We were lucky to catch up with Liv Moore recently and have shared our conversation below.

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

I often joke with my couples that I should have been a pagan wedding officiant all along, but it’s not like on your college counselors wall the posters read “Doctor. Lawyer. Wedding Officiant.”

The truth is I, like most people, didn’t realize that professional wedding officiants even existed until I was engaged and planning my own ceremony.

As a pagan couple, we immediately realized that not anyone would do and unlike our Christian friends, there wasnt a clergy official readily available to us who understood our ritual and could honor our faiths. We had the option of signing at the courthouse and doing a private elemental handfasting ceremony by ourselves… or finding a friend/family member who could get ordained online and do it for us.

But we didn’t just want to be married at a courthouse and we (like most of my couples) have no friends or family who understand or align with our often misunderstood beliefs. We had a vision of a ceremony that honored our pantheons, practices and values and we didn’t want to compromise.

So we found an amazing human, a nondenominational officiant and social worker and we made a pitch. I write our ceremony and they be openminded enough to perform it for us and it was actually that person who first gave me the idea.

“You are a natural at this!” They said. “Your religious history education and experience as a writer are honestly the perfect marriage (haha get it) for this career!”

It was the heart of the pandemic and we were service industry workers laid off for the 4th time. We decided to give it a go, what did we have to lose? We bought our domain and said if we didn’t book 20 couples the first year, we would let the idea and business go.

The universe thinks she’s funny; that year, we booked 21 couples.

I now realize after connecting with peers how unrealistic that goal probably was. But the knowledge that there are thousands of pagan couples in this country in our exact position gave me confidence… that clearly wasn’t unfounded!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I usually have to begin a conversation about what I do and who I am by defining the word pagan (because most people are misinformed about the myriad of ancient faiths).

I am a pagan wedding officiant. I am a pagan. I am a wedding officiant. A pagan is anyone who’s religious or spiritual beliefs connect to nature, the ancestors, the planet and greater universe, divine beings typically in pairs or patheons or in the idea of a religious experience that cannot be tied back to an Abrahamic religion.

The term has changed meanings every 200 years or so. But basically if you “aren’t really religious, just more spiritual…” you are most likely pagan.

What a pagan wedding officiant does then is marry pagan people in their faiths, using their practices and rituals, honoring their gods, goddesses, ancestors, guides, etc.

My goal is to represent your love story in a powerful spell, a ceremony steeped in intentional verbage and elegant ritual.

My goal is to, once more, make wedding ceremonies about marriage as an agreement of honor and trust rather than a religiously motivated sermon about obedience and piety.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

From the moment I began as a pagan wedding officiant, my intention has remained constant; to defy the normalcy within the wedding world and celebrate my clients through authentic representation of their practices, faith paths and love stories.

The goal has always been and always will be to be accessible, to be inviting and to be genuine. To remind the wedding world that it’s not about flowers and cake and the newest trend for photo ops. It’s about powerful moments of ceremony and vow, memories filled with love and hope, and the marriage that follows this beautiful day.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

I actually get this question quite often “How did you go viral? What’s the secret to growing your business so rapidly? How did you do it?”

I didn’t. At least, not intentionally. My online presence has always served the purpose of educating and sharing about the roots of religion and mythology and ceremony…something that we so desperately need in this country.

My couples are drawn to me for my honesty, my authenticity and the audacity I have to defy the Christianized and commercialized wedding industry.

Being myself was my only strategy. And, when it comes to a wedding day, couples prefer to hire people they can trust and connect to genuinely to realize it for them.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.lettherebeelove.com/
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@lettherebeelove?_t=8m1xqC3ZRlu&_r=1

Image Credits
KMM Photography, Krista