Amy Riesenberg, Interfaith Minister

We can't say enough wonderful things about Reverend Amy. For our wedding, the bride was Catholic, and the groom was Jewish. After contacting Amy via her website, we were able to meet her for coffee in Minneapolis. She asked why we didn't want a wedding in either a church or a... Read More temple. She made sure we were choosing an interfaith ceremony for the right reasons. After our first meeting, we were sold. Her approach to creating a wedding where we both felt included, and both of our backgrounds were represented was absolutely perfect. Her sense of spirituality and her sunny disposition helped us feel confident in choosing her to officiate our ceremony. Amy made sure that we could include traditions from both of our faiths. We wanted to ensure that our Catholic and Jewish relatives were able to feel welcome, without overshadowing either background. She made the entire process of planning extremely simple. Amy provided a wide array of traditional readings, prayers, blessings, and poems to choose from. Every aspect of the ceremony outline and wording was customized to our preferences. Best of all, we heard over and over again from our family and friends that our wedding was the most meaningful ceremony they had ever seen. Amy made both cultures feel welcome and represented. From modern liberal friends with no real religious ties to our most conservative traditional grandmothers, everyone said it was the best wedding ever. Amy made our wedding so incredibly special, and we will always be grateful for her guidance, presence, and support.

Couldn't ask for more

Amy was the perfect officiant. She was warm, respectful, offered counsel, was wonderful with both of our families, and made the entire experience a true pleasure. Highly, highly recommend.

Amy is awesome!

We met with two officiants before our wedding, and we had a hard time choosing between the two. Ultimately we chose Amy because I liked the vibe that I got from her-- she has a calm and reassuring energy that I thought would help me get through the ceremony if I was feeling... Read More nervous! After we had officially chosen her and then met with her "officially", we knew we had made the right decision. She is so easy to talk to and feel like you've known her forever. After the first official meeting, we worked mostly with her via email to create a personal ceremony for us. After the ceremony, we had a number of people compliment us on how beautiful and personal our ceremony was and remark on Amy's calming presence. (Even our very religious family members didn't seem to notice that we had created a completely non-religious ceremony and said that it was one of the most beautiful ceremonies that they'd been to!) I highly recommend Amy as a wedding officiant. She is one of the best!

She made us so comfortable and was so fun and professional! So great!! Definitely recommend her!

Rev. Amy was great officiated our wedding this last July. Amy did a great job customizing our ceremony content to what we wanted. She was very prompt and organized for all of our meetings, rehearsal, and day of wedding. Some of our wedding party was a little rowdy after a day on... Read More the golf course for the rehearsal and Amy was great about commanding the room and getting everyone in line. We received lots of compliments on the ceremony and Amy from our guests!

Amy was a delight to work with. She was very flexible for our meetings, and provided so much guidance when it came to writing our ceremony. She was perfect for us, and she'd be perfect for you!

Amy was great to work with, cared about our service, and helped make our day a success. Very capable and highly recommended.

Rev. Amy was such a delight to meet! We could tell right away that she was open to whatever we wanted to do and include in our wedding ceremony. She had great ideas to personalize our ceremony after only meeting once! It was like she already knew our personalities and what was... Read More special to us. Amy was also so easy to communicate with over email and phone as we live out of town and only made a couple trips to the cities. Our ceremony was emotional and touching, but fun at the same time. There wasn't a dry eye in the room when Amy read our personalized messages that even we hadn't heard yet. It was amazing and flawless! Rev. Amy stressed to us that if we ever needed her at ANY point in our lives, she would be there. What an amazing lady! We will definitely see her again!

Amy did an excellent job officiating our wedding! We had the opportunity to meet with Amy a few times before our wedding day and we were able to get to her know on a more personal level. She knows how to make the ceremony fun but yet still be professional.

Amy was wonderful, we were so happy to find her. Amy provided options for every part of the ceremony for the opening prayer to the vow, to the introduction of us as a married couple. Amy is professional, friendly, reliable, and really listened to what we wanted. I would highly... Read More recommend Amy to any couple getting married - stress free.

Amy was wonderful, we were so happy to find her. Amy provided options for every part of the ceremony for the opening prayer to the vow, to the introduction of us as a married couple. Amy is professional, friendly, reliable, and really listened to what we wanted. I would highly... Read More recommend Amy to any couple getting married - stress free.

Amy was a fantastic fit for our wedding. She took the time to get to know my husband and I and she worked with us to create a ceremony that felt true to us and that was very personalized. It was great working with someone who had done many weddings before and who had a sense of... Read More professionalism, but also is very down to earth and easy to talk to. Amy is very warm, kind, and offered helpful suggestions for ceremony options. We are very happy we went with Amy - it eased any concerns we had about the ceremony and we were able to just enjoy our big day.

Amy is amazing! From the minute we met her, she made us laugh and feel comfortable. She was really easy to talk to and asked great questions about our relationship and what we wanted for our ceremony. Planning a wedding can be really trying at times so working with the great... Read More people makes it so much easier and that's what Amy did for us! We got so many compliments after the wedding on our ceremony and it was all because of Amy! So if you are where my husband and I were trying to find an Officiant for your wedding and feeling a little awkward picking someone from Google, you've come across someone whose truly a great person, who wants your wedding ceremony to be a great experience and we highly recommend her! We can't thank her enough for giving us a great ceremony we'll remember forever!

We were really happy to go with Amy. We had our original pastor cancel somewhat close to the wedding so we scrambled to find anyone. We were fortunate Amy was available. Several pastors we had contacted who were unavailable recommended her to us. She was very responsive,... Read More flexible, and worked with us on making our ceremony unique but also including a religious touch we were looking for. We heard lots of compliments from friends and family about her after the ceremony.

Amy was so great! From the moment my wife and I met with her, we knew that we wanted her to be our officiant. We met with Amy prior to the wedding day several times for sessions that doubled as premarital counseling and ceremony planning. During these sessions Amy presented us... Read More with numerous communication techniques that we think will benefit us for our entire marriage. Her fun personality and sense of humor also kept the sessions light and fun. She was also a great help planning the ceremony. She shared lots of great ideas and wisdom but never pushed us to to anything that we didn't want. On wedding day the ceremony went exactly as planned (which is a good thing!) Amy did a great job of letting us know exactly what to expect and she delivered a beautiful personalized message about my wife and I that was based on questions we had answered separately. Overall, we can't say enough about how great Amy was! We highly recommend her services!

Really perfect all around

We used Amy for premarital counseling and as an officiant for our wedding. We were a little nervous going in because we'd found her online and didn't know what to expect, but she was a really warm and wonderful person. I'd definitely recommend premarital counseling with Amy --... Read More 100% worth the price to a) really get to know her before your wedding and b) get some really great insights into your relationship and how to make it stronger. My husband and I already had what I'd consider a strong relationship, but her counseling sessions were always eye-opening, enjoyable and really practical/useful. Then she used what she'd learned about is in the sessions to craft a personalized, warm, meaningful ceremony. And I should add she's also hilarious, so the ceremony really struck the perfect tone. Just the right amount of levity. All of our guests raved about Amy and the ceremony. (Seriously, even our wedding party raved about the wedding rehearsal she organized -- she's just so on top of everything and fun and knows exactly what she's doing. I cannot recommend Amy enough -- we wish she did regular marital counseling too so we could continue to see her! Just an all-around great person.

We were looking for a minister to perform our wedding ceremony because we did not belong to a church congregation, and we found Reverend Amy in an online search. Both of us were impressed by her reviews, and she met our criteria of being a progressive, interfaith minister. When... Read More we first met Amy for coffee to introduce ourselves, we were immediately drawn to her warmth and her humor. It was clear that she took her work as an officiant seriously, but also that her focus would be on crafting a ceremony that was unique to us as a couple. When she insisted on giving us each a hug before we left the coffee store, we knew that she was someone we could quickly build a connection with and decided to hire her for counseling as well as officiating. We met with Amy four times for counseling before our wedding, and each session was a chance for the two of us to explore aspects of our relationship that we had never discussed out loud before. Our conversations were enlightening, heartfelt, and often left us all laughing, while the homework assignments we received help facilitate more discussion at home. Amy also helped us understand our differences, and moderated the tougher conversations with grace. While the counseling sessions were great in their own right, they also had the great side effect of helping inspire her sermon at our wedding. She worked with us to plan our ceremony, helping us select readings, blessings, and vows; and she was great at working with our wedding party during the rehearsal to get everyone prepared for the big day. The ceremony went off without a hitch, and everyone found Amy’s words to be inspiring and personal, with just the right dose of humor. We could not have been happier with Amy as an officiant or as a counselor. She did a great job helping us plan all the minute details of our wedding day, but she also made sure we took the time to consider what being married would actually mean for us going forward.

We couldn't be happier!

Amy was exactly what we were looking for and more! My now husband and I both come from different religious backgrounds and wanted a way to display that at our wedding but not be overly religious. Finding an officiant that would make this unique for us was a bit of a challenge... Read More but Amy couldn't have been a more perfect fit. As soon as we met her we knew she was the one for us. Amy was very patient as we worked through how our wedding would be and gave insightful advise when she knew we needed it most. After our wedding, and still to this day, our guests talk about how personal our wedding was and how great of a job Amy did! I would recommend her to anyone and feel extremely blessed to have her be such a huge part in our day! Thank you Amy! Love - Ashley and Josh

Easy to talk to and open minded premarital - fantastic!

Amy worked with my husband and I for our premarital counseling sessions this past summer 2015. We had a difficult schedule, and were living in 2 different states. She was fantastic at planning our meetings around that. More importantly, Amy is an incredibly down to earth, kind,... Read More intelligent, and open minded person. Her positive attitude and happy disposition helped make talking through some tough topics easy. She was able to work with us through the Prepare/Enrich inventory and evaluated the results in a realistic way which matched our spiritual/religious beliefs, rather than being a stickler. We appreciated her candid nature and ability to personally relate to us. We felt fortunate to be able to talk through a lot of the big topic issues many couples face, and reaffirm our love for each other. Amy is fantastic and I would highly recommend her to anyone!

Amy is AMAZING!!!

My wife and I had an interfaith Jewish/Christian ceremony. We were initially worried about being able to blend our two faith traditions into a meaningful, enlightening ceremony, but Amy helped make our day more perfect than we possibly could have imagined. She was friendly,... Read More outgoing, and really made us feel empowered to make our ceremony what we wanted it to be. She provided thoughtful solutions and was, simply put, the glue that made the entire ceremony fit together. Her personality and demeanor was EXACTLY what we were looking for, and she was so knowledgeable about both faith traditions that we were completely at ease. One of our favorite things about working with Amy was that she was never pushy or adamant about doing something a certain way. She made sure we knew that she was there for us in whatever way we needed her to be, whether it was running the entire ceremony herself, taking a back seat to her co-officiant, or even singing some Hebrew prayers. Her biggest concern was us and our happiness, which is something that cannot be understated. DO NOT HESITATE to work with Amy – you’ll be glad you did.

Outstanding officiant

Amy was an outstanding choice to officiate our wedding. We were looking for someone who could speak to the full range of people attending: religious and not, married and single, young and old, with respect for people's ideas and traditions, but without making our ceremony... Read More explicitly religious. Amy did this perfectly. Her counseling leading up to our wedding was also excellent. She is at her best when giving her own ideas and opinions; her canned curriculum, Prepare and Enrich, was not particularly useful for us, but her own words and wisdom were. Prepare and Enrich may be useful for some couples, but for us, as non-religious people who had lived together for a while already, it was overly focused on dimensions of marriage that didn't apply to our particular case. When she got away from Prepare and Enrich, Amy was truly fantastic, full of sage advice and realistic ways to manage expectations and to recognize each others' struggles. Her advice on communication was especially good. Planning the ceremony with Amy was easy. She had a great range of readings, rituals, and other things for us to choose from, and she did a great job of incorporating our requested changes even at the last minute. In all, Amy was a pleasure to work with, wrote and delivered a beautiful ceremony for us, and most importantly, made us and everyone else involved feel comfortable and confident about the wedding. She is a caring professional that we recommend to anyone.

Perfect

Amy is a wonderful officiant. She made our ceremony meaningful and special. Thank you Amy!

I Recommend Amy to Officiate your Wedding!

I went to high school with Amy back in the day, and had the wonderful opportunity to have her marry my husband, Ignacio, and I earlier this month! She had a great way of asking us questions to help us think about what we wanted to communicate to one another during our ceremony.... Read More She also took what she learned about our feelings for one another and our relationship and wove them into a beautiful ceremony. Thank you so much for the perfect wedding!!!

Wedding ceremony

Amy is fantastic. My fiancée and I instantly knew we wanted her to perform our ceremony when we had our first meeting. I felt she really took the time to know us and personalize our ceremony. It went awesome and was totally our personality. She made everything stress free and... Read More fun! We couldn't have been happier and we received many compliments from our family and friends about how lovely the ceremony was. Thank you Rev. Amy!

I cannot say enough kind words about Amy. I feel truly blessed that our original Pastor was unable to marry us and we had to revisit who would be a good fit. Sometimes things really do happen for a reason. From the minute we met Amy both my Husband and I were both at ease. She... Read More has such a laid back personality and is open to tailoring your ceremony for whatever fits your needs. Many vendors I looked at had different price brackets for how many modifications you wanted to make to your ceremony. With Amy it was one price for as many modifications as needed to make it truly yours. After the wedding I had so many compliments about Amy from guests and how wonderful they felt our ceremony was. She not only tailored our ceremony to what was unique to us, but prior to the wedding day she sent both my Husband and I "Love" questions about each other. With these questions she prepared a short section during the ceremony where she described what we each loved about each other. It was such a special moment to be standing in front of our friends and family and hear this together. So many couples focus on the reception details. My best and highest recommendation is to not forget about the reason you're celebrating and find someone who will make that moment when you say "I Do" feel magical. For us, Amy was that person. Her passion, dedication to your love story and overall demeanor were worth every penny and I feel so fortunate to have stumbled upon her when searching for an Officiant. Thanks Amy for everything!