White Dove Release creates an uplifting moment in ceremony

I'm so pleased to introduce our guest blogger and newest partner at Asheville Celebrant -- Julia Gaunt of Asheville White Dove Releases.  Julia has brought her tenderly cared for and painstakingly trained White Rock (Homing) Doves to communities and families in our region for over 6 years now.

The sight of these beautiful white doves being released and taking flight to the sky is an awesome experience for all who witness it.   

The birds always circle around and gather any stray doves into the flock before they begin routing their way home.  They provide powerful symbolism  for the many ways people seek  to live connected.


As the doves begin flying together - their lived connection to each other allowing them to fly in unison - we feel our  hearts uplifted because we, too, can experience the bond we share with all creation.  


I am so pleased to be affiliated with Asheville Celebrant. Together, we help families celebrate and honor the connections that make life meaningful in ways that people remember for a lifetime.

Michelle is a talented and compassionate Celebrant who helps people create ceremonies that authentically reflect her clients' values and beliefs.  I trust her to release my birds with the same care and ethics I do myself.

Videos of Asheville White Dove Releases for several types of ceremonies such as weddings, funerals and community celebrations can be found at doveladyasheville on YouTube.  

The releasing of pure white homing doves is a harmonious and natural way for an individual, a family or a business to celebrate or commemorate personal milestone events.  An alternative to balloons or rice,  white doves add an unexpected and uplifting highlight to any occasion!

To set up a short no-obligation call to Explore the Possibilities for your including a White Dove Release at your ceremony email us at ashevillecelebrant@gmail.com

Warmly,

Julia

Julia Gaunt, Asheville White Dove Releases

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Michelle Smith is the founder of Asheville Celebrant. She is an ordained Inter-Faith Minister and Certified Life-Cycle Celebrant who helps people experience deeper, more meaningful connections in their families and communities. Whether helping people create personal ceremonies for life’s big changes or leading public ceremonies that build community, Michelle honors all philosophies, beliefs and traditions--religious, secular, spiritual, inter-faith and multi-cultural. To explore the possibilities for honoring your own life’s transitions email Michelle at ashevillecelebrant@gmail.com to set up a short, no-obligation call.

5 Reasons to Make Your Business Launch Even More Powerful With Ceremony.

Most people recognize the importance of ceremonies in their personal lives, to mark births, graduations, marriages, deaths and other big life changes. But one of the most important ways we interact in our communities is in the marketplace -- through our businesses.

Rites of Passage help people adjust to change and organizations go through many changes - some celebratory, some difficult.  
Grand Openings, Retirements, Opening a new location, Down-sizing are just a few ceremony-worthy transitions that businesses and organizations experience.


Nothing builds connections between people like ceremony when it is skillfully and meaningfully presented.   Ceremony can help bring a stronger sense a Purpose into your business activities and, as a wonderful side-effect, creates unbeatable marketing opportunities!


For example, one business ceremony that many people are already familiar with is the typical Chamber of Commerce Ribbon Cutting Ceremony.  The Ribbon Cutting ceremonies that I've attended are very nice and may create a pretty good marketing opportunity but I didn't experience them as creating strong personal connections and lasting relationships.


A trained Celebrant can enhance this typical ceremony in a way that is authentically meaningful for you and your business to create an experience that allows people to see your success as part of the whole communty's success.  

Here are 5 ways a Celebrant Ribbon Cutting Ceremony can create a powerful launch for your business:








1. Create a "pattern interrupt".  A custom-crafted ceremony looks and feels different from the very beginning.  People don't expect it so they pay attention! 


2. Attract a better attendance.  If people expect something interesting besides free wine and hor d'oeuvres they are more likely to turn out for your Ribbon Cutting ceremony and bring their friends. 


3. Create emotional connections.  We humans make most of our decisions from the Limbic area of our brains.  This is the area where we experience our higher emotions.  Successful marketers have understood this fact and worked with it, for good or ill, to influence our buying decisions for decades.  (Think of how you feel when you see a photograph of children laughing or a firefighter covered in soot or tropical  beach or a polluted river.)  We don't make most of our desicions from the rational Cerebral Cortex area of our brains.  That area just provides the "intellectual alibi" for the decision we made from our emotional brain.  Meaningful ceremony can create meaningful emotional connections with your businesses audience. 


4. Remember you BIG WHY.  Why did you start this business in the first place?  Sure, to make money but why do you want to make the money?  And why this business? Leading a business to success is not for the faint of heart.  It presents daily challenges.  If you didn't have a bigger WHY you probably would have chosen some other path for making money.  What larger purpose is your business serving?  A Celebrant ceremony can help you remember that Big Why, express it in a way that makes people want to support your business. 


5. Recognize the people who have and will help your business succeed.  In an enhanced Celebrant Ribbon Cutting ceremony you can acknowledge the partners, associates and vendors that you that they have made this business possible and you can express your intention that your success means success for them as well.  




A professional Celebrant can work with you, your managers and your employees to create and officiate ceremonies for your business or organization that are meaningful and authentic.  You contact me to set up a no-obligation call to Explore the Possibilities.  I'll be happy to talk with you about your intentions and ways we can craft a beautiful ceremony that will reflect your life and this part of your story.  




From my heart, 

Michelle Smith 

Would you like to share this article?

Please do!  Just include this complete blurb with it.

Michelle Smith is the founder of Asheville Celebrant.  She is an ordained Inter-Faith Minister and Certified Life-Cycle Celebrant who helps people experience deeper, more meaningful connections in their families and communities.  Whether helping people create personal ceremonies for life’s big changes or leading public ceremonies that build community, Michelle  honors all philosophies, beliefs and traditions--religious, secular, spiritual, inter-faith and multi-cultural.   To explore the possibilities for honoring your own life’s transitions email Michelle at ashevillecelebrant@gmail.com to set up a no-obligation Explore the Possibilities call.

5 Ways that Ceremony Helps Us Live Connected

Often when I talk with people after their ceremony, whether it is a union, a remembrance or a rite of passage, they tell me they are surprised at how powerfully moved they were by the ceremony we created together.   Sure, it was beautiful, but it was more than that - it was deeply moving and it strengthened their connections in ways they had no idea ceremony could provide.

Our culture has lost most of our ceremonies and the ones that do remain are often just something to get through before the party starts.  Most of us have no idea how much ceremony can enrich our lives.


So here are five ways that we can expect ceremony to help us live more powerful and connected lives:


1. Ceremony enables us to express ourselves, our desires and our intentions creatively and authentically.   When we take the opportunity to mark a transition with a personal ceremony we get to bring our creativity and imagination to the process.   We can include beautiful objects as well as favorite songs, poems and readings.  We can bring our sense of humor and our sense of the sacred.   We can decorate, dance and dress up!  Or we can simply share with others what this transition means and how much we appreciate the ways they’ve contributed to our journey.




2. Ceremony can provide comfort and support. Life is Change.  Whether we are excited about events and circumstances that bring change to our lives or devastated by them, ceremony and ritual help us attend to the big changes in our lives fully — spiritually, psychologically and socially.  The ceremonial arts have stood the test of deep time as the most effective means of deriving peace, positive energy and resolve from the changes and trials that come with being a human among other humans.


3. Ceremony says “this is who we are” as a family or community. Humans are social creatures and meaning-making beings.   We decide what we value by sharing it with other people.  Ceremonies, particularly those we return to such as Renewals of Vows or annual gatherings, allow us to re-connect with those shared values and create a sense of continuity and stability in an ever-changing world.


4. Ceremony helps us shape our present and mold our future.  Even the most eagerly anticipated transitions, like weddings, graduations, the welcoming of a baby or the launch of a business include uncertainty and a shifting of roles and responsibilities.  Studies have shown that meaningful rituals are associated with increased marital satisfaction and a heightened sense of personal identity among adolescents.  Ceremony provides elders a meaningful opportunity to pass down traditions and to give children a sense of belonging to something larger than themselves.


5.  Ceremony allows us to model authentic living to those who look to us for guidance. We’ve got a world to save, people.  I believe it will be saved by people who have consciously declared who and how we want to be in the world, then gone out and lived that declaration.  With ceremony we can share these intentions with our community and gain support for them.  Furthermore, we encourage others to declare their intentions as well.   Whether a change in our life is joyous or solemn, planned or unexpected, when we mark the transition in ways that are authentic and meaningful to us we not only help ourselves respond to the change with intention, we help our families and community respond intentionally as well.


Simply put, ceremony connects us and reminds us what we share. It was my passion for seeing all re-awaken to our connectedness that lead me to become a professional Celebrant and an Interfaith minister in the first place.


In this blog I will be sharing ideas for personal ceremonies and rituals that can help you build lasting connections in your family and community.  I’ll give insights from my experience and training in ceremony structure and theory to help you as you work with a Celebrant to create ceremony for the milestone transitions of your life.


And I’ll share some of my impressions from some of the ceremonies I’ve performed or observed that might reveal some of the wonderful, sometimes surprising,ways those ceremonies have forged connections for people.




From my heart,

Michelle




Would you like to share this article?

Please do!  Just include this complete blurb with it.

Michelle Smith is the founder of Asheville Celebrant.  She is an ordained Inter-Faith Minister and Certified Life-Cycle Celebrant who helps people experience deeper, more meaningful connections in their families and communities.  Whether helping people create personal ceremonies for life’s big changes or leading public ceremonies that build community, Michelle  honors all philosophies, beliefs and traditions--religious, secular, spiritual, inter-faith and multi-cultural.   To explore the possibilities for honoring your own life’s transitions email Michelle at ashevillecelebrant@gmail.com to set up a no-obligation Explore the Possibilities call.