For nearly a decade, I have worked with couples and families to create one-of-a-kind wedding and commitment ceremonies. It’s an in-depth process. Making a commitment doesn't have to fit into normative understanding of marriage. A ceremony can be an archetypal experience that you define for yourself. It can be a commitment to oneself first, the relationship, or growing a community. It can be all of these things. Everything about a wedding has the potential for symbolic importance, but the ceremony sets the tone both for the day of the wedding and for the next stage of commitment. How you decide to run the ceremony helps set the intention for a life together, it is a memory that will be ingrained in your shared experience.
Why not just hire someone?
Why ask a friend or family member to officiate your ceremony? And then, how do you support them to be successful?
I hear from a lot of people who have asked a friend to do their ceremony and then realized how much work it would be. Or, they asked a friend but they're having trouble making the time to put together something meaningful. I've heard from people who worked with a professional officiant, and they just have a routine script that’s not personally meaningful. Another challenge with professional officiants comes up for people who are queer or in a poly relationship, because it can be hard to find a professional officiant who will be accepting and nonjudgmental of their lives. These are some of the reasons why you might ask a loved one to officiate your wedding ceremony.
These are all reasons why you might want to use this DIY Wedding Officiant Course.
Course Curriculum
I am an artist and a kohenet, Hebrew priestess, feminist, queer, dream worker, healer, activist and teacher living with disabilities of mainly Ashkenazi and Celtic Isles ancestry. In my work I collaborate with unseen and seen beings to make art and ritual with the intention to collaborate with benevolent beings to heal earth and restore a sense of human belonging. I offer classes and workshops to help people manifest their most true expressions : to live an embodied life, listening to the wisdom in their bones and spirit. I also make objects and create public ritual as performance / ceremony.
My work invokes the scholarship of re-remembering as relevant, immediate and anti-colonialist in it’s nature. I practice and teach a Judaism steeped in the old ways, ancestral reverence and earth honoring. I’m inspired and guided by Indigenous self-determination, Disability Justice and Black liberation movements. My work is in service to a time when the hum of bees rule the land and those who have historically been most oppressed, guide our collective healing rites. I am the creator of the Moon Angels / Malakh Halevanah Oracle Deck and the forthcoming Golden Animal Oracle.
My art experience includes performing and showing throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and Northwest. I hold a Master in Teaching and over eighteen years of teaching experience. In 2014 I co-founded a two year collective art school, DIY Art School that met in public libraries. I’m currently working on a community project and film, Queer Mikveh Project, a Jewish ritual of transformation and water immersion.
I am honored to live on the occupied lands of the Squaxin, Chehalis, and Nisqually by the Salish Sea in Olympia, WA, the original village of the Steh-chass people.