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vendor reviews: ministers & officiants
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Interviewing Christina Brighton, Chaplain, Celebrate Love & Life Weddings
Whether you'll be exchanging vows in a hot air balloon or having an inter-faith ceremony that incorporates your children, Christina Brighton wants to be the one to celebrate your day with you. Chaplain of Celebrate Love & Life Weddings, Christina believes that love is eternal, that it can carry you through both the ups and downs that life can deliver. She makes sure that each couple she meets knows how important their wedding day and their future is to her. "A wedding is not one day to me or to my bride and groom. It has meaning. It is one of the few days that will last forever. It's a celebration of love and life itself."
Personally speaking... Christina Brighton was originally licensed by the Association of Unity Churches Canada five years ago. She now spends her time performing wedding ceremonies of all kinds is a guest speaker at various churches in the area. "I'm a high-energy person... I get 'a high' when I'm speaking on a Sunday and when I'm performing a wedding." But it's the weddings Christina has performed in recent years that seem to have mapped out the direction she sees her future taking.
Celebrating love on your wedding day While Christina likes to have at least some mention of 'the spirit of God' in each ceremony, the one thing that always remains the same is that the day is about the bride and the groom. "I'll honour their day and do what they'd like me to. Ultimately, it's their day and I'll respect that. I'm there to bless the wedding day." This not only includes incorporating your spirituality and wants, but a ceremony completely tailored to you as a couple. "With Celebrate Love & Life, you get me and you get a completely customized service. That's what is most important to my couples and to me."
If nerves start to build up before the ceremony on the wedding day, Christina says that she helps the couple draw a breath and take a moment to relax and take their time. "Brides are the centre of attention on their wedding day. Sometimes they need reassurance that it will all be beautiful, that she'll be beautiful... I encourage them not to worry and to just enjoy the day." Describing herself as easy-going, Christina uses her experience as well as her assuring attitude to keep nerves under control on the big day.
From your backyard to a British Columbia beach With Christina, your wedding day can be in British Columbia, a traditional church setting, or your Kitchener area backyard. Christina has performed ceremonies at Grey Silo, Bingemans' Pavilion, chapels and a variety of outdoor locations including backyards of homes. Recently, she was flown out to British Columbia by a couple for three days, just so that they could have her marry them. Most of her weddings to date have come from referrals by those who know her or who've attended one of her weddings.
Her specialty is traveling anywhere you need her to go for a ceremony that's tied to a special location. And wherever Christina's ceremonies take her, she takes her personal touch along with her. "I offer flexibility in the service, the location, and the words... And I offer me as a person. I guess I try to put a unique, personal touch on services."
Offering options... There are lots of options for you when you choose Celebrate Love & Life Weddings. As Ann and Rob told The Ring, Christina gave them the flexibility to choose elements of their July 2007 ceremony, "I really liked the fact that she had a number of different themed versions to choose from. There were spiritual, contemporary and very thoughtful selections. It allowed us to personalize our service based on who we were and what our guests would enjoy and made it much more meaningful for all of us... As one of our attendants said it was the perfect blend of formal, yet relaxed, reflecting warmth and a sense of the spiritual."
Christina offers a 'Marry the Children' service for those couples who have children coming into the marriage. This unique and often emotional service offers absolutely beautiful wording that includes your children in the day. This reading is called 'Promises' where the father or mother of the child states that they, "Promise to walk with you through all things!" In this ceremony, the siblings may make commitments to each other as well. For example, you may want to have the flower girl answer if she accepts the ring bearer as her brother!
One unique ceremony includes a 'Traditional Wedding Blessing' at the end that describes the couple as two people with one life before them. "Now you are two persons, but there is one life before you. Go now to your dwelling place to enter into the days of your togetherness... and may your lives together be blessed with love... and may your days be good and long upon the earth."
Another option is to incorporate a 'White Rose Service' into your ceremony, with the white rose as the first gift the bride and groom give each other as husband and wife. This white rose can then later be uses to symbolize or remind the couple of their wedding day, when they come across difficult times.
Sarah Smith and Jenene Ford were married by Celebrate Love & Life on July 11, 2007, and told us they chose Christina because "she was unbiased (we are a same-sex couple), professional, neatly dressed, responded quickly to emails, had many ceremony options we could choose from and was very organized."
Walking you through your ceremony When you first contact Christina, you'll set up a meeting to get together at a mutually favourite location. That means that Christina will come to your home or meet you to chat over coffee - whatever makes you and your fiancé most comfortable. "We most-often meet over coffee."
The first meeting is often one, to one-and-a-half hours and is a general get-to-know-you meeting where she outlines her services and your options. It's also at this meeting where Christina likes to find out more about you as a couple. "I like to know how they met, what made them fall in love," she says. "I love listening to their love stories. Then I take parts of that and incorporate it into their ceremony."
If you choose to have Celebrate Love & Life officiate your ceremony, you'll be in contact by email and phone in the months leading up to your wedding. There is no limit to the number of questions you can ask or changes you can make, even up to the night before the wedding day.
Pricing it out Wedding ceremonies by Celebrate Love & Life are done for a fee of $275. This covers all meetings, consultations, and services within Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge.
If you need Christina to travel further outside of the K-W and Cambridge area, she is happy to do so for a small, additional fee. Rehearsals are an additional $50 and can be done if time permits. A deposit of $100 will allow Christina to hold your date for you and get the design of your ceremony started.
For more... To contact Christina Brighton, Chaplain at Celebrate Love & Life Weddings, call her at 519-574-5540 or email her at eagleheart@rogers.com. She's happy to give you more information, answer questions, check her availability for your wedding date, and help you get started planning your personalized ceremony.
- The Staff at TheWeddingRing.ca * Prices are all approximate and are subject to change and verification by Christina Brighton of Celebrate Love & Life Weddings. |
For this local
wedding officiant your
wedding day celebrates love and life
"There's nothing
more beautiful than the meaning in and behind a wedding day," says Christina.
It's not just her religious beliefs that explain her faith in marriage itself.
Her appreciation for weddings also stems from the fact that she was married
herself. "My husband passed away but the love we shared is
eternal." It's this sentiment that Christina wants to offer to her couples.