We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Elizabeth Babinski a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Elizabeth thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard

The writing and storytelling! Or this has always been the core of my business. There are a lot of officiants out there, but there aren’t too many that focus solely on storytelling and good writing. It’s not just about having gone to school once for writing, but the constant dedication to improving. I’m always developing my own work, whether through book or poem format, so I can bring that to the wedding ceremonies I write. I’m constantly in school.

Elizabeth, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

As my title suggests, I’m a wedding officiant.

The short version of the story is that I had friends getting married that didn’t have anyone to officiate or know any professional that was LGBTQ-friendly, so I decided to start a business. It worked out well because I love writing, so this was a great way for me to practice my writing and do something meaningful. The business blew up in the first year and hasn’t stopped since!

I began with offering just officiating services, but now I ghostwrite many wedding ceremonies for folks having loved ones officiate, and conduct vow renewals. On top of all this, I’m launching a line of journals in the next few months to help couples write their wedding vows and loved ones write wedding ceremonies. I’m really excited about this because I’m combining all of the knowledge I have from the last nine or so years into a tangible product that takes away the fear of writing emotions for couples and provides them with a memorable item, too!

I know most people don’t think about their ceremony when planning a wedding, but it can be a wonderful element of the day, and I hope that I can continue to share that amongst the industry! There’s nothing better than going to a wedding and walking away from the ceremony having learned something new about the couple.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

This is kind of a weird one, but it’s that it’s important to stay happy. I struggle with mental health issues, so having a wedding business is obviously a challenge when I’m expected to be “on” all the time.

During my earlier years, I battled with figuring out how to have a life that allowed me to feel…anything, while balancing a business that relies heavily on being an unofficial therapist for a huge moment of a couple’s lives. I felt that, if I wasn’t happy or pretending to be happy, something was wrong with my business model, and I was a failure.

After a lot of wine, therapy, and time, I learned it’s ok to take time for myself and not to feel guilty about it. Now, during the morning and night, I write my own pieces that are much less happy (more dark comedy!) and give me the balance I need to stay genuinely happy during my working hours. And I also practice my writing!

It’s ok to have emotions, it’s ok to feel things, it’s ok not to be extremely excited all the time. But as a business owner, it’s about learning how to balance those because a business owner isn’t a regular person in the sense that they can just take a day off whenever. Having a good routine for managing emotions and a support system is what led me to this point.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Most officiants either have no reputation or a bad reputation, which was a boulder for me to roll up a hill when starting this business.

I (hope) I have a reputation now of consistently great quality, friendliness, and kindness. Having a presence on social media was the first step to this – people need to know who I am!

The second was to make constant efforts to get to know other vendors and their stories. Not only did this help with creating a genuine connection, but it also helped me when couples asked for referrals.

And finally, I write outside of the wedding business, so maintaining published content, whether that’s my terrible Instagram poetry, book-writing process, or all the other websites I’ve published work on, has shown that I’m serious about creative writing.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.lizraeandco.com
• Instagram: @lizraeandco
• Other: TikTok: @lizraeco

Image Credits
Mandelette Photography Marit Williams Photography The Hendrys Deepwell Photography TWA Photographers