Rev. Shirley did a great job for our wedding. I booked her on The Knot and shortly after we met with her at her beautiful home to go over the ceremony details. Both of us really li...ked her right away and felt she captured us perfectly. She gave us the idea to do a sand unity which turned out beautiful and our guests really loved it. Those are the pros for us.
There were a few cons that I feel are worth mentioning. First, just to explain the background, my wedding was on a Saturday with both the ceremony and reception being at our venue which was a small barn. The venue required the rehearsals to be during the week on Thursdays. A couple months before my wedding, I received a phone call from the venue owner asking me if I would allow the bride that was getting married the day after me to do her rehearsal on the day of my wedding. They wanted to do it in the early afternoon. Apparently that bride did not want to do it on Thursday like we were supposed to, as it was inconvenient for her wedding party. Which, I completely understand, it was inconvenient for us too, we had to ask some people to take off work! The venue owner went on to say that she tried to tell the other bride that they don't allow that and she was embarrassed to even ask me to share the venue on my wedding day, but apparently the other bride's wedding officiant insisted on it. I thought that was very odd, so I asked who it was. Turns out their wedding officiant was the same as ours, Rev. Shirley. I don't know what other brides would have done in this situation, but for me I was not comfortable allowing another wedding party to do their rehearsal the day of my wedding, as it's just an unknown risk I was not willing to take. Plus, I had paid for use of the venue for the entire day and there's so much that could go wrong when allowing a large group of complete strangers to do their rehearsal the day of your wedding. The venue owner said she completely understood and agreed that was the right decision. She called the other bride to let her know and that was the last I heard of it.
Months later, when it came time for our rehearsal, when Rev. Shirley saw me she made it a point to bring up that I said no to allowing that other bride to do her rehearsal during our wedding. She didn't say it in a snippy way, but I felt it was unnecessary to mention and I still feel it was very rude to even ask a bride to share her wedding space the day of their wedding. I would never have asked that of another bride. It is just disrespectful in my opinion. I think Rev. Shirley was not thinking about that.
Now that my wedding is over with, I am so glad I did not allow it because we were outside setting up for the ceremony the moment we got access to the venue in the morning and we even had issues with our arch falling down, and our photographer also had us out there taking pictures before the ceremony and we were all running around trying to make the place beautiful. I can't imagine trying to do all that while sharing the space with another wedding party who I didn't know.
The last con for me was that we asked Rev. Shirley to not use God in our ceremony and say Higher Power instead. It wasn't our idea, it says it right on her flyer that she can do that if you prefer higher power to be used. It is specifically why we chose her, it said that she will accommodate whatever your beliefs are. During our ceremony, she said higher power consistently but then toward the end she slipped up and said God. Which, really sounded funny because she made it a point to not say God the entire time and then randomly said it at the end which threw everyone off! Maybe some people didn't notice. But my bridesmaid walked up immediately after and mentioned it. My husband and I walked away from the ceremony site and looked at each other pretty unhappy about that part. She has done over 400 weddings but somehow managed to not read the correct words? But, overall, I'm trying look at everything overall as a positive experience. I'm trying to not get hung up on the little mishaps. Other than a few disappointing things, I think overall I really liked Rev. Shirley and I don't regret booking her. I just wish a few things went a bit differently.