My now-husband and I chose to elope not only due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but also on account of my very tenuous health. We handed Emily a near-impossible set of tasks: craft a socially-distanced ceremony that captures the spirit of a complex, decades-long relationship in roughly 2 weeks. She accepted the challenge with joy and grace.
In just a few short emails, video chats, and interview questions, Emily composed a ceremony with the perfect balance of weight and levity, capturing a dynamic my husband and I built to weather everything from our carefree undergrad days to our recent battles facing terminal illness. Her ceremony was so perfectly tailor-made that members of our family even asked if we’d written it ourselves and simply handed it to her! (Not possible – it was far too nicely done!)
In short, Emily *gets* people. She loves them. She genuinely wanted to learn our story, respected our stringent COVID protocols, and even enjoyed (virtually) meeting our dogs. Most importantly, she valued my experiences as a disabled woman and at no point made me feel lesser than my partner (or herself). She took an occasion that could have brought mixed emotions and ensured it only brought happiness. We cannot thank her enough.
-Ashley (Google Review)
My wife and I found Emily online through a Google search for LGBTQ+-affirming Michigan wedding officiants. She was AMAZING. First, she met with us for a consultation over Zoom and got to know us as well as what we were looking for in a ceremony and officiant. Next, we filled out questionnaires for her. Then she wrote an incredibly touching, detailed, customized ceremony for us. She talked about how we met, touched on themes that were important to us like fate and friendship, and incorporated a poem we wanted read. Our ceremony was everything we wanted thanks to Emily’s hard work and dedication. Plus, she is a really cool person!! When we first met with her, it honestly felt like we were talking to an old friend. She is very personable.
I would highly recommend Emily’s services to anyone getting married, especially LGBTQ+ couples. She’s very supportive and affirming. We loved everything about the ceremony she wrote for us!
Thank you so much, Emily!! 🙂
-Rebecca (Google Review)
I worked close with Emily who provided me and my husband Patrick with a great ceremony. The ceremony featured jumping the broom, vows, laughs, and cries. However, what prompted all these great events during my wedding was the lovely and profoundly informative program Emily presented. The way she took our experiences and wrote them into our ceremony was beyond beautiful. You’ll get no better experience and the price is really too low for the amount of time and quality she puts into the ceremony. Loved my experience and now she’s going to be a honorary member of my family!
-Seantel (Google Review)
What a beautiful ceremony our officiator Emily performed! From the beginning, we felt super comfortable talking to her because she seemed genuinely excited about being a part of our special day. She sent us a few questions about our relationship so that she could get to know us a little better. She was able to intertwine our answers with our love story and the result was beautiful and touching. Even though we had to have our meetings over the computer, Emily was a very attentive listener and also had some amazing suggestions that made out special day even better. At one point she even asked if we could “talk about Kota (our dog) for a bit” because Emily could tell that she was super important to us and wanted to incorporate her into our ceremony. I highly recommend Emily and consider ourselves so blessed to have found such a wonderful woman to perform our wedding! Thank you Emily and Smitten State Weddings!
-Cara F. (Google Review)
We highly recommend Smitten State Wedding! We had a very simple ceremony at Nichols Arboretum on May 19, and Emily was our officiant. We are absolutely satisfied! Emily is very patient and considerate. We had a face to face meeting with her when we are still browsing officiants. At that time, she listened to our stories earnestly, and helped clarify all of our questions. In addition, Smitten State Wedding offers a variety of services that we can customize the ceremony easily. So we immediately decided to have her as our officiant after the meeting. We chose the Prewritten Ceremony, Emily has done an excellent job! She delivered fabulous readings, incorporated with lyrics from our favorite Beatles’ songs! The ceremony is romantic and impressive, definitely beyond our expectations. Thank you Emily, for creating such an unforgettable memory for our lifetime.
-Xiao L. (Google Review)
We were so incredibly fortunate to find Emily! She has such a positive, upbeat personality and is incredibly passionate and skilled at what she does. The ceremony she wrote for us could not have been more perfect! It was absolutely beautiful the way she was able to describe the love in our relationship! She also included our kids wonderfully in the ceremony so they could be a big part of our special day as we blended families. She was amazing at the rehearsal and did an exceptional job to coordinate everything to make sure our ceremony was seamless. Because of her calming presence and expertise we had no stress at the ceremony because she had prepared everything so extraordinarily well and we knew everything would be just perfect – and it was! She is exceptionally well spoken and performed the ceremony even better than we had dreamed! We are so thankful to have had the privilege of Emily marrying us, and we can’t recommend her enough! Thank you Emily and Smitten State for making our day perfect!!!
-Don L. (Google Review)