My Background
Becoming an officiant wasn’t always my intention. I never dreamed my academic and personal interests would evolve into a profession that allows me to spend my life helping people design and celebrate their most momentous occasions!
As an anthropology undergraduate, I fell in love with the rituals and traditions of various world cultures. I was fascinated by the way people practice their beliefs to connect to each other and their world. With graduate credits in English, I spent the next 14 years in higher education, directing a program for students with learning and other disabilities and teaching composition and literature to undergraduates in New York and, years later, in South Florida. This honed my ability to use words to express emotion and sentiment. Through exposure to poetry, fiction, and drama, I understood meaningful prose and effective delivery. It was in these years of teaching that I learned how to captivate an audience and maintain their interest.
My life changed dramatically when I lost my brother-in-law on September 11, 2001. Like many, I urgently sought answers to my questions about life, death, and the afterlife. Seeking personal development and growth, I enrolled at the University of Metaphysical Sciences and earned another bachelor’s and a master’s degree. After I completed my Doctorate in Divinity and Ordination, I devoted my life to helping others and creating extraordinary ceremonies that celebrate the couples and families I serve.
But everyone starts somewhere.
My very first ceremony was for a good friend. She was getting remarried, and she insisted that only I could deliver what she envisioned because it was such a delicate situation. Her first husband had passed, and she and her fiancé wanted to create a special tribute to him somehow. At the same time, she wanted me to create a ceremony that was foremost about her and her fiancé’s relationship, based on their ideas of spirituality and not with the religion they were raised. I, of course, was petrified of such a responsibility. She assured me I could do it, reminding me of my years teaching literature, and she buttered me up with every compliment she could think of.
Designing and officiating that ceremony was one of the greatest moments of my life. And so, Ceremonies with Cynthia was born.
