Verla Joy Basdeo, MBE, JP
Joy Basdeo has spent more than twenty-five years beside people at the most important moments of their lives. As a Civil Registrar of Marriages in the Cayman Islands she has officiated more than 4,500 weddings and civil partnerships and hundreds of vow renewals, and in 2008 she and her husband, Sam, founded Simply Weddings.
Ceremony is a family calling. Her parents, the late Francine Jackson, National Hero of the Cayman Islands, and Vernon Jackson, together performed some 7,500 weddings over the decades.
Her work now also reaches the end of life. Joy is a funeral celebrant, a certified grief educator, trained through the programme created by grief expert David Kessler, and a certified grief coach. She believes Cayman needs more open conversation about dying, and better support for families before and after a death, while being clear that coaching is not a substitute for therapy.
Before ceremonies became her life's work, Joy was an English teacher and served in the Cayman Islands Government. She holds a BA in English from McMaster University and an MA in Human Resource Management from Durham University. In 2001 she was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to the Cayman Islands in education and country planning. She is a Justice of the Peace and a Notary Public.