My husband and I spoke with a few officiants before deciding to go with Dale Desmarais. We met Dale at a local coffee shop, and he brought along a couple of things to help familiarize us with the process -- examples of the scripts for the weddi...ng, suggestions for the unity ceremony taking our backgrounds into account (he had done his research!), timelines for handling the paperwork -- so he was super prepared. His organizational capability and the way he takes the job seriously put me at ease, but what really won us over was his charm. Dale is very upbeat -- he guided us through the meeting with confidence, but he read us well enough to know we could all have a little fun.
Dale was very encouraging during the process of defining our ceremony script, which can be bizarrely very nerve-wracking. He provided suggestions for the general flow of the ceremony, and weighed in appropriately when we had any questions. He was always very timely in his responses, and he was always happy to check in over the phone.
During the rehearsal and the wedding itself, Dale was absolutely great. My husband and I had prepared for the rehearsal as much as we could -- deciding things like where people would stand and how they would process; and Dale was right on top of covering things we hadn't thought of -- e.g., how the Best Man was to give him our rings,, how our hand fasting ceremony would go exactly. He gave us a lot of confidence for the day of the wedding.
During the wedding, Dale did a brilliant job of grounding us, encouraging us, and keeping the ceremony moving. The event being so emotional for my husband and me, it was extremely helpful to have him tell us, after each major part, "Good job. You're doing great. Excellent." He never stumbled, and everything went off without a hitch, including the paperwork afterwards.
Dale is a fantastic JP, and if you get married in the area, we hope you get to have the pleasure of working with him!