Joan Phillips, Officiant & Celebrant

Joan was incredible. Her personalization of our ceremony made it seem like she knew us for years. She made the process so easy and was in constant contact. You can really tell she loves and takes pride in her role. I’m so honored she ensured we had the most beautiful and special ceremony. I highly recommend.

Joan was amazing! She was very easy to work with a guided us through everything. Our guests through she had know us forever because the ceremony as so personal and crafted for us. Very beautiful and we were touched

Joan is very professional and ensured our wishes for the ceremony were met. She communicated several times to help us decide what we really wanted and was careful to incorporate our dreams, resulting in a successful, stress-free, and happy event.

I could write a 600-page book on how utterly amazing Joan is. I booked Joan on a whim after seeing 111 FIVE STAR reviews. If there were 100 stars, I would give her that in a heartbeat. Joan met us at a coffee shop in our neck of the woods in Arlington, came prepared with a folder and super helpful and thorough materials to help us prepare for the ceremony, took copious amounts of notes, and genuinely got to know me and my fiance. I instantly knew shew as going to be our officiant and wrote her a check the minute I came home. Joan wrote us the most personalized, customized, eloquent ceremony I could have ever imagined. She gave us the BEST and most creative ideas to perfect our ceremony and tailor it for us, as we didn't want a google template ceremony. Days before our wedding, she reviewed the notes she took months' before our wedding to make sure we incorporated all of the things that were important to us that had slipped our minds in midst of last-minute prep. We were so grateful that she remembered and captured it! Joan arrived early to everything - rehearsal day, wedding day, and was exceedingly prepared for every event. She was available via coffee, text, email, google drive comments until the wee hours of the morning, and phone for last minute changes and additions. Joan was uber flexible to work with and was a true godsend in every sense of the word. I would hire her a million times over. She was the consummate professional and the ceremony was absolutely flawless thanks to her and her talents. You'd be truly remiss not to hire her. She'll blow you away.

I cannot praise Joan enough! She is so wonderful and she did such an amazing job at our wedding. She felt like family and became family during our wedding day! All our guests kept asking us if she was indeed family. Such attention to details, and such a graceful, personalized and beautiful ceremony! Thank you Joan, we loved having you as part of our big day.

We had such a wonderful experience with Joan as the officiant of our wedding. My husband and I are non-religious so we struggled initially finding someone to provide us the ceremony we wanted. We spoke with quite a few on the phone but quickly connected with Joan. We had an initial meeting with her to go over some of the high level ideas of our ceremony and for her to ask questions. We continued the conversation in emails and a few days before the ceremony she provided us with a full script of the ceremony, which was awesome. It allowed us to know exactly what she was going to say and tweak to our preference. She also helped us with rituals (we did a wine ritual since we got married at a winery) and provided us with tons of useful information on things others have said at weddings, popular readings (hundreds of them), ideas on what to recite during the ring exchange etc. What was also invaluable was her assistance with our vows. My husband and I both wrote out our vows to each other and she reviewed them ahead of time to make sure they were consistent in tone/meaning and length. Her feedback was a huge help. Though the venue was quite far from where Joan lives, she drove down and attended our rehearsal the night before the wedding, which was a huge help. The day of she arrived early to say hi to everyone, and got everything setup (including for the ritual). During the ceremony, everything went seamlessly and exactly as I would have hoped. She and her husband attended the reception at our invitation as well and were a lot of fun. She followed up after with a kind note, and to let us know our forms had been mailed to the county. I got my official license from the county soon after upon requesting it, so Joan definitely mailed it in promptly. Joan is a kind, open and wonderful person - I don't think we'd change a single thing about our ceremony (except maybe the drizzle). Joan was perfect and I couldn't recommend her more.

My wife and I contacted Joan about 8 months prior to our wedding, looking to get information about her as an Officiant. She drove to meet us, and after our hour-ish long meeting with her, we didn't consider another Officiant. She was FANTASTIC. She listened to us describe our relationship's history, our wishes and ideas for the ceremony, and offered up several wonderful suggestions, most of which ended up as part of our ceremony. She crafted a complete, beautiful, and unique ceremony that fit our personalities and told our story together. During the months between meeting her and our actual wedding, she kept in contact with us, asking us occasional questions (especially after we completed the questionnaire she sent us), all to ensure everything was to our liking. Finding the perfect vows, and perfect ring vow to give one another... finding potential readings to include... also giving us a rough draft (for us to edit) of the entire flow of the ceremony- we were given ample opportunity to ensure the wedding went exactly as we dreamed. She attended the rehearsal, and with her guidance, everything went extremely smooth, and we left there confident. During the ceremony, she performed the ceremony without a flaw, leaving many in the audience in tears. Honestly, we couldn't have been happier in who we asked to officiant our wedding, and I'd recommend Joan to anyone. She is extremely professional, very organized, and does a wonderful job.

Joan really took the time to get to know me and my husband and she worked with us to create a ceremony that felt authentic and meaningful. Her list of recommended readings and sample vows were so helpful as we chose readings for the ceremony and wrote our vows. Thanks, Joan!

Typically, I would start with our initial impression of a vendor - but I think I really must start with our ceremony and go backwards. It was the best ceremony I've ever read or heard. It included little stories and notes about us as a couple, our history, our families, was cute, funny, not your usual or typical readings/poems, and, most importantly, was exactly what we wanted. We had so many guests comment on how well it appeared that Joan knew us (and even asked for a copy of the ceremony as well) - it was humorous, touching, and full of love. It really told the story of us. We also selected some readings, one of which she noted had never before been selected by a couple. Before the wedding day, Joan sent us a draft of the ceremony and was open to any edits or changes we had for her. Just reading it made us both tear up with how fantastic it was. Our coordinator suggested Joan as a potential officiant/celebrant, as neither of us were sure who to choose for our special day. We met with Joan initially for almost 2 hours, and I think we decided that day to go with her services. She sent us a long questionnaire (to respond to individually) and many suggestions for the various components of the ceremony, including a very extensive list of readings, poems, short stories, etc - some quite standard/typical (i.e. ones we've all heard before) and many that were completely new to us. We read through them all and chose readings individually before deciding together our favorite ones. Apparently my responses to the questionnaire were much more extensive that my now husbands, as she had a follow-up call with him that lasted another hour and a half. Needless to say, she is quite thorough. I could not recommend Joan enough. She worked with us to create a beautiful ceremony that was better than we ever could have imagined. It was exactly what we thought we wanted - but better! I wish we could do it all over again.

We were married on October 12th in Virginia, but we live in Hawaii. For this reason we needed to find an officiant but did not know a pastor in the area. Because it was a holiday weekend most, especially the ones that had great reviews were already booked. So we were excited when we found Joan. She was able to Skype with us since we were out of town and even sent us a compilation of wedding quotes/material that we could potentially use in the wedding. She also sent a questionnaire so that she could get to know us better. The problem was that we didn't realize that when she said "she tries to use our own words as much as possible" she meant it literally; we assumed she was going to paraphrase. Instead she sent us, just two weeks before the wedding, a 12 page ceremony draft that was basically our wedding questionnaire copy and pasted. (In her defense it was late due to a family emergency) With phrases like "when you met through a mutual friend, you immediately began hitting on her, Todd! You couldn’t help yourself; with her blonde hair and good looks, you thought she was really hot!" we were shocked. We immediately called Joan and apparently that is what she was trained to do. We just didn't realize that when she meant use our words as much as possible she meant direct quotes! She rewrote the ceremony for us but I still went back and revised it. With only two weeks before the wedding we didn't have time to find a new officiant. For her fee of $700 we were very disappointed personally. But, if that is the type of ceremony you are looking for she would be perfect. She was a very nice person but there was just a lot of miscommunication on the type of ceremony we thought was happening.

We knew we wanted Joan to be our officiant as soon as we met; what a wonderful, caring, genuinely lovely woman! Joan made us feel so at ease with our ceremony throughout the planning stages and on the big day itself. So many of our family & friends commented on how beautiful the ceremony was; it was heartfelt, personal and totally endearing, so much so that many asked how long Joan had known us for (they actually thought she was a very good friend of ours!) We cannot recommend Joan enough for her services and if we could do it all again we wouldn't hesitate in choosing her to be a part of our special occasion; thank you so much Joan!

When our original officiant had to leave town on a family emergency, she put my wife and I in contact with Joan Phillips. While Joan did not write our ceremony, her delivery was beautiful. We met her the day of the ceremony, literally an hour before hand, and she warm and welcoming. During the ceremony she read slowly and with meaning, and afterwards it was obvious that she was truly happy for my wife and I. While we did not expect to be using her services, she gave us a wonderful ceremony.