Languages: English & Portuguese
Hi there!
I’m Carly, an American living in Portugal who as a kid swore I would never marry and now I marry people as a job… The universe is a crazy one for sure!
A self described former economist, serial founder, advocate of reinvention, writer of love, latenight coder, ardent feminist, LGBTQIA+ ally, and dog mom I adore that becoming a celebrant and founding YEWC allows me to combine all of these aspects of myself together. I bet at this point you are wondering how this all came to be…
Well, after swearing I would never get married, I was in fact married to my husband three times! Well to be a bit clearer, we were only married once, but celebrated it three times.
While undertaking these three weddings – the first in London where we resided, the second in Portugal where my husband is from, and the final one in the United States – I discovered the lack of wedding ceremony resources for multicultural and multilingual couples. Since then I decided to share my knowledge with other couples. And because I loved the process of creating our own, personalized wedding ceremony so much it became obvious that becoming a wedding celebrant would allow me to undertake this experience with other couples.
What is your favorite part about being a wedding celebrant?
My favorite part about being a celebrant is the couples that I am privileged to meet and learn about. I have been lucky enough to hear beautiful tales of romantic proposals, heart-breaking stories of times spent apart, personal tragedies overcome, and belly-achingly, funny accounts of first encounters. All of which I deeply cherish, along with the invitation by couples to be a part of a very important day.
What is your favorite kind of ceremony?
My favorite kind of ceremony is when the couple decides that they are going to do what feels right to them and create a ceremony that they will look back on with love and fist-pumps for how awesome it was.
What is the best compliment a couple or wedding guest has ever given you?
A groom once wrote me an email after his wife had already thanked me and all his email said was “You were f&$king amazing.” That email still makes me smile to this day.
Parting words
I know. I am not for everyone and that’s ok – it is also why every celebrant on our team is so unique. The couples who usually like me are the ones who never ask “What’s traditional?”, instead they ask “What can we do that is ‘us’?” My ceremonies attract couples who are over constraining traditions, those who are more comfortable without labels, and those who don’t feel the need to meet anyone else’s expectations of them.
If this sounds like you, then we definitely need to talk!
Carly