Hi! I’m Anna and I’m so glad you found me.
I partner with couples like you to write and design the personalized, spiritually-grounded and totally authentic wedding ceremonies of your dreams.
I know the paralysis you’re facing when planning your wedding ceremony:
Putting some of your most deeply felt emotions into words feels like an impossible task.
You want this day to be worthy of the profound love you’ve built and reflective of your unique story, but you have no idea where to begin.
You’re afraid that amidst the stress of planning, you’ll lose sight of your north star: everything there is to celebrate about your love.
I help you tell the story of your love in a way that honors its complexity, its fullness.
My story:
My gift and my work has always been to inspire connection, spark joy, and create magic in community.
I started my career as a middle school science teacher after getting my Masters in Education in 2016. Now, instead of sparking joy inside a classroom, I facilitate ecstatic marriage experiences for couples and their closest friends and family!
My job is to act as a conduit: to put words to the story of your love and ground your profound act of union in a ceremony that illuminates your love’s unique brilliance.
As an intuitive facilitator and a student of world religions (that was my major in college!), I have always been drawn to the cosmic and the eternal. Rituals and ceremonies are what connect us to our humanness, and unite us through time and space to those that have come before.
It is my greatest joy and privilege to craft the kind of marriage ceremonies that meaningfully and authentically welcome you and your partner into the legacy of loving unions that binds us to our ancestors.
For the astrologers among us, I am a Virgo sun and Aquarius rising. I have always been guided by a connection to the greater whole, and driven to manifest that connection in the here and now.
I believe:
I believe that choosing to create a life with someone is the ultimate act of grace.
It’s a powerful invitation to vision, collaborate, and create the lives that you truly want to be living.
I believe that relationships are far greater than the sum of their parts.
That when people make a lifetime commitment to each other, a third entity arises: the love they’ve created takes on a life of its own. It guides us, inspires us, and breathes vitality into our daily lives. In return, we must feed it, nurture it, and protect it.
I believe that love of this kind asks us to bare ourselves to our other.
To find the courage to see each other deeply. To dust off the shadowy corners of our psyches hand in hand. To soak in joy when it’s abundant, and to do our best to create it when it’s hard to find. And to always, always see each other’s goodness.
I believe that love is alive.
And if you’re here with me, I know you do too.
At the heart of my work…
As a queer wife and mother, I understand what a gift it is to be witnessed, held and celebrated in your love. I know what it means to feel supported by your community. I’m inspired by the ways the queer community has always rallied around each other, unapologetically generating joy, beauty and opulence in the face of oppression and in the absence of the systemic support they deserved.
It’s in deep gratitude to all those who have come before us that I dedicate myself to helping couples like you feel seen, held, and wildly celebrated on your big day. Each of my ceremonies is thoughtfully crafted with that intention.
Flashback to my wedding:
My own wedding was true, modern, barn-raising perfection, thrown in our backyard in 2020 with only a month’s notice. It was the gay version of a shotgun wedding: we knew we wanted to start our family, and we wanted the security and benefits of legal marriage before embarking on that process (though to each their own!).
Our friends and families contributed their time and talents: hand-wiring soft carnations and baby’s breath to the party tent, bringing decor from each of their homes, making pitchers of their famous margaritas, and even writing a custom song out of a love poem I wrote for Hilary when we were first falling in love.
Looking around on our wedding day, I could see our friends’ touches everywhere I looked. I felt an embodied sense of awe as I realized that our love did not stand in a vacuum. I felt wanted, cherished, and loved in my community. I felt that my love mattered.
This is how I want every one of my couples to feel on their big day. This is what inspires my work and defines my process. This is what Ecstatic Ceremonies is all about!
Could we… be friends?!
A few fun facts about me:
I have a lot of nicknames, but “Mom” is my favorite! My three year old is obsessed with garbage trucks and formal wear (the sparklier/twirlier the better) and reading his favorite book, “Julián at the Wedding” by Jessica Love.
I enjoy knitting, navigating airports, dancing, replacing grass with native plants, and yes, I can long-divide by hand (though I only do it when I absolutely have to)!
I am a self-proclaimed hot tub queen and you’ll find me decompressing in our blow-up hot tub pretty much every night of the week.
I grew up in Portland, OR and am proud to still call it my home.