My name is Destiny and my husband, Walter, and I have taken over OWC from Ann Clough. We live in Colorado and were Chrismated and married in the Antiochian Orthodox Church. We have one newborn baby and a small menagerie of animals.
We are so excited to make crowns for the sacrament of marriage! It appears to be a blessed endeavor, so I will tell the story from our perspective below.
When Walter and I were planning our wedding, we looked far and wide for crowns that fit not only our tastes but some criteria our priest had given us. The task wasn’t going well, so I enlisted the help of one of my bridesmaids to widen the search. She found this website and we were so excited! The St. Irene crowns were exactly what we were looking for, and all the designs looked so well-crafted. But when I tried to put the crowns in my cart and check out, I wasn’t able to make the purchase. I went to the homepage and found updates that explained my problem. The business was on pause!
After nearly 2 decades of making gorgeous, high quality wedding crowns for Orthodox Christians, Ann realized that her priorities had shifted and she stopped making crowns in favor of making bread seals, teaching, and taking care of other things for her family. She just wasn't sure about letting go of this business permanently. This is all detailed in her previous updates which we will leave up on the website for a little while for continuity.
Walter ended up making our crowns by hand, as he was already making our rings. Later on, we were talking about career moves for me and how nice it would be to have a meaningful, at-home handicraft business. We decided to reach out and see if Ann was interested in selling OWC. She never responded to our email so I put it to the back of my mind.
Several months later, the day after I prayed to St. Xenia to intercede for guidance in my career decisions, I abruptly remembered this idea and sent a message to Ann through another channel. As it turns out, Ann had finally decided to close down the business for good and she had shut down her web store that very day! She had never checked her old store email but received my other message the next day and was blown away. She had hoped to not to let her art work disappear but hadn’t found a good fit with anyone else nearby to take it over, so she was finally ready to let it go right when we came into the picture.
We set up a call to get acquainted. We went back and forth a bit on details over time and ultimately it just seemed right! Our priest also approved of our plan and we bought OWC so that we could continue making Ann’s lovely crowns for another generation.
I was pregnant when we officially transferred the business, and life with our first baby has been wonderful but time consuming! So we have been doing our best to get things up and running but will be taking orders very slowly for a while rather than opening up the website for instant purchases. Better that we tell before you pay whether or not we can make your crowns! Feel free to inquire by email about a made-to-order crown at contact@orthodoxweddingcrowns.