Carissa Ceremonies

Jessica absolutely made our wedding ceremony the most memorable moment of our lives. We felt like she was part of our family. She understood that we wanted to showcase how important family and friends are to us on and especially central on our wedding day. She embraced all of the personal touches we discussed with her and weaved them beautifully into our ceremony. She had great pointers on the flow and special moments for our ceremony. Her positive energy, professionalism, guidance, charisma, and warmth made our big day perfect. So many of our guests commented to us about how she led our ceremony, and how she felt just as excited and connected with us as our own family did. We can't say enough about how amazing our experience was and HIGHLY recommend Jessica for life's important events. Thank you, Jessica!

Every child is a miracle, and deserves a celebration.Those were my feelings this past summer when we had Jessica, of Carissa Ceremonies perform a dedication service for our third daughter Emily.After struggling with infertility issues for years,it was the most welcome surprise last spring when we found out that we were going to have another baby. I knew that this baby was such a blessing in many ways, and we had to find a special way to acknowledge this gift. I have known Jessica for a long time, when she was a social worker with an adoption agency , she was a great support for my husband and I. Infertility is a difficult road, and her compassion and friendship during that time in our lives helped me more than she could know.So who better to perform this celebration than the person that has seen our family through so much. In planning the service,being able to work with someone that knew our history and why it was so important to me to really celebrate this baby was invaluable. I could bring what I wanted to convey,and Jessica had the creativity and experience to bring it to life. Emily's dedication was everything I hoped for and more,a beautiful day of family and friends. The service was genuinely meaningful and fun, complete with music,a sand blending ceremony,a nursing break for the guest of honor and a grand finale with all of the kids present releasing a rainbow of balloons.Thanks to Jessica everyone understood what we were celebrating, and why it was so important to us. At one point in my life, Jessica was witness to some of my saddest days,when I didn't know if I would ever have a family.I consider it a gift that she was able to be an integral part of one of my very best. I believe that this day meant as much to Jessica as it did to us,and it came through in our service.I think we both knew, that we had come full circle .

Jessica was wonderful. She was warm and kind and was perfect for us. She explained how everything works and gave us a ton of options for our ceremony and was completely open to our ideas - even letting our dog be the ringbearer! I would reccommend her over and over again!

Jessica was wonderful to work with. In our first meeting we felt like she was so easy to talk with and had such a presence. We also felt like she was open helping us make our ceremony simple, yet meaningful and personal. She helped to give us suggestions or readings, and ways to incorporate our family. She gave us guidance on writing our own personal vows. She was also quick to respond to emails and was at all times professional. I felt like she truly enjoyed her job and working with us. She worked well with our ceremony location to make our rehearsal effortless. Our ceremony was beautiful. Everything she worked with us on in advance materialized. It was such a beautiful ceremony and most everyone was crying. Afterward so many people asked us about her, and talked about what a beautiful ceremony it was. I would definitely recommend her to other brides :)

When my now husband & I began looking for an officiant for our Saratoga wedding, we were looking for someone who would listen to our ideas, someone who would provide guidance (since we felt like we had no idea what we were doing!), and most importantly, someone we felt we could connect with in the small amount of time we had available to meet face to face, since we were planning our big day from Boston. Jessica Rowell of Carissa Ceremonies exceeded our expectations in every way. Her warm yet professional manner put us at ease immediately. She listened to all of our ideas, answered all our questions, and incorporated everything we asked into the ceremony. She provided guidance and addressed all of our concerns with productive and creative suggestions. There were tons of people at our rehearsal, but she calmly took charge and ran through everything like a rock star! She had no problem accommodating a last minute change I requested. I was a stressed bride on my wedding day, but the one thing I had absolutely no worries about was the ceremony since I knew it was in such good hands. It turned out perfectly! Our friends and families were impressed by her professionalism, grace, and warmth. Jessica went above and beyond for us and I can’t imagine what our big day would have been like without her. She is truly a gem!

For my 15 year vow renewal, I can't imagine it would have gone any smoother with anyone else besides Jessica. Never having met her, living in Florida and trying to plan a surprise renewal for my husband in New York was certainly a challenge, for myself and I am sure for Jessica. She calmed my anxiety when I thought I couldn't make it happen and reassured me that it would be wonderful. The ceremony was everything I expected and more and I couldn't have been happier. She is a true professional and I am so happy I chose her to celebrate my marriage! Thank You Jessica from the Bernardo's!

Jessica was a continual source of guidance, reassurance, humor, and warmth throughout our year-long wedding-planning process. Professional yet caring and easy-going, Jessica offered many suggestions about how to structure a ceremony — sending us a wide variety of sample ceremony scripts for us to browse through, for example — without ever imposing on us a particular vision of what a ceremony is “supposed” to be like. As my husband and I come from very different cultural backgrounds (Cambodian and Greek/Sicilian), we were so happy to see that Jessica was not only open to hearing about our various wedding traditions but downright enthusiastic about finding ways to incorporate them into our ceremony. Jessica helped us edit the ceremony script into a polished final product that balanced my husband’s culture and religion with my own and managed to be deeply meaningful without sounding overly sentimental. Since we didn’t hire a wedding coordinator, we greatly appreciated the fact that Jessica was always ready to roll with the punches, keeping up with multiple changes to previously longstanding plans, making herself available to meet on several occasions, and deftly turning an initially chaotic rehearsal into a productive meeting. On the day of the wedding, Jessica was simultaneously a bastion of calm (soothing everyone in the bridal suite when my grandmother’s ride was late, lost, and out of cell-phone range; reassuring the nervous groom as he waited at the altar) and a pro-active problem-solver, coordinating with the D.J. and handling last-minute issues on her own. Our ceremony went off beautifully, earning us (unprompted!) rave reviews from our guests in the days and weeks following the wedding. What is more, everyone who had any level of contact with Jessica mentioned how wonderful she was. One friend even commented that Jessica was her ideal of what an officiant should be. My husband and I whole-heartedly agree!

Jessica did an amazing job with our wedding. She is very flexible and willing to design a ceremony that truly reflects the bride and groom. She helped us to craft a beautiful civil ceremony that was meaningful to us. We appreciated her thoughts and advice and she did an amazing job reading the script on the day of our wedding.

Jessica performed an adoption ceremony for us. While we were designing our ceremony she provided us with information and examples as well as guided us in making our ceremony individualized to meet our needs. She also provided a lot of feedback assisting us in developing the flow of our event as well as our programs. She was responded quickly and fully to questions. The quality of our ceremony was perfect, she met all of our needs and all of our guests kept remarking how beautiful our ceremony was. We would strongly reccommend Jessica to friends and family who are in search of an officiant for any event, weddings, adoption ceremony, commitment ceremony... Sophia and Brian

Jessica was incredible!!! She took the time during our inital meeting to really get to know us as a couple (from how we met to what our families are like). She made our ceremony about us and not some cookie cutter ceremony. We were totally at ease with her like a friend that you've known for years. She was able to take the tension of being the center of attention and make it feel like it was just the 2 of us.