and do as many as they want at $25 apiece. Conceivably, someone could run a business doing that,” McAlvoy said.

Jo Marshall Cooper has no plans to turn professional, though some guests suggested she consider it after she officiated at the oceanside wedding of her friends Pamela Hughes and M. Andrew Ishee in Cape Cod.

“I was nervous because the waves were loud and there was a lot of wind and I had to practically shout for people to hear me,” Cooper said. “Once I got into it, it was enveloping. All the words we worked so hard to compose seemed just right.”

Those officiating don’t have to follow a particular ceremony. The only requirement is that at some point, they declare the couple married.

Cooper did it with a flourish.

“By the powers vested in me by his excellency the governor of the commonwealth of Massachusetts, I now pronounce you man and wife,” she said.