People often ask me what celebrant training involves, but the question underneath it is usually a different one. What they really want to know is what happens after. Once the training is finished, what does the first year of being a celebrant look like?
The honest answer is that it depends. And I think it’s worth explaining exactly what it depends on, because that’s far more useful than a single number.
Training itself is shorter than you might think
My course runs over seven weeks. Most students take both the wedding and funeral training, so that’s around fourteen weeks in total. It’s structured, supported, and finishes with you genuinely capable of writing and delivering a ceremony and supporting your clients.
Some practices fly from the start
I want to be honest about this because it happens more often than people expect. I’ve had students take their first funeral booking before they’d even finished training. Funeral celebrancy in particular can move fast, because the need is immediate and there’s no long lead-time to wait through. If you’re building relationships with other professionals and your community from early on, and you’re open to funerals as well as weddings, a genuinely busy practice in year one is entirely possible. Some of my most established celebrants didn’t have a slow start at all.
Weddings, by contrast, have a long lead-time
If wedding work is a bigger part of your plan, the picture is different, not worse, just different. Couples often book a celebrant twelve to eighteen months ahead of their date. That means a practice built mainly around weddings will naturally take longer to feel busy. This is simply because of how far in advance that industry works.
A practical way to bridge the gap
Many of my students don’t leap straight from employment into celebrancy full time. A common and sensible approach is to reduce hours in an existing role and grow celebrant work alongside it. Gradually increasing the balance over the first year as enquiries build. There’s no badge of honour in jumping in with nothing underneath you. Building steadily while you still have a foot in stable income is not a failure of commitment, it’s simply sensible.
So what’s the realistic range?
If you focus on funeral work and build relationships early, you can have a busy practice within the first year. If your work is weighted toward weddings, or you’re building gradually alongside other commitments, eighteen months is more realistic. Year three, with consistent effort, you should expect a thriving practice, regardless of which path you took to get there. That range isn’t a warning. It’s simply the honest shape of how this profession tends to grow.
Knowing this changes how you start
The celebrants who struggle most in year one are rarely the ones who are short of skill. They’re the ones who expected to be fully booked by month three, regardless of what kind of practice they were building, and quietly lost heart when that particular timeline didn’t happen. Understanding your own likely path, fast through funeral work, steadier through weddings, or gradual alongside other commitments, lets you measure your progress against something real.
Before you go, a free resource for you
If you’re thinking seriously about this path, my free guide Transitioning to a Celebrant Career is honest about exactly this, the realistic timeline, the financial transition, and what building a genuinely sustainable practice involves.
And if you’d like to talk it through properly, my Informed Decision Session is a warm, no pressure 30 minute conversation to help you think it through with someone who has been there.
Warmly,
Dinah, She/Her