Eight Weddings and Counting
Smith Faculty Member Is In-Demand Wedding Officiant for Fellow Terps
From massive celebrations to intimate gatherings, Nima Farshchi ’14, MBA ’20 has officiated all types of weddings for his friends since 2017. The popular Robert H. Smith School of Business faculty member has delivered heartfelt and funny speeches at eight ceremonies, including that of Katie '14 and Dennis '13 Dodson, left, and Megan Sanquist ’13 and Megan Averso, right.
Photo on left by Roman Grinev Photography; right, by Jessi Vaughn Photography
A late-night decision, made on a Van Munching Hall sofa after hours of procrastinating on business law, led Nima Farshchi ’14, MBA ’20 to the altar.
Then back to the altar. And again. Plus five more times after that.
No, he’s not Elizabeth Taylor. He’s a wedding officiant who got ordained online as a joke during his junior year. Now, he’s married eight couples (with another on the docket for this summer)—all with a University of Maryland connection.
“I just speak from the heart, so nothing beyond the vows is scripted,” said Farshchi, director of the Center for Social Value Creation (CSVC) at the Robert H. Smith School of Business. “I’ve known some of them longer than they’ve known each other. It’s easy when you know them so well.”
Farshchi is the ultimate connector. As a friend, he’s the guy who sets up reunions of all the resident assistants he once worked with or schedules monthly dinners with buddies now in the throes of parenthood. As the CSVC head, as well as executive director of experiential learning and a faculty member in management organization at the Smith School, he frequently hits up former colleagues and fellow alums in the business world to serve as speakers, offer internship opportunities or serve on advisory councils.
“It’s cool how he manages to bring so many different people together,” said Katie Dodson ’14, whose 2017 wedding to husband Dennis ’13 in Ellicott City, Md., was the first one that Farshchi officiated. “He’s in touch with so many people but manages to remember details about everyone’s life.”
That’s what makes him the perfect person to stand up in front of a crowd, whether in an intimate gathering of a dozen or a big party of 250. He takes as much direction as his friends offer, including time limits, people they want to recognize or cultural elements to include, and then seamlessly weaves it all together with funny and touching remarks about the couple.
Farshchi, left, with Adele and Tommy Treacy '14 at their wedding.
“We’re big sports fans, so he used a lot of analogies” about hockey and references to their favorite Kansas City Chiefs, said Tommy Treacy ’14, who married wife Adele on the Jersey Shore. His irreverent speech “really helped me with me being a little tense up there—I loosened up a bit as he talked.”
Perhaps it was inevitable for Farshchi, who grew up with about a dozen aunts and uncles and an estimated 150 second cousins, to end up as a bit of a wedding guru. He’s attended more than four dozen at this point, extending beyond family to include business fraternity buddies, University Senate alums and coworkers.
The warmer months can get hectic, with back-to-back-to-back weekends in different cities, celebrating couple after couple from Vermont to Washington, D.C. to Florida. Sometimes he even pulls double duty, serving as both groomsman (or “bridesman”) and officiant.
Staying flexible is key, since every wedding has so many moving parts. One couple with an outdoor ceremony had to reschedule twice, while another ended up having three ceremonies because of the COVID-19 pandemic: a private signing of documents, then a 13-person service, and finally a big celebration for hundreds.
Farshchi’s ability to pivot and “match people’s energy” makes him ideal to oversee a wedding, said Megan Sanquist ’13, who married Megan Averso in Frederick last fall (they leaned into it, with a neon sign that said “The Megans”).
“He’s the most genuine person I know, and that attracts a lot of people to him. He’s super charismatic and that makes people feel at ease around him,” Sanquist said. She first met him when he was her resident assistant, and he was an invaluable source of support when she came out as an undergrad.
After the ceremony, “so many came up to me and asked who he was,” she said, including her wedding planner, who made Farshchi an intriguing offer: Would he like to be listed among her vendors, potentially turning officiating into a paying side gig?
Farshchi isn’t sure about marrying strangers, but said, “If any friend asks, I’ll happily continue to do this.” (Two more couples have already inquired about the next year or two.)
Friends think he should branch out. Not only would he do a great job, but he’d befriend anyone he conducted a ceremony for, said Dodson. “He’d schedule time to chat, find out their hobbies, then say, ‘Hey, I officiated your wedding, let’s go get dinner sometime!”
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