We recently connected with Jennifer Garone and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Jennifer thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Going back to the beginning – how did you come up with the idea in the first place?

My colleague Naomi and I both work as wedding officiants, and we create deep-dive, beautiful, custom ceremonies for couples. We often joke that we want couple’s communities to think that we are a good friend of the couple — that’s how intimate and authentic we want the ceremonies to feel. We both share the belief that there is so much room for improvement when it comes to wedding ceremonies… and we aim to create real and true, inclusive and inspiring moments for the couple and their guests.

With the rise of “friend or family” led wedding ceremonies, we had been brainstorming how we could best support those couples not wanting to hire a professional. Our thought was that while there are some friend and family officiants who can put together a beautiful ceremony, many just cannot. There is an art to ceremony, and we have seen many friend and family ceremony scripts that are disjointed, lackluster and quite frankly… boring and cliche.

When the pandemic began, we found ourselves with some extra time, and began a super creative period of writing scripts for the friend and family officiant. After an inspired burst of writing, we “soft” launched our “Owl and Rose Ceremonies” Etsy store in July 2020 with our Vow Writing Tutorial, “Not Your Mama’s Wedding Vows.” By the following winter, we added pre-written ceremony scripts to the store, and we now have 7 wedding scripts, 4 elopement scripts, a self solemnization ceremony guide, and bilingual weddings as well.

The truth is, we didn’t know if the Etsy store would succeed, and if folks would purchase scripts sight unseen. But we kept our prices low, so that the risk was low for everyone, and do our best to give a really good sense of our style in all our descriptions. The bottom line is that our scripts work best for those couples who want their ceremony to matter, and not just be an afterthought. And it is so fun to watch those couples find our little store!

It is delightful to think that we have helped so many couples create a beautiful, authentic wedding ceremony led by their friend or family member. Our impulse will always be to revitalize the concept of ceremony for non-religious folks, and this little Etsy store is helping us with out mission.

Jennifer, 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?

I create both custom ceremonies for couples with my main business, Small Circles Ceremonies, and pre-written wedding scripts for couples looking to DIY their ceremony with my side business, Owl and Rose Ceremonies.

In a world that seems to place a lot of value on rapid, transactional interactions, I take pride in diving deep and moving at the pace of a turtle. It is always a challenge to advocate for thoughtfully slowing down in a world/culture that seems to always want to go go go, but here at mid-life, I have found it easiest to just be me. I love helping folks pause through ceremony: to celebrate what connects us, to say thank you for all the goodness, and highlight the magic and mystery of life on planet earth. Working deeply with couples allows me to learn all about them, and craft a ceremony that highlights their worldview and the things that matter most to them.

That’s my inspiration for Owl and Rose Ceremonies as well… to empower folks to create their own soulful ceremonial moment. To help folks find the words to celebrate interconnectedness, to help them luxuriate in kinship and love and beauty. Writing a cohesive, connective ceremony does not come naturally to many of us, so offering pre-written ceremony scripts is our way of supporting beautiful, authentic, slowed-down moments for couples.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I want to support humans slowing down, being present to beauty, celebrating what unites us, being grateful for all our connections. I think wedding ceremonies should leave everyone present feeling like they just experienced an enlivening and inspiring moment… I think the more we slow down, and remember that we belong to each other and the earth and we are all living inside of the same story… well, that just might inspire us to rise up to meet this moment in time.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

I think the most rewarding aspect of being a creative is the way it seems to make room for other folks to step in to their own creativity. I know that I am really filled up when I see folks fully expressing their creativity — it seems to give me more fuel for my own self expression. And in my ceremonies, I can see that offering a new, relevant and inspiring way of doing wedding ceremonies really seems to impact the community in the same way. I have had many guests share the impact of the moment after the ceremony, and the most meaningful are when they share some way in which they feel an impact on their own creativity or how they see the world. (Like the time a Lutheran priest told me he was inspired to revamp all his wedding ceremonies!)

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.owlandroseceremonies.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/owlandroseceremonies/
• Other: http://www.smallcirclesceremonies.com