Beloved Beginnings

The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was.
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”
Rumi

On Love.

We humans are heart-wired for Love and yet for all its chemical configurations, we tend to overlook that Love is a many-splendored Choice.

Congratulations to you on choosing and affirming the Love in, of and for your life!

In fact, if you haven’t already done so, place your hand to heart and pat it ever so gracefully and gratefully. You have, after all, attuned yourself to its quickening rhythm and celebratory song. You have heeded its call as your omniscient and kismet matchmaker. And in whichever myriad ways you might delight in solemnizing your soul claim and “I Do” for your beloved Other aloud, know that there is a ceremony to suit all the ways you want to show and tell your wild Love true.

Pssstt! Wedding Whispering…it’s Real!

Be it your engagement, your commitment ceremony, a pre-marital wedding party festivity, your elopement, an elaborate betrothal, or your vows of renewal and recommitment – you can breathe easy knowing you have a professional wedding whisperer and non-denominational officiant at your beck and call to help navigate it all.

My time with you (equal parts coaching and midwifery) will be about ensuring we blend all the best bits of your love story ~ from its once upon a time roots to that first officially-wedded kiss ~ into an expression and experience that feels univocally you and yours.

I Stand For Love. Unconditionally and Unapologetically.

Let me betray my true colors: I stand staunchly on the side of Love with my couples in affirmation of their commitment to one another.

Having moved from Alberta, Canada just five days shy of witnessing same-sex marriage laws pass there, I would wait seven more years for a similar ratification here in Washington. As an unabashed supporter of LGBTQI+ rights, I proudly and publicly flew my Ref 74 flag in support of marriage equality in Washington (despite almost getting run over with my then 12-year old daughter alongside me, by a fist-shaking motorist who clearly did not share our views). Love won by a narrow margin and wide echoing in 2012, and its reverberations continue to loom and bloom large here.

Love is a choice I wholeheartedly rejoice in. Living in such a pioneering and progressive state as Washington, which enjoys status as one of the first to legally affirm the freedom/right and choice to marry for so many, makes my inclusive heart happy.

So what more can I confess but to profess that I say Yes! to Love in all its many splendors.

I say Yes! to:

Backyard Engagement Ceremonies
Private Commitment Ceremonies
Elopements
Destination Weddings
Simple Ceremonies that Culminate in Elaborate Honeymoons
Vow Renewals
Your Pre, New or Magical Re-Beginning

And for agape’s sake, I say a resounding Yes! to You, your day, and your company of dearly beloveds.

Together, we’ll work in triad to help weave a masterful, meaningful and, more often than not, downright unconventional ceremony. Crafting a breakfast cereal unity ritual at the altar to honor the many thousand, “Good Morning, Sweetie’s” ahead, or jumping an ordinary kitchen broom in solidarity of the mandatory fun your shared householder chores promise you, are but two of countless weird and wacky rituals you might choose to incorporate into your day.

So start scheming and dreaming how we shall weave the most mythic, magical, and momentous memories of your love story into your special moment – because that is exactly why we invented ceremony.

And so without further ado, permit me to pop the big question…

How will You choose to say Yes to your wild and precious LOVE?

Talk to me. I lean in listening with a long ear and a silly smile to each and every love story I meet.

Making the decision to have a child – it is momentous.
It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”
Elizabeth Stone

On Family.

Blessings to you on your intention to nurture, name, and nestle a new life!

It’s little wonder that we uphold the tradition of showering parents-to-be with our words and symbols of good fortune the world over. This time of new family beginnings is colossal with its promise of vitality, abundance and growth, not unlike what rainfall bequeaths us from the heavens. Your decision to start a new or blended family invites an equal torrent of excitement, anticipation, longing and yes, even (and perhaps especially) terror.

Too often though, beyond the customary bestowment of gifts, we neglect to mark these important times of transition with intentionality and ceremony. And yet, each landmark moment – whether it constitutes becoming a parent, carrying and birthing life, naming your newborn, adopting a child, blending families or even welcoming a pet to the family fold – is steeped in “Ooh’s” and “Awe’s”; for each is what helps posit the suffix unity within one’s own family community.

Embodying parental wisdom is spotty, at best – it seems the more I journey along this rewarding path, the less I know. And yet, what I do hold for certain, as I look over my shoulder at this vista point called shepherding teens, is how each glittery feather, glistening pebble, gilded twig and glorious fern along the trail has beckoned me to:

be present to the precious, time-sensitivity and IS-ness of these young teachers, and;

fortify myself for the incline ahead through small yet meaningful acts of ritual and abiding words of love.

In whatever ways you might choose to celebrate your new family ties through ceremony, trust that I come to you bearing a wealth of understanding and experience – as an adoptee, sibling, wife, mother, aunt, youth mentor, celebrant, and above all, nourisher of the human spirit.

Common ceremonies to celebrate family beginnings include: