Life-Cycle Celebrant Holly Pruett does a great job of showing the advantages of a celebrant wedding ceremony. She too speaks of the cookie-cutter approach from which we as celebrants flee, preferring instead to create a ceremony which is as unique as the two of you.
via Yes, I’ll Marry You! 5 Questions to Answer Next – Proud Queer (PQ Monthly – Daily Online)
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The Top Ten Scams of 2014 is out and the top love scam is catphishing. It has been around for years but mutates as does our social media.
Catphishing – A romance scam in which a fraudster pretends to be someone they are not on an online dating or social media website, for the purpose of taking money or personal information from their targets.
For those with an online profile on any of the multiple dating sites available to us, it can start innocently enough with a friendly hello and some comment about your profile, usually of a complimentary nature. If you reply the game is afoot. Usually there is an exchange of email addresses to take communications outside the dating site itself.
Other social media sites like Facebook are also prime for catphishing, especially those with very relaxed or no security settings. Young people can be particularly vulnerable. Lisa Shaw, Senior Director, Child Online Safety and Protection at SpectorSoft, in an article for Parentingtodayskids.com says “unfortunately, kids and teens can be lured into unsafe situations because they truly believe they are building a relationship with a boyfriend/girlfriend who is a peer, when in reality they could be talking to a predator.”
A link to this photographer’s work showed up in my facebook stream today. Some of these pictures just sizzle with creativity and artistic aesthetic.
Braden says he really loves creating portraits and celebrating romantic moments. Now this guy has created some incredible romantic moments in the past. Then one day his boyfriend suggested that he photograph a gay couple, and Braden had to ask himself why, as a gay man, that he had not thought of this instinctively?
“We’ve seen it millions of times in commercials, movies and advertising for as long as the mediums have existed. Now, I know first hand that there’s a lot of love and romance in the gay community, and what’s lacking is representation of this in these mediums. Now what we do see of the LGBT community is often overtly sexualized and sometimes deviant. I want to show a campaign that illustrates the love and romance in various cultures around the world, that communicates all love is equal.”
The results of his project are absolutely stunning.
Go immediately to Braden Summers and check his work.
The use of ceremony to mark the milestones and transitions in the lives of individuals, families, communities, and organizations is a time-honoured tradition. From the birth of a child to a rite of passage; from engagement to wedding, we use ceremony and ritual to engrave these precious events into our hearts forever.
Over the years I’ve noticed an almost cookie-cutter response to ceremonies which really should do so much more to honour the participants.
As a Certified Life-Cycle Celebrant I believe in the power and effectiveness of ceremony.
Celebrant ceremonies and rituals can serve basic needs of society and the individual by creating personalized ceremonies to meet client needs.
With your participation I will craft a ceremony that reflects your beliefs, philosophy of life, and personality. Through careful interviewing I will get to understand what is meaningful for you so that I may create a relevant, customized ceremony to honour the fullness of the experience.