A: Both Rebecca & Emily are ordained ministers with the Universal Brotherhood Movement, a service-based organization, which allows us to perform marriages under North Carolina law. We also each have a Bachelor of Arts, in humanities and history, respectively, and Rebecca has experience working in writing and editing. Emily is also currently working on a master’s degree in ESL teaching and is fluent in Spanish. Both of us have completed courses on officiating weddings in order to hone our skills and keep up with best practices, and have had the pleasure of officiating more than 200 weddings. Emily has been married for 20 years and Rebecca for 14, and we try to bring our joy and understanding of marriage into our practice, as well.

A: Rebecca is the business manager behind our practice so if you reach out for availability you will be talking with her. If you request Emily as your officiant or if Rebecca is unavailable or thinks that Emily might be a better fit for you, you’ll have the chance to chat with Emily to help you make your decision. Regardless of who you officiant will be, Rebecca takes care of contracts and deposits as well as writing your ceremony for you. If Emily will be your officiant you will meet with both her and Rebecca when we work out the details of your ceremony. Regardless of which of us performs your ceremony for you, we guarantee you’ll get top-of-the-line service every step of the way!

A: We’re pretty comfortable with just about anything, and we welcome all couples. We both come from Christian backgrounds ourselves, but we also fully respect and appreciate non-Christian and non-religious weddings and make it a priority to honor whatever our clients’ desires for their wedding might look like. As we tell many clients, there is a lot of tradition but very few rules—we’re here to advise you and give ideas but ultimately what you want for your wedding is what we’re going to make happen! We love incorporating diverse traditions into our ceremonies. Interfaith and otherwise creative weddings are a joy, and we would be happy to work with you to turn your ideas into a one-of-a-kind ceremony.

A: If you’ve booked Rebecca or Emily for your rehearsal (which we recommend, even if it’s just in a backyard or at a park!) then your officiant will show up with your prepared script, walk everyone through it, and practice until we all feel confident about everyone’s role in the ceremony. This usually only takes about 45 minutes and can make a pretty big difference in how smoothly everything goes on your actual wedding day. Sometimes a wedding planner or a day-of coordinator shows up expecting to run the rehearsal in which case we work together (often a planner wants to help everyone line up and know where to stand, but the officiant walks everyone through what will happen during the ceremony). While rehearsals aren’t necessary, we have definitely found them to be helpful: not only do they give us a chance to work out any problems and help everyone to feel self-assured about their roles, they also give your officiant and your wedding party an opportunity to connect and feel comfortable and relaxed working together.

A: Rebecca is a complete sucker for poetry, great love songs, and romantic readings, so she’s always happy to help with ideas!

A: We often tell clients that legally we have to make sure that you really want to marry each other and we have to get the paper work all in order. Beyond that, it’s 100% up to you! While it is easy to personalize a traditional ceremony outline to all your fun ideas, even if you have other plans that throw all of that out the window, we’re all in. If we can’t do it we’ll try to recommend someone who can!