The Officiant Behind the Story.

I spent ten years in sales and public speaking before I ever wrote a ceremony. Rooms full of skeptics. Small conference stages. Long dinners where someone had to say something meaningful before the food got cold. I learned, slowly, what words can do — and what they can't.

My first ceremony was for close friends who asked because they didn't want the default. They wanted something that sounded like them. I took it seriously. I asked too many questions. I wrote, rewrote, and then I stood in front of ninety people and told a story that only two of them had ever lived.

Afterward, their parents came up to me, separately, and said the same thing: “That was them.” That's when I knew what this work was supposed to be.

A ceremony is the one part of your wedding day that is just for you. Not the photographs, not the flowers, not the party afterward. The ceremony. I believe it deserves to be written with the same care you'd put into a first letter to someone you loved.