To my great surprise, honor, and delight, I’ve been named Global Wedding Awards 2022 New England Officiant Of The Year!
Writing and performing wedding ceremonies is a non-stop delight. It’s such a treat to be able to participate in one of the more significant moments of a person’s life – all the while making sure it’s as fun, joyous, and LOW STRESS as possible!
Even when a herd of cows shows up uninvited.
Photo by the inimitable Karen Pike Photography.
Courtesy of a global pandemic, Jonathan and Kendall had their Vermont wedding postponed more than once, and really didn’t know whether or not they’d be able to get married at all.
Eventually, they realized they didn’t want to wait any longer and decide to elope. Fortunately, the staff at Spruce Peak had plenty of time on their hands, and rolled out the red – er – green carpet for them.
With pretty much all of the resort to choose from, Kendall and Jonathan decided to get married on the golf course, which is unique, in that it’s built up the side of one of the mountains, and you gain serious elevation going from hole to hole.
I wish I had a photo of the rugged trail which takes you on your Golfer’s Journey, or of the turbo-charged cart which brought us up there. But every time I tried to take a photo, the cart would lurch and I kept almost dropping my phone.
Still, you get the picture.
Along with helping these two lovely folks have a glorious September afternoon wedding, I also got to fulfill a lifelong fantasy of going barefoot on a professionally groomed green.
My toes were as happy as toes can be! I’d have taken a photo of that as well, but my pedicure was TERRIBLE that day!
Even with the coronavirus pandemic in full swing, and many folks having to cancel or postpone their ceremonies, a few Vermont weddings still managed to prevail! Sometimes couples opted for a quick elopement, and sometimes they manage to carve out appropriate space for their guests and carry on. For example…
Angelo and Bruna had been dating long-distance, as Angelo lives in New York City, and Bruna is from Brazil. She’d come up to visit him on a temporary visa when the pandemic struck, and the whole world went into lockdown.
Their fear was that she’d have to leave when her visa ran out, and given the scope of the crisis, they had no idea when she’d be able to come back. The solution? Get married!
So, after a month of hiding out in Angelo’s apartment, they rented a car and drove like Love Bats Out Of Hell’s Kitchen to Vermont, where we had a quick ceremony in my backyard.
The Love Bat metaphor is more than apt, as they’re both biologists, and Angelo works for the Natural History Museum where he actually studies bats.
Bells started ringing when he told me about his job, as Maggie and Amanda – another couple I married a few year ago and became friends with – also lived in New York, where Maggie works at the Natural History Museum, and I knew they’d studied bats.
Turns out Angelo was their mentor! Small, small, small, small world!
I’d show you a picture of Maggie and Amanda, but they’ve since split up. However Maggie and Angelo are still friends, and it was fun to surprise them with a photo from the wedding!
Photo by Amy Bennett
Bravely tempting fate, Maggie and John got married on Friday, October 13 at Shelburne Museum. Their karma must have been squeaky-clean, because getting hitched went off without a hitch!
Share the beauty as captured by photographer Amy Bennett.
Photo by Monica Donovan
Now that Vermont has legalized recreational cannabis use (starting July 1), I’ve no doubt that a number of folks will consider Vermont as a destination wedding locale of a very different kind!
Hemp touches adorn a sweetheart table at CynEvan Farm in Addison, VT. Photo by Monica Donovan
Certainly Vermont’s long agricultural history, our numerous artisans, and our deep commitment to social justice will likely make our canna-wedding options as beautiful, luscious, and personable as as the wedding pros of our Brave Little State can muster!
Already we have herbalists like Lauren Andrews of AroMed creating cannabis-based skin care products, food vendors like ZenBarn and Monarch and the Milkweed cooking up CBD-infused delicacies, a number of cannabis-friendly wedding venues, and a wide range of massage therapists and yoga studios that include CBD in their offerings.
Once legalization is official on July 1, no doubt recreational cannabis will enter the nuptial picture in full force.
Photos by Jewels Gray, Photography by Jewels
Still, rules are always changing and as Culture Magazine reported recently, vendors are going to have to bone up on the most current legislation to make sure they’re operating within the scope of the law.
In fact, the challenge in Vermont right now is that while we’ve legalized for personal and medical use, we haven’t yet created a commercial market with a complete system of taxation and regulation.
So, if you’re interested in a cannabis-themed wedding, want a little bud to smooth some jittery pre-wedding nerves, or hope to have smokables and edibles be part of your reception, it’s best to ask your vendors up front about what it will take to responsibly and legally incorporate cannabis products into your day.
As it happens, I have a day job with a cannabis advocacy and news organization called Heady Vermont, and am fairly well connected in the industry. Plus, there’s a growing overlap between wedding folks and the ganja world, and Vermont is already a pretty small place to begin with.
Which is all to say, if you questions, please ask! If I don’t know the answers, I’m probably one degree away from someone who does!
Jewels Gray, Photography by Jewels
I just got the sweetest review from Heather and Patrick. They got married in December in the mountains of Southern Vermont, and, as you can see, are immune to weather – so strong is their love:
We are so happy we chose Kathryn to be our officiant. We are both non-religious and wanted our wedding ceremony to be beautiful without being religious, which can be hard to find. We chose Kathryn’s pre-written ceremony which we loved so much we didn’t decide to do anything customized.
It was beautiful and short which we needed as our ceremony was outside in December. Many of our guests commented on how moving her words were and how wonderfully she delivered them. She has a very warm presence, and Patrick was grateful for her company to help calm his nerves as he waited at the alter when there was a bit of a delay getting things started. She also gave us a nicely printed personalized copy of the ceremony to keep, which we absolutely love. We couldn’t be happier we chose Kathryn to officiate our wedding.
I honestly don’t know how she did it.
I know that for many people, one of Life’s Great Fears is the notion that you might not ever find anyone to love. Either you’re afraid that you’re just so picky that you won’t meet anyone who lives up to your standards, or you suspect that you’re somehow so inherently unloveable that nobody is going to want to spend their life with you.
One of the benefits of being a wedding officiant, is that I get to meet LOTS of couples. Sometimes the people are folks I happen to find personally attractive and I completely understand how they could be so into each other. Sometimes, I meet people and think, “Well, not my cup of tea, but clearly they’ve got something going on.” And, sometimes, I’ve met folks and thought, “Wow. Do not get that. At all. But bully for them that they found each other!”
If you think about it, that’s generally how life works. Of course there are the people we run across who we think are paragons of perfection, and that’s fun for a bit. But more often, we have strange and surprising connections with people we never would have expected to meet or know or love. And those connections tend to be more honest and enduring.
When I ask couples what they love about each other, what intrigues me the most is that they rarely spend much time talking about things we think we’re supposed to care about: physical attractiveness, popularity, worldly success, power.
Instead, mostly what they talk about is how they feel when they’re with the other person. I can’t tell you how often someone has said, “I’ve never met anyone more generous and giving” or “I feel so safe and understood when we’re together” or “We communicate really well with each other.”
Qualities of personhood and how the couple interacts and moves through life together are the traits that inevitably win the day.
I’ve also met couples who’ve loved each other as much through transformations of gender as changes in career.
Which says to me that if we’re looking for love, focusing on who you are as a human being – a giving, loving, flawed, curious, compassionate, growing, quirky human being – is far more important than living up to impossible standards of perfection.
So revel in who you are. Be unabashedly, unashamedly who you are. Give, listen, care, feel, and show up fully in your life. Of course there are no guarantees, but with that much unfettered being of yourself, you’re likely to find someone with whom you share just the right amount of everything.
Paula and Jon got married at The Old Lantern in Charlotte. It was a beautiful breezy day in early June and the grounds couldn’t have been prettier. Not to mention the couple couldn’t have been any cuter!
Given that it was one of the first weddings of the season, I forgot my cardinal rule of outdoor weddings: Don’t wear lip gloss. It’s very thick and sticky and if a breeze blows, you’re gonna be left with large amounts of hair stuck to your mouth. And it’s not polite to do a back-of-the-hand-wipe in the middle of a ceremony.
This is also a good rule for brides, bridesmaids, makeup-loving grooms, flashy wedding attendants of various genders, and anyone whose hair runs the risk of adhering to their kisser!
It also reminded me of the value of microphones at a wedding. It’s certainly a conundrum for the budget-conscious couple, as renting a mic and audio equipment – even from your DJ – could cost you several hundred dollars.
But sound gets swallowed up by wind and trees and sky or water (if you’re doing it ocean/lake/river-front). Even a big room can suck up sound more than you might expect, and basically, there’s no getting around the fact that folks are going to hear things much more easily with a mic than without one – particularly any guests older than 45 or so.
You might have noticed how a lot of people start using reading glasses in their 40s. Turns out the same thing happens with your hearing. While that happens naturally, most modern adults also have tinnitus and other forms of hearing loss related to ambient or recorded noise.
While I’m a trained actor, I have a naturally light and high voice, which doesn’t carry outdoors over great distances. So much for Shakespeare in the Park…
If you want a mic on the cheap, and find out that you have a friend who’s got some audio equipment you can borrow, you’ll need to make sure to have all the necessary cordage and/or batteries, and someone who can trouble-shoot if anything goes wrong at the last minute. This stuff is notoriously finicky, and while I’ve worked with sound equipment a lot, it’s been as someone with a mic attached to her, not as a tech.
By the way, when I googled “giant ear horn” for the image above, I also came up with this very creative guy:
EXCLUSIVE: Kala Kaiwi from Hawaii just returned from Milan, Italy where he was awarded a Guinness World Record for the largest non-surgically flesh tunnels or earlobes. At 109 mm, his earlobes are so large that one could fit a hand through. Kala was born in Hawaii and trained in Las Vegas in 1999 he moved back to Hawaii to open Sin City Body Modification and Tattoo shop.
Picture by: Tim Wright / Splash News
Maggie and Amanda went to the same college but didn’t meet until Amanda graduated and stayed during the summer to do research. They met through mutual friends, stayed up late talking at Amanda’s apartment on their balcony, and then a few weeks later decided to hang out and go to the Highline together. It happened to be on June 26, 2013 – the day the Defense of Marriage Act was struck down. They ended up going to the Stonewall Inn to celebrate later that night and, coincidentally, were told by a friend of a friend that they would get married.
The wedding they eventually decided on was a small gathering of friends and family at a rented house in Stowe. The only wrinkle was that a few months ago, Amanda got hit with a strange virus, spent several weeks in the hospital, and has been on a slow arc of recovery ever since.
Having spent the last year dealing with a huge health event myself (exploding appendix/sepsis), I completely understood the challenges they’ve been facing.
One of their big concerns was how tired they get, and how they’d handle a whole day of celebration. A solution we came up with was to have them both sit for the ceremony. Easy enough! They settled themselves in facing Adirondack chairs, and we carried on as usual.
An upside to this arrangement was that it made their extremely decorative socks all that much more visible!
Maggie is a biologist, so the African savannah socks were absolutely perfect!
It also turned out Maggie’s brother works at Dobra Tea – one of my fave Burlington haunts. And he was at a wedding I did for another of their Devoteas. This was a legendary ceremony in which one of the attenants – the couple’s dog – threw up just before the vows in a spectacular display of Canine Projectile Hurling.
At any rate, these lovely people were chill, smart, funny, extremely charming, and I wish them all the absolute best!
I got a call last week from my friend, the kicky wedding photographer Karen Pike. Her mom’s caretaker, Michelle, needed to get married, like, NOW, and could I do the wedding?
Karen said that her mom has Alzheimer’s and that Michelle goes out of her way to keep her calm and happy.
As I cannot imagine a job much harder than Michelle’s, I was more than willing to do whatever Karen wanted to make Michelle’s day!
We rolled out to a secret corner of Shelburne Farms. Michelle, her guy Tim, and their kids were all suited up in matching white, tan, and peach.
We had to make the ceremony quick because the boys were DYING to go flinging themselves up and down the hillside. Which, of course, they did.
All the best to two people who clearly work very hard, and are also (very clearly) such an immense blessing on each other’s lives!
All photos, of course, by Karen Pike.