Ceremonies By Sue Morales

Of all the professionals and vendors involved in our June 2012 wedding in Berkeley, none made a bigger impact than Sue Morales, our wedding officiant. We had a year to plan, and since neither of us is religiously affiliated, we looked extensively through the Bay Area for someone who could reflect our personalities, make our diverse group of guests feel welcome and at ease, and put together a simple but meaningful ceremony. If you’re here on Unilocal,you’ll find the same big names that we did, and I’m betting you’ll wind up talking to a few. Our experience was that many of the most popular – while having tons of experience putting together weddings and offering some helpful tips for a smooth day– were so insincere and so obviously disinterested in anything but the business angle of it that we really couldn’t commit to letting them take charge of officiating our wedding.
Then we found Sue. Her website’s modest by comparison, but all it took was a few emails to know that she was different. When we met to talk over her approach, she radiated warmth and a kind of genuine investment in her work as a wedding celebrant. She’s funny, gentle, and completely reassuring… just what a nervous couple really needed. We talked for much longer than anyone had planned, just because she’s such great company. Over the coming months, she sent each of us a kind of questionnaire (where did we meet? What do you really love about your spouse’s personality? What would you want your guests to know about your wedding, or about the life you’re planning together?) that she then wove into her sermon– it was all the best elements of «writing our own vows» without the mess of us having to actually stumble through it. We heard over and over on the day of our wedding that our guests had never seen such a beautiful ceremony before, and we absolutely agree.
Sue was endlessly patient, taking revisions and sending help and info for our wedding party right up to a few days before the wedding. Her fees were not only fair, but considerably less than what the Big Name Guys we talked to were asking. We simply can’t recommend her enough.