I used to work in District Court for the State of Montana as a stenographic court reporter. One Friday afternoon this cute couple entered the courthouse in, obviously, wedding attire. You could see the excitement on their faces and in their hurried steps toward the courtroom across the hall from mine.

My afternoon calendar was finished and the thought occured to me, why not take their wedding on my steno machine so they can have their ceremony preserved in writing for years to come?!

I approached them and offered to do it. Confusion flitted accross their faces and they kindly declined. Disappointed, I went back to my courtroom, mulling the idea of taking weddings over as I went, and decided that they just didn't understand what I meant by "taking" their wedding.

Fastforward a few years and I was starting a wedding venue for my brother. As we started having weddings at the facility, and I was there overseeing the events, this dream of mine came alive again. So I decided to quietly take my steno machine with me and take a seat in the audience of the wedding.  I would take the wedding ceremony verbatim, notate certain happenings, the first kiss, the bridal party entering, etc.

After the ceremony I would head back to the office and quickly edit the ceremony, print it and bind it together.

At the end of the day, I would pull the couple aside and gift them the written experience of their wedding ceremony.

It was a HIT! They couldn't believe they could read through their vows, read the cute little things the flower girl said as she made her way to the front, or the description of the grooms face as the bride walked down the aisle. Touched, they would hug me and thank me over and over for this unique memory of their wedding, as they wiped tears from their cheeks. 

Fastforward, again, and this time it wasn't such happy circumstances. I lost a loved one in a car accident. At his memorial service, all his friends stood up and reminced and told so many wonderful stories.

At the end of the day as I was getting ready for bed, I was going over the stories told, the wonderful things he had done for so many, and the jokes and memores shared that afternoon, hoping to solidify every detail of each story in my mind. I would have given ANYTHING to have those wonderful memories written down, to go back over in the years to come when I wanted to sit and remember my dear brother, who we miss so much.

And so White Rose Stenography was born. Our hope is to bring a unique way of remembering special events for years to come. 

 

               "When Words Make Make Memories Magical."