Unusual Ceremonies

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~ About Us ~

Rev. Isaac Bonewits was ordained as a priest in the Reformed Druids of North America in 1969. The following year he gained some modest fame as the first person to ever receive an academic degree in Magic (from the University of California, Berkeley) and soon published his first book,Real Magic. After thirteen years of study and practice in this and other Druidic, Wiccan, and Santerian traditions, he founded Ár nDraíocht Féin: A Druid Fellowship, which is now the best known Neopagan Druid organization based in North America. He was ordained by ADF in 2002. Between writing other books and lecturing around North America on minority belief systems, he met and eventually married Phaedra.

Rev. Phaedra Bonewits has been a Wiccan priestess for many years, as well as one of the founding members of the Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans (“CUUPS”). She and Isaac met in 1989 at a Pagan festival, but life and a few other spouses intervened before she and he were handfasted in 2004 and legally married in 2007.

Also in 2007, Revs. Isaac and Phaedra published their first book together, Real Energy: Systems, Spirits, and Substances to Heal, Change, and Grow. The next year they intensified their studies with Rev. April Gismondi of the Church of Ancient Ways, becoming ordained and starting their own congregation, the Church of the Oaks.

Both Revs. Phaedra and Isaac have officiated at many marriages and handfastings (non-legal, temporary marriages), as well as other rites of passages for members of Wiccan, Druidic, Asatruar, and other Pagan paths, as well as secular, New Age, and nondenominational ceremonies. Between them they have over fifty years of experience in creating, tailoring, and performing rituals for all occasions.

In late 2008, they saw the need for an officiant service that could meet the needs, not just of members of minority belief systems, but of those who belonged to various overlapping subcultures, including medievalists and other historical recreationists, rennaisance artists, science fiction fans, furries, goths, pirates, leather folk, atheists, agnostics, naturists, and others living on the edges of the fading dominant paradigm. These people all get married (in a variety of genders and combinations), have children, lose loved ones, and need the same rites of passage as the members of other belief systems. Thus was Unusual Ceremonies.Com born!

So if you need someone to dress (or undress) in a particular fashion for your Pirate Wedding, Star Trek Funeral, Gothic Handfasting, Viking Child Blessing, etc. who will say the words you want said and give you a ceremony you will remember for years, ask us! We will happily work with you and your vendors to make your event a spectacular success.

Please note that we are not trained to perform traditional Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Hindu, African, or Native American rituals. We will happily include minor customs of those traditions in your ceremony, of course, if that's what you want.