Today on Working Lunch we are chatting with wedding officiant Jessica Pelton, owner of Carissa Ceremonies. If you’re getting married soon, then you don’t want to miss our conversation!
Where are you from and what did you want to be when you grew up?
I grew up in Vermont, in a really small town of about 500-600 people. I was adopted, my family is a multi-ethnic, multi-racial family. We grew up in a very insulated town, where everyone knew everyone. My parents owned the only general store in town and I grew up behind the counter, running the register, really honing those soft skills in customer service. The town was called West Rupert and its located between Bennington and Manchester.
I think that I always thought I wanted to go out in the world and seek your passion. I’m 45 now and I’ve learned maybe its more about letting your passion find you. I’ve really been on this journey. I’ve always wanted to explore, I have varied interests. I’ve traveled the world. Once I got to undergrad, sociology and anthropology spoke the most to those passions I have inside. From there, I went on and really did a lot of work in higher education and nonprofits. I really enjoyed helping people, through education and other means to transform their lives.
From that I sort of sparked this passion performing wedding ceremonies. It started from my own wedding ceremony years ago. We did not belong to a church, we were not having a large wedding. Truth be told we did not do a lot of planning. We wanted a small ceremony and when looking for a person who could actually perform the ceremony we found this gap of not a lot of people were available. We ended up with a town justice, and it wasn’t a super personal experience. It was kind of like going to the DMV but walking away with a ring on your finger.
I started to think right away, I love writing, I love different cultural expressions and traditions, I love weddings and people, and I don’t mind getting up and speaking in front of people. I thought, combine all that together become ordained and started marrying people. Eleven years later, hundreds of ceremonies, speaking in front of a crowd is a very natural kind of thing.
How did you come up with the name Carissa Ceremonies for your officiating business?
I mentioned that I’m adopted. I knew very little about my birth history growing up, but what little my parents did know they shared with me. One thing that we knew is that I was given a name at birth, Carissa. When I was going through the chambers program for entrepreneurs, one of the sessions was about creating your name for your business. I had something very generic, I don’t think it even referenced weddings, and it just didn’t feel good. And the cohorts I was in class with, I thought I needed the word “Ceremonies” so I wanted another C word. We were working on something and sharing personal stories and the name Carissa came up, and as it left my lips I thought that’s it. Carissa Ceremonies. It was a nice way to honor that part of my history.
Photo: Liv Rowell (Jessica’s daughter). “This is me marrying my birth brother and sis in law, first time for us ever meeting! Super special honor!”
What are the steps to becoming a wedding officiant?
I literally went online, like anyone can do. I think it was a free certification. It took 24 hours, answered a couple of questions, made sure it was legitimate. I believe the site was called Universal Ministries. I wanted to make sure the program was very inclusive and held the same values as I have, which it did. That was how I got my start. I have a good friend who does this as well, so I shadowed her on a couple of gigs to get my feet wet. After I saw her do it, I thought there’s no reason I can’t.
What was your first wedding like?
I loved this couple, we’re friends on Facebook. I don’t know if they knew they were my first wedding, even to this day. I remember being petrified. At first I thought I can do this, and then the day came and I thought, who am I to think I can get up and do this? But, I remember talking to my friend, she was great at coaching me. She told me to go in and act as if. Act as if this isn’t my first wedding. So I went in, and it was beautiful. I think it was at Rensselaerville Institute, they had a wooden platform for us to stand on, the mountains were behind us, it was absolutely gorgeous. I stood up, performed the entire ceremony, and as I remember it no issues. After that and hearing people say how nice it was, I could think of ways to improve on it and that’s when I hit the ground running.
What should I do to prepare for officiating my friend’s wedding?
You’re amazing, someone has chosen you soak that up. I always feel so honored when a couple chooses me. 99% of the time we don’t know each other, and its such an honor. But this person knows you and chose you. You already have all the belief in you that you need. I have informally coached a few people in your situation and you’re making me think I need to have a side service of helping people for this!
To prepare, my approach has always been that each ceremony, in terms of the couple, it’s always their vision and their voice. I don’t stand up with any kind of agenda but to communicate what the bride and groom want in their ceremony. I would say do what you can to find out from the couple what they want communicated that day, how they want people to feel. How they want people to leave and what they will remember about the ceremony.
What do you do to prepare, since a wedding ceremony is such a personal event?
My main goal is to just understand as much as possible what the couple’s vision is. A lot of time they don’t have one, so there’s a process of helping them uncover that. I meet with couples in person as well as over the phone, as much as I can I like to meet with them face to face. I feel like that way you can tune in better to their energies, anxieties and address that a little bit more, and get to know each other.
I meet with the couples, we start out talking about their journey to this point. I take extensive notes, and turn those notes around and provide those to my couples afterwards, sometimes they are something they haven’t expressed before and decide that it’s something they want in their ceremony.
Because of my experience, I can really almost cherry pick and say that would be an incredible line to say at this point, or that reminds me of a unique tradition they may want to include. It’s a fun process, and it gives me the opportunity to study people, getting to know their lives. I also thought I should do like a coffee table book, maybe “How we Met” or “Proposals” because I always want to hear that from my couples. They’re all completely unique, different, fun, emotional. I always want to talk about that when I first meet the couple and bring elements of that to their ceremony because its something special and intimate to them.
Photo by: Christina Florada
How do you build a personal ceremony for a couple you don’t know?
I think its in having the couple tell me their story to help me start to build a rapport, and get those sweet nuggets that make a ceremony really personal. I follow the same format of the different elements of a ceremony, but if there’s something they want taken out or want to add, we can definitely do that. Its made it much more relaxed to know there are not some strict rules to follow.
If you want a short 5 minute ceremony, great. If you want longer, lots of involvement with family, great. Its resulted in doing very special rituals with couples. I had a couple who got married on top of a ski mountain, they met or had a tradition of something with craft beer, so we did a beer tasting as part of their ceremony. The sky’s the limit of what to have in your ceremony.
How do you manage a strong personality/bridezilla?
I honestly have never had to deal with a bridezilla. Now, I don’t work with them as much and I’m not with them all day long. I’m blessed, I’ve attracted the best people to work with. As for strong opinions, I don’t see a lot of that between the couples. But a lot of the time a couple will want something but their families want to see something else. Two different religions, not getting married in a church, etc.
There are ways and elements we can add to a ceremony to pull from traditions to be more familiar to the families. There’s a general nervousness, people want it to go off well. One thing I do is arrive early, for a couple reasons but one of them is so the day of I can speak to any last minute issues or concerns. I like to be on hand as a resource not only for the bride and groom but also their families. I always recommend a rehearsal the day before. It helps calm nerves, we laugh, it helps to get the emotions out before the day of the wedding.
What is your advice for that person who is getting married and wants to write their own vows?
I love when couples want to write their own vows. When it comes to working with me, I always provide numerous resources. We have our meetings, I take my notes, we figure out the general elements they want to have. I type that up and give it back to them like their homework, and I send them resources to help them. Copies of ceremonies I’ve done in the past, others’ personal vows.
I want couples to take time, do their homework and then individually talk to me. Typically if you’re writing your own vows your not going to share them with the other person until the day of, but I want to be that resource to bounce ideas off of me. What I hear most from couples, what they’re most nervous about is not what’s being said but how long. If the bride’s or long and the grooms are too short, but honestly I never edit them.. They’re so beautiful heartfelt I don’t want to change them. Who am I to even touch this?
The personal vows are like the cherry on top for a ceremony. One thing I see that couples are doing more and more is write personal vows and also chose more traditional vows and recite those as well. This works for the couples and works for the families as well. The longer I’m in this, maybe it’s from getting older, but I just get so darn emotional. I have at times literally had to hold it together, especially when couples share personal vows. That’s very difficult for me, as the officiant I shouldn’t be losing it in front of everyone. I don’t think there’s anyone who could stand between that energy and not get emotional.
What is the most challenging part of this business?
If anything, as much as possible, couples not to go into their day worried. Just to live in the moment and enjoy it. I think people get very concerned because you work on this project for so long, the details and coordination, it’s a lot. It all comes down to that one moment, spend it enjoying it and taking it in. You want to be as present in the day as possible, that’s the start of your marriage, you want to carry that forward not worrying about favors or signature drinks. And that’s also something I bring into the ceremony with rituals and things, harken a tradition that will resonate with the couple.
Photo By: Angela Capetta
Can you share a mistake or a moment where you’ve learned from?
11 years ago reviews were important but now it’s such a huge thing. I think I was luck this situation was early on and the couple was very gracious and forgiving because I did not get a negative review- I didn’t get any review, but I’ll take that over a negative one.
My most supreme failure in this was I overbooked myself essentially. I had 3 weddings and rehearsals over the course of one weekend. They were all here in the capital region, but not next door to each other. I was building in travel time and just juggling. If you really think about it, it’s a lot of family members I’m meeting for the first time and I think a couple of the venues were new to me, it was a lot of details to manage and I thought I could do it. I ended up being extremely late to a ceremony. I say extremely because I always arrive early, I always cushion so I arrive at least an hour early to the ceremony. In this case, I was probably close to an hour late to the ceremony. It was an extreme failure to the couple, it really was swallowing everything and walking down the aisle with every eye on you.
What I’ve taken from this is to be able to pan out, get out of my own head, its not about me its about literally think of the impact to everyone. Starting with the bride and groom, if I’m late then the first thought is the bride or groom has cold feet. I hated that, if I even did, caused that thought to go through anyone’s mind.
The other thing was, I’m not only professional involved in the ceremony. I’m not the only one arriving early to provide the best service possible. You have musicians, caterers, and all of these things have to be timed. When I started to think about the magnitude of this error, it really caused me to really buckle down and re-examine how I wanted to do this.
This has stayed with me in a powerful way, as much as I want to say I’ll book another, it really has caused me to stop and think about how I’m going to do this. And I always want to assure my couples not only will I arrive on time, I will arrive early. If I don’t, I’ll have a replacement there for you and none of that happened in this case.
The one thing that saved me, and I called my friend and mentor, and I just said “I have messed up” and had the pressure of I’m arriving late now I have to perform an amazing ceremony. I had to be at my absolute best on top of what was going on. My mentor told me to walk in, go to the bride and groom, go to the parents, they key people and you look them in the eye and sincerely apologize. One time. Don’t fall all over yourself, don’t get all into it. Give them the most sincere apology and say let’s go do this.
That’s what I did , and I also had the money from being paid the day before. I put the money in the father of the bride’s hand and went to perform the ceremony. Tried not to make eye contact with the other vendors, and it was literally the hottest day that summer and an outdoor wedding. People’s makeup is melting, people are dying of heat. I was no one’s favorite that day.
What do you typically do for lunch?
I drink my lunch in the form of coffee, but I do eat a very good breakfast and snack throughout the day.
