A Wedding Your Way

Michelle recently performed our civil ceremony in Evanston. She was so easy to work with and offerd some great suggestions on how we could make our ceremony special and unique for me and my fiance. We had both been married once before, and wanted something more casual than the typical church/religious ceremony. Michelle suggested a sand ceremony to signify the joining my me, my fiance and my daughter into our new little family. We had an outdoor ceremony, and Michelle checked in the morning of our wedding day to check on the game plan in the event of rain (it had been stormy the night before and was cloudy on our wedding day). Miraculously the weather was perfect, but I appreciated Michelle checking in just in case. I would definitely recomend Michelle -- she really helped us put together a special ceremony.

Michelle performed our civil wedding ceremony. Some background info...We had already planned our Catholic wedding ceremony and reception. About a month before the wedding date I went into pre-term labor and was put on bedrest for the remainder of my pregnancy. I couldn't even leave the house so obviously the wedding had to be postponed. But because the wedding date was reallly special to us, we decided to still have a small civil ceremony at our home and have our big church ceremony sometime after the baby was born. So...we needed an officiant who could come to our home and perform a SHORT (as I couldn't be on my feet for long) but meaningful ceremony who was also available last minute (by the time I got out of the hospital and we had hashed out details with our church to ensure that we COULD still have our church ceremony in the future we only had a week to find an officiant) Michelle came to our rescue. She was friendly and very accomodating over the phone and when my husband met with her in Evanston. On the day of the wedding, she performed a beautiful ceremony for us in our backyard. Her words were beautiful and she had both my husband and I in tears. She even said a special blessing for the health of myself and our baby. It was a perfect day. We highly recommend Michelle!

Michelle was wonderful to work with. We kept changing our minds on our date, time, location ... basically everything! But Michele was extremely understanding and accommodating. We wanted a truly personal and private ceremony, and that's just what she provided. We would highly recommend Michelle to brides and grooms to be...

Michelle was great! We wanted to design our own ceremony and she gave us the freedom to do that. When needed she offered ideas and input.

Michelle is a lovely women and very professional. We are thankful to her for a business and flexibility which she provided to us. It was easy to talk and do our arrangments, flexibile day, time and ceremony details. We are happy we found her!

Michelle was great to work with. She listened to everything we had to say and put together a wonderful ceremony for us. We felt that she was genuinely excited to be a part of our big day! Great value for excellent service!

Michelle was fabulous. She was easy to work with, prompt to respond to questions, and made valuable suggestions to improve our ceremony. She was exactly what we wanted for our wedding.

Michelle did a great job as officiant at our wedding. She was very helpful providing material from which to select readings, vows, etc. We knew when we first met her that she would be excellent. Everything went very smoothly, she helped us at our rehearsal to think through the smaller details and the wedding was outstanding.

Michelle is a very lovely woman! We hugged after our initial get together and it was a nice touch that didn't seem forced or fake. She was genuinely happy for Derek and I and that meant a lot to me. I write as a hobby and tentatively asked her to send a rough draft ceremony that I could "play around" with. I was worried I would offend her, but she was very open to letting me use one of her scripts as a jumping point to inject my own ideas. With her guidance, it truly was a wedding our way! She made several helpful suggestions, not only in wording, but with supplemental ceremonial activities as well. We opted to do the wine box (very romantic!) and also added a few humorous/personal vows that strayed from the standard. Aside from that first face-to-face meeting, we communicated only by email. Because the ceremony felt so personal to me, I worried whether she would deliver it with the playful tone I had in mind. Well, she knocked it out of the ball park! The guests laughed hard and often and it was in huge part due to her spot-on delivery. I would definitely recommend her.

We were looking for someone who was willing to perform a nonreligious ceremony without spending an arm and a leg. Michelle was that person! She was flexible with her meeting schedule and let us guide what she wrote for our ceremony. She attended our rehearsal dinner with no extra fee (shouldn't they all?) and was generally great to work with. My only criticism is that she was a little disorganized and didn't always get back to me right away, which can stress some brides out.

Michelle is willing to do anything you want for your ceremony and will not judge. We were hoping for more guidance in creating and preparing for the ceremony. We had to push to make sure that things were in place like rehearsal time slot, who should be there and a finalized ceremony plan. She never told us that we needed to have anything done, we had to figure it out on our own when deadlines started looming and we hadn't talked to her in a while. Overall, she was fine and we were happy with our wedding.

Michelle is very nice and compassionate, but what counts is the event itself. She seemed very unprepared for our rehearsal and it was a mess logistically. But the real problem is that, in our wedding ceremony, she SKIPPED MY FRIEND'S READING! How hard is it to follow your written list? That's the crux of her job at that point. She also didn't speak directly into the mic and my guests were all asking "who is the officiant who can't use a mic?" It was a bummer. Right in the middle of our vows she also made a little quip about how -- oops! -- she had a page break, hang on. Really? It's not like our wedding was super duper formal but come on, no one wants to hear that in the middle of the vows. That's not witty, it's just sloppy. All in all, she just didn't seem very on top of things. There were a few big errors in our contract too (like, oh, the town we were getting married in) and long delays in getting them fixed, like it just wasn't a priority for her. I'd overlook that clerical stuff if it wasn't for all of the above. Bottom line, just don't expect a seasoned pro here. A lot of her advice was nice, but nothing we couldn't have gotten from actual clergy, or online, or from experience at other weddings. If you're going to go with someone who isn't actual clergy (ie, someone who got ordained online) just do what we wish we'd done -- have a friend do it!