Ceremonies Designed for Large Gatherings or Intimate Elopements
Ceremonies Designed for Large Gatherings or Intimate Elopements
You can choose how you want to be witnessed when you come together in marriage. Whether you have a large gathering of friends and family or it's just the two of you and myself, your ceremony should reflect your unique love.
Wedding ceremonies go back thousands of years in human history to mark a threshold crossing. Ceremonies should take us from an ordinary state of being into an extra-ordinary state. When I marry couples, I honor this beautiful ritual when two individuals choose to step out of the ordinary into the extraordinary experience of their love binding them together.
When I stand with a couple in ceremony, there is one profound moment that happens every time: in just a few simple words, I watch their lives change. Those words are "I now pronounce you…" I see looks of wonder, recognition, joy, and a knowing look that their lives have just been transformed. This happens every time — whether it be with 150 guests witnessing this transformation or just myself and perhaps a couple of witnesses.
The size of your guest list doesn't make the ceremony more or less meaningful. It's your love that enlivens this moment in your lives.
What Witnessing Actually Means
Somewhere along the way, we started confusing the size of a wedding with the beauty of it. But it was never the number of chairs that made a ceremony meaningful. It's the words spoken with care, the love shared between two people, and the depth of the commitment they're stepping into. A hundred and fifty guests gathered together with a couple joining together in marriage can feel beautifully intimate, each individual witnessing and adding their own love to the love being made new that day. A quiet clearing in the redwoods with two witnesses and the sound of Fall Creek can hold that same gravity and meaning as a large gathering. The true meaning in a wedding was never in the size of the gathering — it was always in the ceremony itself.
Witnessing isn't about the head count. It's about presence. It's the people (however many or few) who are truly there — awake to what's happening, not just watching it happen. Intimacy is created among whoever gathers, when they come together with love in their hearts.
The Shape Your Ceremony Can Take
I build the ceremony around the two of you — around what's true for your relationship and your beliefs.
That might look like:
A grand gathering — a full processional, music, and a hundred witnesses that have watched over thresholds like yours for centuries in places like Roaring Camp Railroads in Felton or a unique private location called The Secret Garden.
An intimate elopement — just the two of you, myself, and maybe a friend or two, vows spoken along the Big Sur coastline at Garrapata State Park with the ocean as witness, or beneath the ancient canopy at Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park in Santa Cruz.
A blended ceremony — one that honors a Celtic Handfasting alongside a Hispanic Lasso blessing, or weaves in the guests joyfully shouting the Jewish words “Mazel Tov” alongside an honoring of the land your standing on, because your love doesn't come from just one lineage.
None of these is "more" of a wedding than the others. Each is simply a different shape for the same threshold crossing.
Your Ceremony, Your Choice
So when you're planning your wedding, give yourself permission to let go of what a ceremony is "supposed" to look like. There is no single right way to be witnessed. There's only the way that's true for you.
Whether that's 150 people riding a steam train into the forest, or two people standing quietly with me having the trees as your only witnesses — what matters is that the moment is yours, and that it's real with sweet Honey in the Heart.
