This is the first in a series of posts on inclusive celebrancy. Each one draws on the work we do here at the Celebrant Coaching and Training Academy. In our training, our coaching, and in the CPD-accredited Inclusion and Diversity module we’ve developed. I hope you’ll find something useful, challenging, or thought-provoking in each one.
I live with a disability. And because of that, I am acutely aware, in a way I might not otherwise be, of how much other people’s attitudes and assumptions shape our experience of the world. Of how quickly you can feel seen or unseen. Welcomed or tolerated. Included or merely accommodated.
That awareness has changed the way I approach my work as a celebrant, a trainer, and a coach. It’s made me far more conscious of the assumptions I bring into a room, the language I use without thinking, the moments where I might unintentionally make someone feel like an afterthought in a ceremony that is supposed to be entirely about them.
I don’t share this to claim any special authority. I share it because I think inclusive celebrancy begins exactly here – with the willingness to look honestly at ourselves, our blind spots, and our habits, and to keep looking, even when it’s uncomfortable.
What inclusive celebrancy actually means
It’s a phrase that’s used a lot. And like many phrases that get used a lot, it can start to feel like wallpaper – present everywhere, noticed by nobody.
So let me try to say what I actually mean by it.
Inclusive celebrancy isn’t a set of boxes to tick before you can call yourself a good celebrant. It isn’t a one-day workshop that gives you a certificate and a clear conscience. It isn’t something you switch on when you’re working with a couple or family whose identity or background is different from your own, and switch off when you’re back in your comfort zone.
Inclusive celebrancy is a way of practising. It’s the ongoing, sometimes uncomfortable, always humbling work of making sure that every single person you serve – regardless of their identity, background, belief, ability, culture, sexuality, gender, or family structure – feels genuinely seen, respected, and honoured in the ceremony you create for them.
It starts long before you write a single word of script. In the questions you ask, and crucially, the ones you don’t. It shows up in the language you use in your initial enquiry form, on your website, in your first phone call. It’s present in whether someone with a disability or special requirement feels able to tell you what they need. Whether a same-sex couple assumes they’ll have to explain themselves to you, or whether your words and presence make it clear they won’t. Whether a family with mixed cultural heritage feels free to bring all of themselves to their ceremony, or whether they sense that only certain parts will be understood and welcomed.
Why this matters so much in our profession
Celebrants are invited into some of the most significant moments of people’s lives. Weddings. Funerals. Naming ceremonies. The occasions where people are at their most vulnerable, their most hopeful, their most exposed.
That is an extraordinary privilege. And with it comes a responsibility that goes beyond writing a beautiful script and delivering it well, though those things matter enormously too.
People who feel excluded from their own ceremony – who encounter a word, an assumption, a ritual, or a structure that signals “this wasn’t designed with you in mind” – carry that with them. I have spoken with families who still remember, years later, the moment a celebrant got a pronoun wrong and didn’t correct it. Couples who felt their cultural traditions were treated as add-ons rather than the heart of who they are. Parents whose grief at a funeral was compounded by a ceremony that seemed designed for a different kind of family entirely.
These are not small things. And they are rarely the result of bad intentions. They are almost always the result of assumptions. Assumptions so embedded that we don’t even notice we’re making them.
Inclusive celebrancy is the practice of noticing.
This is a journey, not a destination
One of the things I feel most strongly about and that underpins everything we do in our Inclusion and Diversity training, is this: none of us will ever be finished with this work.
That includes me. I am learning constantly. There are areas where my understanding is still developing, communities whose experiences I am still working to understand more fully, language that is still evolving in ways I need to keep pace with. The moment any of us believes we’ve arrived, that we’ve done the training, we understand the issues, we can move on, is the moment we start doing harm without realising it.
This is not a reason to feel overwhelmed or paralysed. It is simply an invitation to stay curious, stay humble, and stay committed.
At the Celebrant Coaching and Training Academy, inclusion and diversity isn’t a module we bolt on to the end of our training. It is woven through everything – every course, every coaching session, every piece of content we produce, including this blog series. That’s not because we claim to have all the answers. It’s because we believe this is the foundation of everything else.
What this series will explore
Over the coming weeks, I’ll be writing about the specific themes that sit at the heart of inclusive celebrancy:
- understanding privilege and what it means for our work
- the language we use and why it matters so much
- the assumptions we bring into consultations without realising it
- the difference between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation
- what it means to honour diverse wishes in funeral ceremonies
- Why inclusive practice is never about who happens to be in the room.
Some of these posts will be aimed primarily at practising celebrants. Some will be useful for anyone considering celebrancy as a career and wondering what a truly values-led training looks like. All of them will be honest about the difficulty of this work alongside its importance.
If you’d like to go deeper: Want to develop your inclusive practice in a structured, supported way? Take a look at our CPD-accredited Inclusion and Diversity module.
Exploring celebrancy as a path and want to talk about what values-led training looks like? I’d love to have that conversation. Book an Informed Decision Session and we’ll take it one step at a time.
Warmly, Dinah
She/Her