Finding an Officiant

Jeff and I are now starting to think about and plan our wedding ceremony. The first thing we need to figure out is who we will have as our officiant. It's a little bit difficult, because there is no obvious choice for us. We don't have a family member that is a religious official, and we don't interact with any religious officials on a regular basis. Also, I'm Catholic, and though Jeff's family background is half-Christian, half-Jewish, he is not religious. We'd like to tailor our wedding ceremony to fit our style. We'd like it to be formal and personal, thoughtful and substantial. and though we don't want it to be extremely religious, we would like to at least include some religious readings (both Jewish and Christian) and possibly other religious aspects.

It's possible to find people on the internet who officiate weddings for a living, and some of them look very nice, but somehow this doesn't seem like a great option to me. I don't like the feeling that the search for the person who will marry us is the same as the search for the photographer or caterer. I would really like the person to be someone we have some connection to, and ideally someone who has some kind of background that gives their officiating some authority.

One option is to have a religious official from my past. Father Charlie, who was the priest at the church I attended growing up, had a huge impact on my religious beliefs. I'm not sure, however, if a Catholic priest would be able to perform a ceremony between a Catholic and non-Catholic in a non-religious setting. We'd face the same issue for a high school friend of mine that became a Catholic priest.

The next option would be to have a friend recommend a priest, pastor, or other religious official that they really like and think we would work well with. We're talking to friends in Minnesota to try to get recommendations.

After that, the next option would probably be to ask a family member or family friend to get ordained and perform the ceremony. This would be nice, because we would really be able to tailor the ceremony to fit our style, and it would be very personal.