We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Naomi Rose a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Naomi, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
I came to my work as a wedding officiant and ceremony leader for non religious and unaffiliated couples by living it first. I grew up in rigid, insular and repressive religious community. Early on I started grappling with big philosophical and ideological questions in an attempt to make sense of the world and my place in it.
That early tension set me on a path of exploration. I spent years traveling, learning, immersing myself in diverse spiritual traditions and ceremonial apprenticeships.
I eventually became ordained as an earth based minister, and certified as a life cycle celebrant, not because I cared about these titles (in fact, I rarely use them,) but because I wanted to understand how people mark life’s most meaningful transitions.
As I watched more of the population identify as nonreligious (I think it’s about 30% now,) I saw a real need: people who longed for the power and beauty of a real rite of passage, but had nowhere to go to get it.
Couples were searching for ceremonies that truly honored their beliefs, expressed their sovereignty, and made their milestone moments feel powerfully transformative. That gap—the absence of meaningful ritual outside religion was what called me to this essential work.
I often call myself a “minister to the churchless” or a “reverend gone rogue,” because I guide unaffiliated, atheist, agnostic, secular and spiritual-but-not-religious couples through ceremonies that bridge reverence with realness and levity.
Over the past decade I’ve become a pioneer in this emerging field, mentoring a new generation of officiants and now working on a book about reimagining ritual and ceremony in the modern era. The idea for my business didn’t come in a flash of inspiration; it was the natural conclusion of years of learning, living, and seeing a population hungry for ritual without religion.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I’m an innovative officiant and “marriage midwife,” committed to reimagining rites of passage for a population that increasingly exists outside traditional religious frameworks.
To date, I’ve officiated 400 wedding ceremonies, primarily weddings but also quite a few funerals, and I’ve received multiple awards on the top wedding websites. More than the accolades, it’s the response from couples and their guests that drives me, and the feedback that speaks to how a ceremony can be transformative, grounding, and affirming. One couple wrote, “Our wedding ceremony was the most pivotal affirmation of our relationship, our identities and values, and it has strengthened the very core of my being.” That is at the heart of my work and the reason I do it.
I’m disrupting the lifeless and formulaic ceremony status quo in an industry that can feel shallow and sometimes quite vapid. I strive to bring substance to the spectacle. Instead of cookie-cutter or cliché ceremonies, I create real moments of beauty, connection, and meaning. In a polarized world, I aim to foster unity and cohesion through ceremonies that honor the uniqueness of each couple or family, and the transitions that matter most to them.
Beyond officiating, I am mentoring a new generation of officiants and writing a book on this rich topic. I am also available to teach at ministerial training programs, speak at conferences, consult with clergy, and coach friends or family members who are tasked with officiating ceremonies.
What sets me apart is the combination of deep experiential wisdom (sometimes very hard won!) and a commitment to creating ceremonies that are alive, meaningful, and relevant. I want potential clients to know that I bring competence, creativity and deep care to every encounter, and that the work I do is about more than just a ceremony—it’s about transformation, connection, and honoring these once-in-a-lifetime whirlwind moments with grace.
Where do you think you get most of your clients from?
The best source of new clients for me has always been local and organic. Word of mouth and vendor referrals have been invaluable. Wedding venues and planners regularly add me to their preferred vendor lists, which keeps my name in circulation with couples looking for an officiant they can trust. A small but consistent social media presence has also helped, especially in the early days when I was unestablished and popular wedding photographers would tag me in their posts from ceremonies I officiated. And perhaps most importantly, my website URL is a secret weapon—it’s wildly searchable and consistently comes up at the top of nearly all local officiant searches. Honestly, I couldn’t have chosen a better one if I’d tried.
At the end of the day, my business has grown through genuine connections and trusted relationships, which feels like the most fitting way for a high-touch, low-tech, heart-centered business to grow.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
When I began this work, it became clear that I was carving a path in terrain that didn’t exist yet.
In the wedding industry, the ceremony was minimized or conspicuously left out, treated as a prelude to the party, with officiants being pushed to the margins. Established wedding vendors were often dismissive, and couples would allocate little to nothing from their budget for an officiant.
There was no framework in place for valuing the kind of deeply intentional, custom curated ceremonies I was offering. I was told no, dismissed, and ignored more times than I can count. It was painful to watch other creative vendors be exceptionally well-compensated for their work, while I as the officiant – the person holding the emotional and communal heart of the day – was consistently overlooked or low-balled.
But I persevered. Year after year, I kept having conversations, kept educating, kept standing for the worth of this work. I was inventing something without precedent in the modern wedding industry, and that meant pushing against misunderstanding and resistance.
Resilience, for me, has been about holding the line: refusing to disappear, even when the industry wanted the ceremony to remain an afterthought. Choosing to keep showing up because I knew the emotional and creative labor deserved recognition.
And slowly, I’ve seen that persistence shift things. Couples I speak to now are more interested in honoring their ceremony in ways they didn’t before. Vendors are beginning to recognize the ceremony’s centrality, and the merits of a truly skilled officiant.
That’s resilience to me: insisting on the value of the offering, even when the culture hasn’t quite caught up.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.santacruzofficiant.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/santacruzofficiant/
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/santa-cruz-officiant-santa-cruz
- Other: https://www.theknot.com/marketplace/santa-cruz-officiant-santa-cruz-ca-982456
https://www.weddingwire.com/biz/santa-cruz-officiant-santa-cruz/793e921acb73b12e.html
Image Credits
https://dejoyphotography.com/
https://www.carololivaphotography.com/
https://www.stevencottonphotography.com/wedding-photography/