Your Personal Ceremony

Because of Joanie, our ceremony was absolutely beautiful and there wasn't a dry eye in the house. She smoothly and seamlessly intertwined our backgrounds and personalities into a meaningful and personal ceremony that was absolutely perfect. Several people commented to us that it was one of the most beautiful wedding ceremonies they had ever seen, and we have Joanie to thank for making it so wonderful for us. When we hired Joanie Levine to be our officiant, we had some interesting requests in that I (the bride) has a Jewish background and the groom has a Scottish background and we wanted to find some way to work both into the ceremony without being too religious. From our first meeting, Joanie understood our needs right away and had lots of examples to show us. Most of our ceremony was inspired by what she already had on hand, and therefore made the writing process much easier on us. Joanie was very knowledgeable, insightful, and patient in guiding us through this. She was very thorough and made sure all details were taken care of, including having a chuppah for us to rent. At the rehearsal, Joanie took command and really made sure we went through everything so each person knew what they were doing. This is not a wedding officiant who makes you feel like you are one of ten weddings they have that day. Joanie put a lot of time and thought into our wedding, and she made it really special for us. I am forever thankful to her!

I highly recommend Joanie! She made our wedding very special and unique! I got lots of compliments on our ceremony. She totally lowered my stress during the planning process and during the big day!

I contacted Ana two weeks before our elope date. Not only was she available during the busy holidays, she gave us time and attention so that we were able to create a very special, unique and customized ceremony. We even used their home as the venue for our ceremony! All for a really great value that surpassed the other prices I saw online. The professionals at your personal ceremony made a last-minute decision into a wonderful, loving and beautiful experience that my husband and I will both cherish.

Joanie took our last minute wedding and made it calm and collected. She provided us with great options over the phone and was well prepared on our wedding day even though we were not, her calmness was much appreciated through the chaos of the day.

We loved working with Joanie!!! We are so pleased with how our ceremony turned out!!! My husband and I live in Arizona and we got married in Portland. We found Joanie through an online search and worked with her online, phone and email for a year before our wedding. It was difficult planning our wedding from out of state but Joanie made planning the ceremony seamless! Joanie helped us create a truly unique ceremony that included everything we wanted! We got to create our very own personal wedding ceremony and that was so special to us. Joanie helped us create and develop our ceremony from start to finish. We worked together on the phone and through countless emails. Joanie was always willing to meet with us, give feedback and give help where we needed! Joanie responded to our emails within the same day- which was great! Our ceremony turned out great, we really couldn't be happier! We are so happy that we found Joanie, she gave us the ceremony we truly wanted on our wedding day! Thank you Joanie!!!

Joanie and Yehudah were so wonderful and personable throughout the entire process of meeting with us and creating our ceremony. They really helped us identify a framework that would speak to both of us, and gave us good ideas for what we wanted to include in our ceremony. Yehudah officiated on the actual day, and the ceremony will always be my favorite part of the day, so personal, warm and friendly.

Joanie and Yehudah performed a wonderful interfaith and inter-nationality ceremony for us during the summer of 2011. They were great to work with as we wove together Jewish, Christian, American, and Caribbean traditions into one coherent ceremony (all while keeping it short and sweet!). We were also able to put together a ceremony that pleased both our religious and non-religious friends and family. We would highly recommend them to any couple looking for a highly customized, completely personal wedding ceremony. Their experience provides enough structure to ease the ceremony development process along, while retaining enough flexibility to let the personality of the couples to truly shine through. You won’t be disappointed!

We had a wonderful experience with Your Personal Ceremony. We met with Joanie and Ana early on to discuss what we wanted in a ceremony, what was important to us and what had drawn us together in the first place. Reminiscing about the early days of our relationship was a delightful highlight during the wedding planning! They were with us every step of the way helping to put together a ceremony that reflected us perfectly. We are not religious people and drew on imagery of the Earth and our community-- they helped us incorporate these things. On our wedding day, Ana conducted our ceremony with grace, humor, and spirituality that made us feel "really married". On the practical side, YPC was a pleasure to work with and they worked well with our other vendors to make the whole day a great success.

Being a couple of mixed nationality and religion, our challenge in planning our wedding ceremony was finding an officiate who could provide a non-denominational, yet spiritual, ceremony. The ceremony not only had to satisfy both of us, but also our (very religious) immediate family members. We interviewed a number of officiates, but as soon as we met Joanie and Yehudah we felt a connection. They were completely professional at our initial meeting and came prepared with sample ceremonies and were full of helpful ideas and inspirations. They immediately understood our situation, and took the time to get to know both of us individually and then how we fit as a couple. This helped them to guide the ceremony planning process, and over the course of a few months through email communication we put together the perfect plan. They truly want you to create “your personal ceremony” by using their expertise and combining it with your vision. They also conduct the Rehearsal, which was an extremely helpful event. My husband and I were able to practice everything that was involved with the ceremony, discuss timing, and it allowed us to be completely comfortable on our wedding day. We were lucky to have both Joanie and Yehudah as officiates for the wedding, and the dynamic of the two of them combined with their meaningful and perfectly timed delivery of the ceremony was amazing. The ceremony was everything we could have dreamed of, and Your Personal Ceremony is responsible for that. We will never forget this most cherished part of our wedding day. Thank you so very much Joanie and Yehudah, we will never forget you! Jayne & Armando Tirado

Joanie was not just helpful in getting our vows together for our ceremony, she was instrumental. The consultation was great; Joanie interviewed us about our background, families, how we met and what we were looking for and gave us examples of vows and ceremonies she had done previously. With these tools in hand, we were able to craft vows that were meaningful and exactly right for us. Joanie was so confident, warm and welcoming as an officiant during the ceremony, a loving and welcoming presence for all. The ceremony was beautiful, memorable, perfect and we couldn't have done it without her.

My wife Dara and I are celebrating our 1 year wedding anniversary today. As we were reminiscing about the incredible wedding day we had, we decided we should take a moment to thank one of the people who was instrumental throughout the experience - Joanie Levine. From our first meeting we knew Joanie was the right choice to officiate our service. She was very reassuring and it was obvious that she was deeply invested in working with us to create a wedding ceremony that was uniquely expressive of who we are as a couple. Throughout the planning process, Joanie helped us navigate the confusing procedure of expressing our personal feelings and values in the form of a wedding ceremony. We were able to pull from seemingly disparate sources of personal inspiration and weave them together into a beautiful, seamless ceremony. The wedding day ceremony itself could not have been smoother. Joanie officiated with the perfect balance of warmth and authority. We enjoyed working with her so much we had her stay on to celebrate at our reception! Thank you Joanie, we are so grateful!

Ana did a wonderful job. Thank you so much for helping us with our wedding ceremony. Everyone loved the sand ceremony :)

Joanie officiated our Wedding on July 31st and did an amazing job. I especially liked her vast collection of beautiful readings, poems, and quotes that added a memorable touch. She was very skilled at taking our personalities and interests and incorpoating them into a lovely event. Guests were talking about how they had never seen such a personalized ceremony. Thank you Joanie for all your hard work!

Wonderful Woman!!!! She was a lovely officiant for our wedding, very helpful, courteous and willing to perform ceremony at a correctional institute. Thanks so much and would recommend Joan for all my friends!

My husband & I got married on June 27th, 2010 by Joanie & Yehudah. There are two separate reviews to this, one for the planning process & one for the day of the wedding. We really enjoyed working with Joanie & Yehudah throughout the planning process. They gave us as much time as we needed for the initial interview process & were really responsive to any direction we wanted to go with the ceremony. They were very responsive with getting to us with emails & phone calls. All went well & professional until the day of the ceremony. We had gone over the ceremony so many times so we didn't think anything could go wrong. Well it did. We had decided to include a paragraph honoring grandparents dead & alive that couldn't make it to the wedding. They didn't bother to check with us before hand for the correct pronunciation, so they butchered both our families last names. Also when Yehudah was reading his part, he accidentally made it sound like my alive grandparents were in fact dead.This sounded really bad because it was the first part of the ceremony, & one of the most important. Our dads were also supposed to have a part in the ceremony, as agreed upon before hand & they blazed through it instead. Joanie & Yehudah are really kind people, but they didn't deliver a ceremony that I would recommend for prospective couples.

Joanie officiated our wedding last month in June. She was very helpful in helping us come up with a ceremony that was both sweet and romantic, and very unique to us. My husband and I are of different faiths and wanted to still have a meaningful ceremony without offending any of our friends or family who may believe differently. Joanie was great at providing ideas and showing us samples of other ceremonies she's done to help get our creative juices flowing. I received several compliments from our wedding guests about our ceremony.

We had our intercultural, interfaith wedding in Portland, Oregon in September 2010. Joanie and Yehudah from Your Personal Ceremony were great at guiding us through the process, being helpful but giving us space to express our own thoughts and ideas, and generally being very nice and supportive. At the rehearsal, Joanie, our officiant, was both friendly and welcoming to everyone, and at the same time had all the authority needed to get a bunch of bridesmaids and groomsmen plus family members together on the same page -- literally. At the wedding ceremony, her presence made everyone calm and joyful. We are very happy to have chosen Your Personal Ceremony!

We found a perfect fit for our wedding ceremony in Your Personal Ceremony. Not only did Joanie provide us with a warm, unique and very personal wedding ceremony that was truely 'us', she went above and beyond in helping us find our way around town as this was a destination wedding. Our families and friends loved the how personal and sweet the ceremony was and really enjoyed getting to know Joanie and Yehudah. I would reccomend to anyone!

Joanie co-officiated my wedding just over a year ago and I am still getting compliments from friends and family about the ceremony! Joanie and Yehudah were great at listening to exactly what we wanted and equally great at helping us to fill in the gaps when we didn�t. They were open, insightful and very accomodating. Joanie was wonderful to work with while polishing up our ceremony; she was very attentive and helpful, providing insight into timing and suggestions on wording and order of both our ceremony and ketubah. Since my wedding 3 of my friends have become engaged and all have asked for copies of my ceremony they loved it so much, I would (and have) recommend Joanie and Yehudah to anyone!

Working with Joanie on our wedding was absolutely amazing! Joanie co-officiated with my husband's family's pastor and it could not have gone better. She also reviewed the language on our ketubah for us, which I very much appreciated as we have it displayed in our home. Joanie was diligent, extremely attentive, positive and incredibly helpful every step of the way. She helped us create a ceremony that was a perfect blend of Judaism and Christianity while not being too long or religious for us. After sitting through a number of weddings the year before ours that had long and cookie cutter ceremonies Joanie really helped us make the ceremony a unique and individualized experience. 3 years later my husband and I still get compliments from family and friends about our ceremony.