Reviews of Civil Weddings and Other Ceremonies
Opinions and feedback received from the newlyweds I guided in civil wedding ceremonies and in other types of ceremonies
Dear Paola, thank you for everything. It was an indescribable ceremony, filled with emotions. Even months later, we still receive many compliments from relatives and friends for how you created and conducted the ceremony.
It was a fantastic wedding, and your part was truly exemplary! It was so moving: you even made my cousin, who claims never to have cried in his entire (adult) life, shed tears. Even my best man said, "I haven't been moved like this, not even at my children's weddings, but at yours!"
Ylenia Morando and Daniele Olivero
newlyweds
Banca del vino, Pollenzo (Cuneo)
October 15, 2023
During the organization of our civil wedding, we realized the need for a professional figure to officiate our marriage: a secular celebrant, a relatively new professional role. We sought a discreet person, skilled in crafting a wedding ceremony, allowing friends and family to fully enjoy the moment without additional bureaucratic tasks. We also desired someone with musical expertise to coordinate the quartet of string musicians for our special day.
Our journey with Paola was filled with moments of reflection and collaboration. In the months leading up to the wedding, through a series of online and in-person meetings, she crafted a ceremony script tailored to us entirely, allowing us to approach the day in a relaxed manner. Beautiful memories from the wedding are now preserved through photos and the ceremony script.
For us, Paola was all this and more: simply impeccable!
Serena Minervini and Valerio Di Palma
newlyweds
Masseria "Lady Tiffany Ricevimenti"
Ruvo di Puglia, Bari
December 28, 2023
Irene & Alberto, Civil wedding, Municipality of Massagno, (Lugano, Switzerland), Friday 3 March 2023
Thank you Paola for giving us such lovely words for our special day. Thank you for the time you gave us, the sensitivity and care with which you told our story, the professionalism you showed us.We are truly grateful that life brought us together and that we were able to meet someone like you, a wonderful woman, an exceptional mother and an extraordinary celebrant.
With all our love,
Irene & Alberto
Thank you so much Paola, for your professionalism and helpfulness. We were very pleased. You were very attentive to our requests, with so much patience. We wanted a simple but well-organized wedding, and you helped us a lot in every moment for achieving the desired result. You know how to guide the bride and groom in making the many choices there are for a ceremony. You are a person who loves what you do and you convey that. Thank you for making the most important day of our lives unique and unforgettable.❤️ 
From the very first meeting we felt the warmth, spontaneity and great professionalism that distinguish Paola. We felt at ease in every moment and Paola fulfilled all our wishes, even doing more than her due, while constantly guiding us with her advice to have a perfect ceremony. And it was perfect: engaging and intimate, with a hint of irony, but always natural, even for our Italian and German guests. We are grateful to Paola for playing (with great sensitivity) a key role in our lives, and we will always reserve a special place in our hearts for her. 
Dear Paola, we are trying to find the right words to describe what was an amazing wedding speech and a fantastic experience throughout the preparation journey. We believe the greatest compliment to your work was the positive and unsolicited feedback we received from our guests. It was great to meet such a positive and enriching person who was able to convey the positivity and joy of our special day to our guests! Best wishes for all your future endeavors and weddings! 
Paola was a wonderful find, she managed to make our ceremony even more magical and special. She touched all the people who attended. She was fully present and most importantly she was able to convey our love story to everyone through her words, to the fullest. I would recommend her to anyone for their ceremony; I am sure that just as she did for us, she would be able to make it into something magnificent and keep the guests enraptured. Everyone complimented her, because you don’t often get to see such a beautiful ceremony, and at the same time manage to engage the attention of everyone present. 
When Laura and I decided to get married, we started looking for "our" celebrant, the person who would make our ceremony the way we wanted it: elegant, romantic, but also fun. After contacting multiple celebrants on social media, we met Paola, and we both immediately knew that we wanted her to make our dream come true. She was the perfect choice. As we prepared the symbolic ceremony, Paola accompanied us carefully, interpreting our every wish, and she created a simply fantastic ceremony, bringing a special and original touch to every detail with her elegance. Paola turned our dream into a beautiful reality. Thank you, Paola, for the journey together and for the love and commitment you put into your work. 
Dear Paola, I wanted to thank you for the beautiful ceremony you wrote and dedicated to Massimo and Carmen: it was a moment much appreciated by all the guests. Your words, so special and precious, touched the hearts of all the people present. A particularly touching moment was when you quoted a line from the bride and groom's favourite song, "Amici mai, per due persone come noi..." You are really talented and it’s clear that you do things from the heart, and you’ll be rewarded for this. Yours is a talent that you should cultivate more and more, because you are a special and good person. Thank you for being who you are. 
When the universe delivered romance, I was absent; weddings are not my passion, I admit. But then one day your beloved 'little brother' tells you that he is getting married, and it happens that the woman he met and who stands by his side is a special person, and it happens that to celebrate this union is Paola Minussi, who with her gentleness, sensitivity, irony and professionalism writes and elaborates a moving, deep, intense ceremony, full of joy, laughter, and love like you never imagined. Then you find yourself saying, "Long live Love, with a capital 'L'!" Thank you, Paola and thank you to everyone who shared this beautiful day with us on June 28, 2022 at Il Vecchio Faggio Onlus Farm in Canzo. Claudia Fontana, the sister and witness of the groom
Thank you so much, Lay Celebrant Paola Minussi, for helping us make our ceremony unforgettable! We were so happy to have chosen you to perform our ceremony (bilingual Italian-English), and the end result far exceeded our expectations. We appreciated your approach, methodology and professionalism in all the various steps leading up to our wedding day. Thank you, again! 
Paola, you were an invaluable guide in the exciting journey that led us to our special day. You were patient, always meeting our needs in scheduling our interviews, wise in offering us advice and ideas, and empathetic in preparing for the ceremony. Our wedding was truly special thanks to what you brought with your professionalism, warmth and closeness to us. You made us feel special and precious, and all the people who attended the ceremony told us how impressed they were with your celebration. Thank you so much for accompanying us on this special journey of our lives and for making the moment of our wedding ceremony absolutely unforgettable. 
Dear Paola, thank you again for creating such a beautiful and meaningful wedding for us. Your words are among the most precious memories we have of that day. 
Thank you, Paola, amazing as always!
Martina Coppino Director of Events for Exclusive Italy Weddings
www.exclusiveitalyweddings.com
Dear Paola, it is difficult to find the words that best express all the gratitude we feel toward you for your support in such an important event as our wedding. Perhaps the only word is: thank you! Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for being the best celebrant one could wish for. 
Paola dearest, you were really great, both before and during the ceremony. You were fantastic, and we received compliments from everyone. We wanted to thank you so much because, as you know, the ceremony was fundamental for us. We were already sure beforehand that we had chosen the right person, and were even more so after the ceremony. We saw how involved you were, and it was very emotional for us as well. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts and renew the many compliments that all the guests also gave us for your way of celebrating which, despite the emotion, was as beautiful and elegant as we expected. Thank you for everything. 
I met Paola at my cousin's wedding and was impressed by her skill, sweetness and sincere emotion. 
Paola is an amazing person, extremely professional, sweet, understanding, very organized, and a very special celebrant, and we love working with her.
Martina Coppino
Director of Events for Exclusive Italy Weddings
www.exclusiveitalyweddings.com
Thank you so much, Paola, for making our wedding absolutely perfect. Even though we never met in person until the wedding day, it was as if we had known you forever and that you knew us. You helped us the whole way, and made everything so easy. From the first phone call with you, we knew you were the right person to officiate at our wedding. Thank you not only for filling our ceremony with love and intimacy, but also for incorporating Jewish traditions and making everything so smooth. When we look back on our wedding, we are so grateful because we could not have had such a perfect ceremony if you had not been our celebrant. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts. 
Paola turned out to be the best possible choice for our celebration. Very professional, precise in everything but also empathetic and sweet. She walked us through the preparation of the ceremony text, advised us on the timing and choice of music, giving us much more time, attention and patience than initially agreed. Even on the day of the celebration, she was very thoughtful and allowed the whole event to unfold in a truly sublime way. In such a highly emotional moment as that, having Paola in front of us immediately reassured us from the first glance, as she managed with ease to create the intimate, poetic and refined atmosphere we had imagined, in a long moment that will remain magical and timeless in our and our guests’ memories. 
Paola is a true professional! She was the celebrant for our wedding and we had a great time with her right from the start! We were impressed with her professionalism, competence, adherence to deadlines as well as her ability to draft our story as a couple and the text of the ceremony in such a short time. The entire preparatory phase was followed to the smallest detail. On the wedding day, she set an extraordinary tone of elegance and class to the ceremony and also ensured that the timetable was adhered to; in fact, she welcomed all the guests in attendance! We also very much appreciated her coordination with the musicians and the fact that she spoke several languages, as some moments of the ceremony were in both German and English, in addition to Italian of course. Everyone was very happy with the 'magic' she was able to create on our special day. 
On Saturday, August 28, 2021, I attended a wedding celebrated by a lay person for the first time. It was the wedding of Peter, the son of a very dear friend of mine since high school, and Nidžara. The lay celebrant was Paola Minussi. The ceremony was simple and elegant. In the evocative setting of the gardens of an ancient villa overlooking Lake Como, the celebrant was able to emotionally engage all those present with brief but timely and profound reflections on marriage, family and the miracle of the feeling of love, which was able to bring the two spouses closer from the first meeting, despite their different origins, languages and backgrounds. The celebrant also outlined some important moments in the personal histories of Peter and Nidžara. I must acknowledge that the celebration I witnessed allows for a greater 'personalization' of the ceremony, which can, in fact, escape fixed and pre-established patterns and be more calibrated to the wishes and the personal, always different, stories of the bride and groom. 
Paola is a true professional, always ready to accommodate and fulfill all my requests and the wishes of the bride and groom, with a patience that is uncommon! It is always a pleasure to work with her and to have her as a celebrant at my weddings. Georgia Louise
Wedding Planner
www.georgialouiseweddings.it
Dearest Paola! We wanted to thank you again for your work; it was a beautiful ceremony and we received nothing but compliments! 
Dear Paola, everything went very well yesterday and the bride and groom were very happy! I thank you for your help and for making the ceremony an exciting and meaningful moment.
Roberta Cavaliere,
wedding planner
www.robertacavaliere.it/en
Paola, I want to thank you for the exceptional care you had for my dearest and only true friend, Andrea; you were a professional, but at the same time very attentive to the emotional part that never failed. Throughout the ceremony your remarkable care made everything evolve in a natural, yet precise way. My heartfelt compliments, it was a real joy! 
Paola… what can I say?
She’s an exquisite person, I have no words to describe her: her calmness and tact, her willingness to listen, her skill, but above all her humility in dealing with such a delicate subject as the death of a loved one.
Paola was able to make the secular ceremony desired by my husband a unique, intimate, engaging commemoration; she spoke about him, tracing his life from childhood to the end of his days. She described his personality and feelings in depth, capturing all the nuances as she recounted his life and our life together. As she spoke, at different stages she included the thoughts we’d dedicated to him, written in our own hand, with softly nuanced music in the background. Paola captured the attention of all present by touching them, with such a sincere participation and emotion I’d never expected.
This beautiful ceremony left everyone with a feeling of peace, acceptance and serenity.
Thank you, Paola. 
Dear Paola, thank you very much for everything (very beautiful booklet, perfect ceremony, harmonious choice of music). The service was conducted with great sensitivity and empathy. Many relatives and friends of Linda thanked us for this precious moment of bidding farewell. Several people asked us if you had known Linda personally. We were very pleased, the ceremony was very beautiful and touching, and it will remain forever engraved in our memories and hearts. 
I had the opportunity to appreciate Paola's talents as a lay celebrant at the lay memorial service of Linda, a dear friend who passed away. Before then, I hadn’t known that such a figure existed. Paola organized the memorial service with simplicity, in a natural setting and completely respecting Linda's characteristics. The words Paola used and the passages she chose and read revealed her great sensitivity and expertise. She painted a watercolor of Linda through words. I was very moved, and I felt close to all her relatives and friends, united in a warm embrace of farewell to dear Linda. I let her go, and since then I have felt her closer and closer to my soul. 
Linda's memorial service was a well-organized and moving ceremony. In the religious ceremonies we are more accustomed to, we always hide behind a certain conformity, and sincere feelings are somewhat hidden. I really appreciated the quote from Thoreau and rushed to re-read it once I got home. It is especially nice to share with those we meet for the first time our readings and reflections on the world and how we participate in the lives of others. I was not familiar with your profession, but me and my friends all felt it was important to rely on someone with experience for the final parting moment. As much as we express wishes and methods, we almost never have the lucidity to understand what people would like to remember about this type of ceremony. Just in case, I will keep your email address and perhaps rely on your advice. The music that was chosen was very nice, especially the music at the beginning with those distant evocations of Tibetan drums and bells, but Satie was also very sweet.