We recently connected with Lisa Vanderheiden and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Lisa, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear you experience with and lessons learned from recruiting and team building.

I am actually Josh’s first hire! He started his company Wedley Weddings all on his own, out of a desire to create more access for the LGBTQ+ community. He completed 40 weddings in his first year. In a year with 52 weekends, and still working full-time at his day job, you can see how he might have been burning the candle at both ends. Which is so easy to do when you love what you do! Josh is incredible, and really a force to be reckoned with. We met through a mutual friend and I was interested in becoming an officiant so I sent him a Facebook message one day, asking for his time so I could pick his brain. I was looking for some guidance about how to get started, but Josh messaged me back within about a minute, telling me he was actually looking to bring a new officiant into the fold and did I have time to meet that day to discuss it further. The rest is history. He gave me my start, without spoon-feeding me all the necessary steps. Reliability, follow through and initiative are really important in this job so he left it up to me, but I was so enthusiastic and jumped in with both feet. Anytime I asked to shadow his work or if I was following proper protocol, he was available and ready to help. Honestly, the biggest thing he did for me, was to be my “hype-man” if you will. He had so much faith in my ability as a writer and public speaker and was always celebrating my successes, no matter how small or large. It really was my pleasure, and such a tremendous sign of his trust and faith in me, when I could return the favor for him by taking over his day-to-day operations, allowing him more time for a better work-life balance. Now I’m feeling the pressure, just like he did! I need another officiant! I am turning away business simply because there aren’t enough of us but was a great problem to have.

Lisa, 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 can’t speak too specifically about his motivations, but Josh got into this business because he wanted to provide a safe space and loving services for the LGBTQ+ community. In the wedding industry, people are spending spectacular amounts of money on vendors for their special day. I can’t begin to imagine what it must feel like to seek out a vendor for their services, only to either be turned away because they don’t want to serve you due to your “lifestyle” or for them to take your money but clearly don’t support you and the people you love. Our money and how we spend it is one of the few places we can really make our voices heard, so why should you pay someone for a service when they don’t support you and what you’re doing? This is why Wedley Weddings exists and we align ourselves with other pro LGBTQ+ vendors. On a day that is supposed to be one of the biggest of your life, you should be surrounded by love and support and we don’t think that should stop at your guests.

We create customized and unique ceremonies for every couple. The ceremony helps set the tone for the evening, if the ceremony feels inauthentic it can really pull you out of the moment, or keep your guests talking about a negative, rather than enjoying the evening to its fullest extent. My goal is to make the bride, groom and their guests have at least one laugh and one cry. In this day and age, 50 percent of marriages end in divorce, and it’s so easy to be cynical. To me, and the way I write encapsulates this, the whole point of a wedding is to celebrate hope and love, and optimism. No one is standing up there, making those promises, and knowing one hundred percent that they’re going to be able to see them through. But they want to. These couples love each other so much and they do hope they’ll love each other for better and for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health. To me, that’s what is so beautiful and I feel so privileged to help them celebrate.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

It’s less an “unlearn” and more of a “think beyond my own experiences” moment. I had to learn that everyone comes at romance differently, every couple has their own vibe and ways of expressing their devotion to one another. What works for one couple sounds completely ridiculous for another. For some, the last thing they want to do at their wedding is talk in front of all of their friends and family. For others, they would read the ceremony for me and both sets of vows, if I let them. The real test of my metal isn’t actually the wedding, but the interview I have with them before I start writing. Some people just don’t love talking about their emotions or haven’t reflected on the journey, or simply don’t know how to put the feelings that drove them toward marriage into words. My interview skills have really been put to the test, trying to draw emotions out of a stoic groom, or trying to get a bride to tell me why they love their partner without making it feel like a test. I had this couple, they were each on their second marriage and she had three daughters, they were creating a blended family. The groom was so stoic and I could tell he was so uncomfortable during our interview. He could give me their whole timeline of events in their relationship, but as hard facts with no emotional reflection. His bride was more emotionally expressive, but with only one side to work with I was at a bit of a loss as to what I was going to write for their ceremony. He had also told me that he wanted to write a letter to his new daughters but had no idea how to start. So, I offered to write a draft for him. I sat thinking about this for days when I remembered he had told me he built a house for his new family, and his fiance mentioned that he had a really big heart. It was my job to fill in the gaps in a way that would sound as authentic to them as I could manage. As odd as it might sound, I put myself (as best I could) into the shoes of a man used to solitude, who suddenly found himself with not just a wife but three daughters, by choice. He loved them and wanted to build them all a home, with his own two hands. That is a very big heart indeed. Once I had his letter to his daughters drafted, the ceremony was easy. I consider it a highlight of my career as an officiant that the letter I wrote from his persepctive moved this big stoic man to tears within three sentences.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

I think one of the biggest things about a good ceremony, is to believe what you’re saying. If you believe in love, and the love the couple shares, it colors your ceremony as well as your ability to perform that ceremony. Writing is only part of the job, you have to stand up there and perform out loud what you’ve written too. My creativity helps with this process,I do love writing love letters, and I’ve had public speaking and theater experience but my emotional intelligence feeds the process as much as my creativity. If you’re cynical, it’s almost impossible to reflect your clients’ feelings in a true and authentic way. If you can write about love in a positive way, you don’t have to be naiive but you do have to be optimistic, you can write and perform a wedding ceremony. Formatting and language can be found online, there are a plethora of resources available, and you could easily create a ceremony piecemeal from the Internet. But, I’m not convinced you can do this and deliver a quality product if you don’t actually believe what you’re saying.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.wedleyweddings.com/
• Instagram: @wedley_weddings
• Facebook: facebook.com/wedleyweddings
• Other: https://www.theknot.com/marketplace/wedley-weddings-olathe-ks-2036313

Image Credits
Elizabeth L. Powell Emily Nystrom Kelsey Diane