Butler County’s district judges rule on many matters, including matters of the heart.

District Judge Sue Haggerty, whose office is in Saxonburg, has performed weddings for 14 years, and she watched her predecessors do so for another 26.

“I have been in this office for 40 years, first as an assistant to Jim Galbreath and then to Frank Wise, and I have seen a lot of couples recite the vows,” Haggerty said, including weddings at which she has presided since becoming judge in 1998.

In her office, Haggerty and her staff show off photographs of the couples she has married.

“Sometimes they disappear, like if maybe the marriage didn’t work out, but for the most part the photos are here for all to see, whether I got someone to take the photo or the couple sends it to me,” she said.

Initially, Haggerty tried to perform as many wedding as she could, up to three or four on a single Saturday.

“But I got to the point where it was keeping me from getting away on the weekends, and now I just do weddings when I’m on call on the weekends, unless they are people I know who have asked me to do their wedding,” she said.

District Judge Wayne Seibel in Evans City said he does 30 to 40 weddings a year.

“Performing weddings is part of our duties as a district judge,” Seibel explained, “so we don’t get any extra money for performing the ceremony.”

He said the wedding ceremony costs $40 while the marriage license costs about $80 with proceeds going to the state.

As for what vows the judges present, Seibel said when he was elected to office in 2003, there were three different wedding vow versions at the office, including his favorite, the Celtic wedding.

“There’s also a Spanish version, that I have never performed and would probably butcher because I don’t speak Spanish,” he said.

Haggerty said she has her own version of vows that she is so used to saying, she hardly has to read while presenting them.

And, she said, don’t ask her to perform your wedding if you don’t want God mentioned.

“I can’t do that. Getting married is a sacred act, and I say God in my ceremony,” she said.

Both Haggerty and Seibel perform weddings in and outside their offices, some with large wedding parties and others with just the bride and groom.

Both have performed weddings in Moraine State Park and McConnells Mill State Park, at homes and in various wedding facilities.

“I usually just go and perform the ceremony and leave, but if a couple is getting married at someplace like Shakespeare’s (Golf Club in Beaver County), I’d probably stay for something to eat,” Seibel said, laughing.

As for her favorite wedding, Haggerty said it’s easy to remember. It is her own.

She said she didn’t perform the ceremony when she and her now husband, Frank Ballina, flew with another couple to Costa Rica seven years ago.

At a tropical resort, Ballina, unknown to Haggerty, invited a tour bus full of travelers to the wedding ceremony in a rain forest chapel.

“People in the group joined us for dinner and a party afterward, giving us wedding presents from things they carried with them — a couple of rain coats, a gossip magazine, and one lady had a writing tablet that she had everyone sign like a guest book and then give to us,” Haggerty said.

It is moments like that that Haggerty said are the important part of every wedding.

“Getting married is very personal, and I try to talk to the bride and groom when I’m doing the ceremony,” she said, adding that it’s not the number of guests or the cost of the decorations that are important. “It’s that a couple is getting married to one another.”