From first kiss to “I do”

Wedding officiant writes a book of love stories

Every year, hundreds of weddings take place in the County, and Craig Logan literally has a front row view to a significant fraction of them. Craig is a wedding officiant and he performs about 150 weddings each year, mostly in the County at his own backyard venue or at places like Cherryvale, the Drake Devonshire, The Eddie or The Cape, but also farther afield in Madoc or Marmora or even Toronto.

Craig says that he loves the energy and atmosphere of weddings, especially the wedding ceremony, and out of curiosity he asked one of the wedding officiants how to go about getting himself licensed to perform weddings. “I took the leap in 2018 and I haven’t looked back,” he says. Wedding officiants are licensed by the Ontario government to legally unite people in marriage. “There’s a lot of training involved and courses you have to take, and it’s usually a couple of months’ process to get there. We unite people legally in the eyes of the Ontario government, but what we actually do—if you do it right—is create a ceremony that is stress-free, that is fun, and just happens smoothly and effortlessly. That is what I try to do, and keep it under 20 minutes, so that people can get to the celebration,” he says. Most wedding officiants typically do about 15 to 25 weddings per year, but Craig easily does well over 100. This is helped by a strong social media presence, thanks to his daughter-in-law, Courtney, as well as the lakeside micro wedding venue he and his wife, Lisa, operate from their home. “I’m the Drake’s in-house wedding officiant, and almost every venue in the County has asked me to come in. I’m always happy to do so if I’m available, whether it’s backyard weddings, in a barn, or at local wineries. The County has become such a tourist destination that in June, July, August and into September there are weddings pretty much every Tuesday at the Drake or on Fridays at the Royal Hotel,” he says.

Craig is perhaps as well known in the County for his day job as a driver for Purolator, a career that he’s had for over 29 years. Fortunately, balancing his busy summer schedule as an officiant with delivery job has not been a problem. “Being a delivery driver is like the best job in the world, other than being a wedding officiant,” he says. “Purolator is a great company, and if I need to take a day off, they just say, ‘Great, one of the junior drivers will fill in.’ I can always work around my schedule, and I tend to do two or three weddings in a day. But once in a while the phone will ring when I’m driving, and they’ll say ‘There’s no one here!’, and if I’m in the area I can zip over, do what I have to do and take care of it and go back to work. It’s like switching clothes in a telephone booth kind of thing.”

When Craig meets with his clients to plan the ceremony, he asks them about how they met, about their first date, about the proposal, and then he creates a three-or fourminute story that he tells during the actual wedding ceremony. After one of his weddings, the grandmother of the bride said she enjoyed the story immensely, and asked Craig whether he had a book of such stories, because she would be very interested in reading the love stories of other couples. “I got to thinking about that for months and thought, why not write a book? I reached out to 26 couples to see if I could publish their stories, and they loved it. But it didn’t feel right to profit off a book, so I crafted this little book and 100 per cent of the proceeds will go to the Loyalist Humane Society,” he says. The book, First Kiss to ‘I Do’, is self-published through Amazon, and is composed of little vignettes of how the couples met, how their relationship developed and what happened at the proposal, followed by Craig’s reflection. The book is available from Amazon or locally at Taste of Country, the Drake, The Cape and Bright House. Already, Craig has made a $500 donation to the Loyalist Humane Society. It is an organization that is near and dear to his heart—he and his wife have three cats adopted from the LHS.

Giving back to the community is very important to Craig. He is also one of the esteemed judges of the Wellington Christmas Cookie Contest, a task that he takes on with great enthusiasm. “Quite often when I’m making a delivery, people will say they’ve made some cookies or muffins, and here you go, and I’ll gladly take any food offered to me. Evan Nash asked me a few years ago to be a judge for the cookie contest, and I said, ‘of course.’ I’m more than happy to give back, especially for something as worthy as the food bank. I’ve been pretty blessed to live here and do what I do,” says Craig.