In the News: AnitaWeds

Chicago based celebrant Anita Vaughan kindly blogged about WordArrangement. Hope you’ll check her blog out!

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Wed Michigan

The blog Wed Michigan (http://wedmichigan.blogspot.com/2008/12/personalized-wedding-poetry.html) kindly featured the Personalized Wedding poems. Hope you’ll read the interview and visit their very informative site.

 

Personalized Wedding Poetry

If you are looking for a way to make your wedding personal and unique, then look no further than Word Arrangement by Chloe Yelena Miller. Word Arrangement is located in Ann Arbor and specializes in personalized wedding poems for your big day. Chloe has a strong background in poetry and does an amazing job producing beautiful pieces of work that celebrate a couple’s individuality. Visit her website and her blog to read some of her sample work!

What inspired you to start WordArrangement?
I am a poet with an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and I am interested in transforming specific experiences into poems that can offer a human truth to their readers. My mother, a professional photographer, and I collaborated on a project narrating our family’s emigration from southern Italy to New Jersey in the 1800’s. I wrote family members’ stories and ourexperiences in verse and my mother paired them with images. Based on that experience, which included interviews, research and conversations with family members, I was inspired to create a business that did something similar: translated human experience into poems. In addition, I often write my fiance’ love poems, so I thought that wedding poetry would be a perfect combination of these interests. The best part of the process has been hearing the couples’ responses to the poems.

What is the most unique way to include a poem in your wedding?
Many couples will decide to include a reading in their ceremony. The poem will be read by a member of the wedding party, and it will reflect the couples’ view of love and their hopes for the future. I think that integrating the written poem into the ceremony (printed in the program, on an invitation, etc.) helps to give the guests a chance to read the poem more closely and consider what the couple meant by the words they chose. By deciding to use a personalized wedding poem, the guests are offered a window into the couple’s life. This window can help to inspire them to remember when they first fell in love.

What is your favorite part about living in Michigan?
My fiance’ and I were in a long distance relationship before we moved to Ann Arbor… building a home together is by far the best part. I’ve also enjoyed becoming a part of the very creative and dynamic community here. I am looking forward to volunteering for the Ann Arbor Books festival this May and I’ve attended a number of readings hosted by the University of Michigan’s MFA program. I always rave about the easy access to independent bookstores and regular farmer’s markets.

Any advice for Michigan couples when “personalizing” their wedding?
The couples should talk openly and decide what aspects of the wedding are most important to them. Once those are chosen, those should be the parts that are given the most time and attention. Whether a couple chooses a more traditional or nontraditional ceremony and reception, each moment has the possibility to be imbued with meaning. For example, the colors of the flowers could reflect a certain memory of picking flowers during a walk when they were first courting. These are the kinds of details that I look for when I interview someone for a personalized wedding poem.

Thank you, Chloe, for taking the time to share your amazing company with Wed Michigan!

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Read all about it!

Wordarrangement was recently featured in an article in the Philadelphia Marriage Examiner.

Words of Love: So Soft and Tender

Forget what the song says, words of Love are exactly what we need to hear. (Did you ever notice that we all shift uncomfortably in our seats when someone loudly proclaims “I love you?” “Go get a room,” someone is sure to cry. Yet we are all totally fascinated by someone storming out the door in the café screaming “I hate you?” What is up with that?)

 

Chloe Miller, poet, at her site Word Arrangement can help you find exactly the right words to say “I love you.” If you have trouble expressing your emotions in poetry, she’s your go-to girl. There are lots of wonderful poems out there and I always encourage my couples, if they like poetry, to look for metaphors that align with their values. But how incredible to have your love immortalized in your very own poem!

She won’t just find words for the bridal couple, she’ll help out the person making a toast or simply giving a gift to the couple. Use the poem in your program or on your website. Have them printed on Melabee M. Miller’s roses or sent to you to be transcribed onto your own backdrop. After you read it, frame it and hang it on your wall so that every day you remember how much you love one another and why you embarked on this wonderful journey called marriage. How wonderful to know that your love is great enough, that with a simple discernment process, this very talented poet can tell the world your story.

THE BRIDGE: for Christa and Jas, 2006

His proposal bridged east and west

as they kissed between the words.

In her poems, she immortalizes

her story, then his, now theirs.

Two narrators, one plot. They are engaged

after five years of sweetness.

The unwritten years’ ink

fills in craters, lifts the sun and moon.

She bakes with measured flour,

adds pinches of spice, sugar until it tastes like home.

The earth provides colors, flavor,

and the couple builds, creates above.

One more (great) way to move from “I do” to happily and healthily ever after.

 

 

BY:

Ann Keeler Evans, M.Div., The Wedding Priestess, helped 1,000 couples move from “I do” to happily, healthily ever after. For examiner.com she writes about weddings with meaning. Find her at http://annkeelerevans.org or write office@annkeelerevans.org

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