My husband and I actually found Celia from her great reviews on Wedding Wire. The ceremony is the most important part of any wedding. It was really important to us to have the perfect person to tell our story and to marry us. My husband and I do not currently practice any religion. However, our families come from different religious backgrounds. My family practices Catholicism and my husband’s family practices Judaism. Because we do not practice either religion, we did not want a religoius ceremony nor could we have one without converting to the other’s religion. We decided on a non-religious ceremony but wanted to incorporate some Filipino and Jewish traditions that are important to us and our families.
What interested us at first about Celia was that she had a lot of experience in performing non-religious ceremonies. We set up a first consultation and Celia was flexible in traveling to meet in the middle between North Haledon and Philadelphia where we are from. Our first impression was great! Celia has a bubbly personality and is very vocal, expressive and articulate. When we told Celia the Filipino and Jewish traditions we wanted to incoprate, she responded with ” Like the lasso and the veil and glass breaking? What’s funny is I did a wedding not too long ago that incoporated both traditions!” That’s when we knew we had to book her as our officiant. I was expecting have to explain the arras (coin) ceremony, the cord (lasso) ceremony and the veil ceremony in great detail but she already knew all about it and had successfully performed these traditions at another wedding. She explained how the other wedding incorporated these traditions and reassured us that was just one option but we could figure out our own way of doing it. It was such a relief to not have to worry about how these traditions could be incoporated! Furthermore, my husband’s grandfather recently passed away and she had ideas about ways to remember him without taking away from the joy and happiness of the ceremony. Before the wedding, we each filled out a questionnaire and she wrote a final script that we edited until it was just right. Celia was available via telephone for all my concerns as an anxious bride.
On our wedding day, Celia arrived very early and did a mini-rehearsal and went over everyone’s role. The ceremony was beautiful! Celia’s delivery of the final script that we approved was really well done. She spoke passionately, eloquently and incorporated some humor here and there. It was as if she had known us for years. We couldn’t have been happier with the ceremony or happier with choosing Celia as our officiant.
Even after the wedding, Celia took care of all the paperwork to send in for our marriage license. She sent us a nice thank you card and e-mail with details about what to do next to obtain our marriage license and everything I would need to take care of in regards to changing my name.
Overall, our ceremony was a beautiful representation of the love my husband and I have for each other but Celia truly delivered our love story in a way that not only touched our family and friends but also touched us.
Christia
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