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Professional Title and Name: Carolyn Niethammer
Address: 604 E. First St
Locations served: Greater Tucson and Southeastern Arizona
Ordained by: International Brotherhood Movement
Date Ordained: May 20, 2003
Professional Memberships: Celebrant Foundation, USA
American Association of Wedding Officiants
National Association of Wedding Officiants
Education: Master of Arts, University of Arizona
International College of Celebrancy, Wedding Diploma
I Believe... in the power of ceremony to forge personal, emotional and family bonds.
Services provided: Weddings
Specializing in: Custom wedding ceremonies honoring your beliefs
Fees: Each wedding is priced individually, depending on day of week and time of year.
To contact:
Brief excerpts from testimonials:
"I have received countless compliments on how wonderful and personal your words were and I send a sincere thank-you for your patience and expertise."
~ Noah and Sandy
"You made the process of planning the wedding easy and stress free. The whole experience was nicer than anything we could have hoped for."
~ Jennifer and Tom
"Thank-you for working so hard to create the perfect ceremony for us. We will never forget how you made our wedding ceremony personal and special.".
~ Elizabeth and Todd
Recent Newspaper Article about Carolyn
Tying the Knot
October 11, 2006 - Little girls often dream of perfect weddings with big white dresses in beautiful churches. Some use Barbie dolls to enact their fantasies. The more conniving among them might even force friends to play the parts of bride and groom.
As the girls grow older, these dreams transform, some becoming more elaborate. Yet, some couples even choose to stray completely from the white-dress, big-church wedding, asking "Why not?"
Themed weddings have become commonplace, with couples adding personal touches to their ceremonies to make them stand out.
"I think it's becoming more and more common because brides and grooms are looking for a way to make their wedding special and memorable," said Christa Vagnozzi, editor of the The Knot Weddings, a magazine and Internet site about all manners of nuptials. "A lot of people have no problems getting carried away with their passions and their imaginations with a way to personalize their weddings."
Vagnozzi said that couples tend to put the most effort into their themes when choosing flowers, cakes, invitations and music.
"A lot of people are still traditional, and they're just tweaking traditions to their own tastes," she said.
Carolyn Niethammer for the past three years has officiated weddings in the Tucson area. Her business, Ceremonies of Distinction, caters to couples eager to get married in unique ways. She has performed more than 100 weddings, some involving simple ceremonies in parks to a couple that featured Renaissance-era costumes.
"All of my weddings are custom ceremonies," she said. "The more unusual they are, the more fun for me because I've got lots and lots of ideas. And, if they're open and I can throw out interesting ideas, that's cool for me."
Michael Tchong, who started the trend-analysis company Ubercool, thinks that outrageously themed weddings could be attributed to what he calls the "Generation X-tasy Ubertrend." Today's consumers are becoming the "experience generation," he said, spending cash on excesses like spring break trips and Hummers.
"A truth today is that the experience counts as much as the actual event 'contents' itself," Tchong said. "These rapidly multiplying outposts of human entertainment parallel the trend in parties or weddings whose organizers feel compelled to make them more prominent, or distinctive, by any means or at any cost."
Vagnozzi said that these themed weddings don't necessarily require bigger budgets. A Renaissance-themed wedding, for example, might mean that an expert baker has to create a castle-shaped cake.
"It might cost a little more money," she said. "But then again, if you're having a traditional big-budget wedding, it evens out there as well."
Regardless of their budgets, couples these days get more imaginative with their wedding plans.
"A lot of couples, they're a bit older, and when they're getting married these days they're in their late 20s," Vagnozzi said. "They're not afraid to go outside the box and do things like that."
The stories of four couples, with untraditional - to say the least - wedding plans, follow:
'Gettin' hitched'
Images of Daniel Boone, Davey Crocket and John Wayne litter Susie Shelton's childhood memories. With her father, she watched "Little House on a Prairie" and "The High Chaparral" growing up in Oro Valley.
When her fianc/, Scott Dallaire, 36, proposed to her in August 2005, the couple thought Old Tucson Studios would be the perfect venue for their Oct. 14 wedding. Many of the westerns Shelton watched as a child had in fact been filmed at the faux cowboy town.
"I chose the High Chaparral because my dad fell in love with it," Shelton, 37, said of her reception location.
The western theme park regularly plays host to weddings. It likely could book weddings every weekend, from next February to May.
Weddings in October, like Shelton's, allow guests to participate in Night Fall, the annual Halloween-themed event in which cowboys turn into ghouls. Additionally, Shelton selected a "character interruption" for the ceremony.
"When they say, 'Does anybody here object to the wedding,' (costumed characters are) going to jump up and cause a scene," Shelton said.
Old Tucson Studios' resident preacher, the Rev. George Darmondy, said guests generally enjoy the interruption even during a traditional ceremony.
"There are so many people on the guest list that get a kick out of it that it's a fun thing," said Darmondy, who has performed about 100 weddings at Old Tucson Studios in the last five years.
Other western touches include old-fashioned stick candy in mason jars, galvanized buckets with candles and silk flowers, treated to look old and worn.
The couple's guests will be treated to a train ride through the park, which will take them from the ceremony's location at the Crooked Creek Chapel to the High Chaparral and into Night Fall, if they choose. Guests received their train tickets in the mail with the invitations, which of course read like wanted posters.
"It kind of fits our personalities," Shelton said of the invitations. "I didn't want frou-frou stuff. Well, except for the dress."
Shelton's dress remains traditional, but Dallaire's wedding apparel strays from a suit and tie. He'll sport black jeans, a vest, a white shirt and a cowboy hat.
"I dress western all the time just living in Arizona," Dallaire said. "I have the hat and boots and the whole thing."
Though she had tossed around the idea of western outfits for the bridesmaids, Shelton ultimately decided against it.
"We thought about doing the saloon dresses," she said, "but they'd look like hookers."
Dallaire and Shelton's 120 guests seem excited about the western-themed wedding, according to the couple. Much of Dallaire's family lives in Rhode Island.
"Everybody knows it's western, and if they choose to dress western, they can dress western," Dallaire said. "If they don't want to, that's cool too."
Lions, tigers ... and bridesmaids?
In her quest to find a site for her October 2004 wedding, Jen Burdick, 33, wanted a unique venue close to where her out-of-town guests might stay for the weekend.
She had wanted to book a local bed and breakfast, but with a guest list of 120, that proved impossible.
Working for Tucson's Department of Urban Planning and Design, Burdick toured the Reid Park Zoo. The zoo's officials mentioned their desire to book more outside events and a light bulb went off in Burdick's head. Why not have her wedding there?
"People were so blown away (by the idea)," she said. "I'm sure there was that, 'Is it going to be stinky?' They just couldn't picture it, but once they saw it, they thought it was beautiful. The zoo is just a fun place to be."
Her guests stayed at the Doubletree Hotel across the street, making it easy for them to shuttle to the zoo for the ceremony and reception.
White lights hung from the trees; baskets with candles dangled from branches. Monkeys whooped and tigers growled.
"They tell me a lion was roaring during the ceremony, but I was so focused that I didn't hear it," Carolyn Niethammer, the couple's officiant, said.
Burdick, and her husband, John, 34, invited the kids attending the wedding to carry roses down the aisle and place them in a basket. Later in the ceremony, the couple passed the roses to friends and family members.
The reception, held in a plaza near the zoo entrance, catered to children and adults. Jen put her mother in charge of a kids' tent near the rhinoceros' pen.
"For me, it was really important that the kids have something to do," Jen said.
Inside the tent, the kids could watch movies, do arts and crafts or get their faces painted. Kids emerged from the tent imitating every animal, from chipmunks to tigers.
The "adult" reception featured karaoke. After all, the newly weds had first met at a bar on a karaoke night in October 1998. At their wedding, the couple performed "Don't Go Breakin' My Heart," by Elton John and Kiki Dee.
The Burdick's guests enjoyed green-frosted cupcakes instead of the traditional wedding cake, which the caterer would have charged an additional $1 per slice to cut.
"That was amazing," Jen said. "They were the best flipping cupcakes I've had in my life."
Renting the zoo for the evening (which starts at $1,000) help pays for educational programs. The no-frills environment makes it easy for couples to decorate to their own specifications.
"We were able to make it nice by just adding tables and chairs. You could make it the most basic, or the sky's the limit. You could just have a great time there for not a lot of money."
To the dogs
After she got engaged to her fianc/ Beau Yonge, 28, Julie Fernandez, 31, couldn't imagine getting married without the couple's four dogs taking part in the Oct. 22 ceremony.
"We both just love our dogs, so it was always a given that they'd be in the wedding in some capacity or another," Fernandez said. "It just would have never occurred to us to have a wedding without them."
The female dogs - Marlie, an 11-year-old black Labrador/border collie mix, Akira, a 3-year-old basenji/cattle dog mix, and Delilah, an older hound/hound mix - will wear beaded scarves and purple shawls as they serve as flower maidens. Male dog Zabbie, a collie/German shepherd mix, will play ring bearer, donning a tuxedo with a pillow on his back.
Fernandez made all of the outfits for the dogs by hand, even using a real tuxedo to make Zabbie's attire.
"All the men are wearing an English-style morning jacket type tuxedo, so I took the vest, the ascot and the little pin-collared shirt and turned them into a little top for him," she said.
The dogs will walk in with the human attendants at the beginning of the ceremony. Fernandez isn't worried about the dogs misbehaving during the ceremony.
"They probably won't (bark), but it's not any more distracting than if you had a little kid up there."
The Man in Black
Martinique Davis, 27, and Craig Prohaska, 35, managed to incorporate Johnny Cash into their Sept. 30 ceremony in Tubac. Davis' younger brother played "I Walk the Line" after the couple exchanged vows, while a mariachi band played "Ring of Fire" during the recessional.
"My grandparents are going to be there, and it's almost like Johnny Cash is a multi-generational musician," Davis said in an interview just before her wedding. "He's someone you could listen to with your grandparents and they would know the songs."
Davis' brother thought the song fit the couple. Several years ago, they had seen the late Cash play in one of his final tours at a bluegrass festival.
"Basically, we just love him and the whole mariachi kind of Mexican theme we're going with," she said.
Additional touches included a rehearsal dinner at La Roca in Nogales, children ringing bells to commence the ceremony and doling out Spanish-style, hand-held fans at the reception.
"Whether or not it's important, the thought was put in to all those little things," Davis said. "I feel like we truly (had) a unique wedding that reflects who we are."
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