Garden of Wedding Ideas

A Garden of Wedding Ideas Suggestions for Your Unique Wedding Ceremony by Sarah Ritchie, Wedding Officiant and Celebrant Make Your Own Book

Nobody Knows Weddings Like a Bride

Looking for a unique, fun, and memorable gifts to commemorate your big day? My Brag Mag is the perfect favor that everyone will love. My Brag Mag takes your romantic story and converts it into a commemorative magazine, inspired by popular publications including People Magazine and Us Weekly. The creation of New Jersey’s Jennifer Aertker Deyo, she explains, “It was about six months before my wedding when My Brag Mag was unofficially created. With so much excitement during the wedding planning, there were so many funny and memorable moments that I wanted to hold onto forever. So, with a commitment to commemorate this time of my life, I began writing the very first My Brag Mag. ”

Here’s how it works: My Brag Mag creates magazines of 8 or more pages with any content you choose: stories about how you met; the proposal of marriage; marriage advice from loved ones; or funny stories from friends. The possibilities are endless! Not creative? Not to worry. The folks at My Brag Mag have got you covered, developing article ideas and content. The adorable keepsake is perfect for hotel welcome bags, pre-wedding parties, or even at the wedding.

Deyo adds, “My Brag Mag is a hit with brides! I have seen them given as surprise shower gifts. The bride always orders more afterwards, because they are so much fun at the shower! It's really something that includes everyone, too. It's not just about the couple; it really brings everyone into the celebration.”

Big Apple Bound

NYC & Company, the business and tourism organization here in the Ciy, has reported a record number of tourists visited the Big Apple last year. I agree, based on my experience with brides and grooms, who choose New York for their destination weddings! While traditionally destination weddings have been associated with warm weather spots, NYC has become a supremely popular location for weddings of all sizes. New York is considered among the most romantic cities in the world, after all. Last year, I officiated weddings for couples from England, Germany, Mexico, Canada, Scotland, Northern Ireland, The Netherlands, and numerous American states such as Ohio, Colorado, Washington DC, Arizona, California, Texas, Maryland, Minnesota, Virginia, and New Jersey! Central Park, our crown jewel, is the most popular choice for ceremonies, but the couples are only limited by their imaginations in where they’d like to be married. Over the recent New Year’s weekend, I married lovely couples from Western Canada (Gapstow Bridge, Central Park); Southern California (Rockefeller Plaza, near the famed ice rink and Christmas tree); and Texas (Cop Cot Pavilion, Central Park). To assist my destination couples, I launched a blogsite to provide ideas and photographs of wedding locations about town. Let’s see if we can break the NYC Tourism and Destination Wedding records in 2011!

Photo Above Courtesy of John Mazlish Wedding Photography

Happy New Year to All!

It has been an exciting year! I offer a heartfelt congratulations to all of my brides and grooms. I have had the honor of marrying over 100 couples in 2010. Most of my weddings have been in New York City, but I have officiated ceremonies in the entire Tri-state area--from Connecticut to New Jersey to Westchester. And I have seen what feels like every inch of New York's very "long" Long Island. As New York has become one of the most popular spots for Destination Weddings, I have been happy to serve brides and grooms from many American states (Ohio, California, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Texas, and Indiana, to name a few) as well as folks from England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Australia, Germany, Denmark, Dubai, the Netherlands, and Scotland. I thank you all for sharing your special day with me and look forward to staying in touch.

The following slide show, prepared by my young colleague Noemie, includes photos of most of my couples. And, the couple at the beginning of this post is Rebekah and Matthew, a lovely bride and groom from Edmonton, Alberta. With the historic blizzard of the past week, they rearranged their simple flight to NYC, flying instead to Toronto and taking the "Maple Leaf" Amtrak down to the City. Their journey was over 30 hours in length. Meanwhile, their dedicated officiant (that would be me!), made her way from Budapest, Hungary to Prague, Czech Republic, to NYC's Upper East Side. We had a lovely, sweet romantic ceremony on the Gapstow Bridge in Central Park. Many tourists stopped by to watch and savor the romance, on a sparkling winter's day. So Congratulations, one and all. Peace and all good things in 2011!

Celebrate Your Wedding with Three Words

Every once in a while, I come across a "feel good" moment on TV.....times when I think that television, a much criticized part of American culture, is a really terrific tool that connects people. Several months ago, I stumbled upon a feature on the weekend edition of Good Morning America that I really loved. "Your Three Words" is an invitation to viewers to submit home videos (usually less than a minute in length) that use signs with three words, expressing anything they wish. Sometimes the clips are happy ones ("My First Snow" -- with a darling baby in a bunny outfit, situated in the snow) and other times they are profoundly emotional ("Mom finished Chemo" or "Dad came Home" [from the War]). Each week, it is a bouquet of messages from regular people.

I tried one of these video clips with a wonderful couple, following their wedding ceremony. Anne-Marie and Warren were lovable people from Belfast, Northern Ireland. I was so pleased to officiate their wedding in the Conservatory Garden in Central Park. They were joined in New York by a handful of their loved ones. Please enjoy "Their Three Words"! Congratulations to Anne-Marie and Warren!

The Wedding of YOUR dreams!

On Halloween, I was invited to officiate a “costume” wedding for a very nice local couple. The couple had met when they were very young. They went on separate journeys and reunited many years later. Pure romance. In a sweeping romantic gesture, the couple “eloped” and planned to surprise their friends and family members later in the day, with news of their marriage!

We met at the beautiful Wave Hill garden up in Riverdale, a section of the Bronx. The setting is truly stunning. This garden is set on the edge of the might Hudson River. It was peak autumn leaving season. The day was clear as a bell. The couple dressed in ghoulish wedding costumes from Tim Burton films. I, of course, was the Queen of Hearts. We tucked ourselves away in a small garden and had a private ceremony with the bride’s brother.

The wedding went smoothly, with some passers-by stopping to view the spectacle. All were generous with smiles and good wishes. One of the garden volunteers even agreed to be a witness. I must admit, that I was a bit nervous about the wedding plan. Wave Hill is a somewhat conservative location. Unlike Central Park where “everything goes,” Wave Hill doesn’t normally host off-beat events. But everything turned out perfectly.

What did I learn from this couple? Seize the Day! Have courage! Although we need to roll with the punches, assume things will turn out as we hope. And, finally…..pursue the wedding of your dreams and don’t worry about meeting the expectations of others.

Bethenny Getting Married...the Search for an Officiant

I blame this on my very good friend Denise, but I find myself watching “reality” TV shows, lately—more than I would care to admit. From time to time, I tuned in to “Bethenny Getting Married.” I rationalized by thinking it was relevant to my work as a Celebrant. For those who don’t know Bethenny Frankel, she was one of the “The Real Housewives of New York City,” part of the Bravo series. Bethenny is a very attractive 30-something woman of great accomplishment in the worlds of food and entertaining and is considered something of a staple on the New York Post’s “Page Six” gossip column. To those of us looking on, she is the consummate “personality” gifted in the art of business and self-promotion.

Perhaps 18 months ago, she met the man of her dreams. After a whirlwind romance (and subsequent pregnancy) she found herself planning her dream wedding. These developments must have made the Bravo television producers deliriously happy; for, it naturally meant a spin-off, “Bethenny Getting Married.” Over the course of a dozen or so “episodes,” the New York glamour girl planned a very high-end wedding, with her trademark wit and a dose of self-deprecating humor. Having been an event planner, she knew the ins-and-outs of a grand affair. She was accompanied in her planning process by a New York wedding planner of some note. The series chronicled—in great detail—her a campaign to secure the Four Seasons Restaurant for her venue, the search for a stunning dress that could accommodate her growing belly, and the trek to locate the perfect red velvet cake.

Given the work I do, I was chomping at the bit to see who would officiate her wedding! Late in the season, the answers were revealed. And I have to say I was pretty disappointed. The mention of an officiant (to my mind a pretty important part of the wedding) was left until the last minute. I think it eventually occurred somewhere between her shopping break for baby clothes and the bachelor/bachelorette getaway to Atlantic City’s Borgota Hotel. My mind whirled…could she selected one of the gifted women who trained with my program at the Celebrant Foundation? Perhaps it was a Clergy Person/Rabbi from her childhood. Nope. It was a woman, whose name I can’t even recall, who ushered Bethenny and her fiancé Jason Hoppy into a non-descript office. The officiant asked some perfunctory question and that was about it. At one point there was a cutaway to Bethenny’s moment of crying about the absence of an intact family of origin, but the entire appointment (at least how it was portrayed on the series) was essentially a drive-by meeting. Where was the discussion about vows, readings, rituals? Did the woman want to know about their personal story and romance? How might the couple choose to remember the groom’s brother who had passed at a young age? Or what of the new family they were creating?

All of this made me realize that our tribe of Celebrants, who specialize in creative, personalized stories and ceremonies have a long way to go in educating the public about the real possibilities of a creative wedding ceremony. Obviously given the high-profile nature of the wedding, she could have hired the “best of the best” in the officiating field. I’m sorry that no one made her aware of the wonderful choices she had in this regard.

Perhaps she will be more informed when she decides about someone to lead a Baby Welcoming/Blessing Ceremony now that her bundle of joy has arrived! (Bethenny, please visit my new website about these ceremonies!)