Is becoming a Celebrant right for you?

Welcome everybody. I’m Dinah Liversidge. I’m a celebrant and I’m also the chief training officer for the celebrant coaching and training academy and a master coach.

So, you’ve been wondering whether becoming an independent celebrant could be right for you. I’m going to talk you through some information that I hope will help you to decide whether that’s the case.

I have to say of all the jobs I’ve done in my life, being a celebrant is one of the most rewarding.  It’s one of the most humbling and it’s one of the most privileged.

These are four of the gorgeous couples I have worked with in the last few months. Uh, one of those, as you can see, is in Christmas jumpers, a winter vow renewal, including their gorgeous boys to mark their 10^th anniversary together. Two of these couples are having their celebration of weddings in very different places. One in a 12th century chapel in uh the Brecon Beacons area  in Wales and one in Hampshire in their parents’ garden. And my goodness, what a beautiful garden. And then the couple in the top left corner were here where I live in our little woodland garden. It’s the same as the one in the picture behind me. and that was a vow renewal and handfasting ceremony.

I don’t take photographs of myself at or preparing for end of life ceremonies because that does not feel appropriate to me and all the couples included in any pictures I share have always given me their blessing to do so.

So what does an independent celebrant do?

We create and deliver ceremonies to mark significant life events. Some of those might be the beginning of life, some of those might be end of life, but hopefully it’s also everything in between, too.

It was really important to me to become an independent celebrant. You’ll find there are also humanist celebrants in the UK, but humanist celebrants are not allowed and don’t have any desire to include mixed faith aspects in their ceremonies. And to me, it felt very important that I could be totally inclusive in my work. I think our society excludes people quite enough already. And myself, I am married to my husband John who did not share the same religious faith as I did. We were brought up in totally different faiths. And so when we married the only choice we had available and we’ve been married over 30 years but the only choice we had at the time was to go to a registrar for a simple registry office ceremony and I believe as independent celebrants being able to say we can honor and include both your faiths or a mixture of faiths or no faith is really  important.

We’re non-judgmental. It is essential that you can show empathy. Yes, sympathy, but empathy, it’s vitally important. And it goes hand in hand with compassion. And whilst you might think, well, those two would probably only apply to a funeral celebrant, you’re going to need them to help couples who are preparing for weddings, too. It can be an incredibly stressful time.

You have to demonstrate the ability to listen not just to respond, but instead to listen so that you can really hear what somebody is telling you. And sometimes you have to have those active listening skills where what you’re doing is realizing it’s almost as much what they don’t tell you as what they do.

And if you listen well and you show empathy, you will encourage your clients to be open with you  because they feel safe with you. And as a result, you better serve them. You create better

ceremonies, the ceremony they need.

So, when might a celebrant be getting a phone call?
Well, marriage and civil partnerships are an interesting topic in much of the UK. With the exception of Scotland, at the time of making this video, a celebrant cannot perform a legal marriage ceremony.

The ceremony a celebrant can carry out for you is a wedding ceremony or a relationship ceremony. It is not a legally recognized binding ceremony of marriage. And it’s very important that celebrants tell their clients this and make them aware. Now, in Scotland, humanist celebrants already are licensed to perform legal marriages. And at the time of making this video, the Law Commission for England and Wales is reviewing the extremely outdated marriage laws that carry out so many restrictions in the UK.

We are very very hopeful that MPs will decide that the law does indeed need reforming in line with the recommendations of the committee. And we’re very much hoping that they will understand that in addition to humanist celebrants as they have in Scotland. It’s vitally important that independent celebrants are licensed to allow legal marriages of couples throughout the rest of the UK.

If you take a peek  – a Google search or a search online, how many weddings were performed by

celebrants in the UK last year? We’re running into the tens of thousands. So, couples want a celebrant wedding because we can provide so much choice and because what we do is completely and absolutely bespoke. There are no templates. You don’t get 10 weddings. Pick the one you want. We write every ceremony totally uniquely for every couple we work with.

So, when else might a celebrant be called apart from weddings? Well, one of the most significant times is at the end of someone’s life. The passing of a loved one or perhaps the memorial to honour five years since they died. or sadly at the moment I’m being asked to carry out a lot of ceremonies for those who lost their lives during COVID which meant that a proper funeral or life celebration couldn’t take place at that time.

We are asked to help with significant anniversaries for relationships and this isn’t just a wedding anniversary. It can be the you know anniversary of when they met, the anniversary of their first home together. There are couples who will find lots of lovely reasons to celebrate their  relationship. And there’s no better way to do that than with a celebration after illness or a challenge is one of the most wonderful reasons to be asked to carry out a ceremony for a couple. You’re being taken really deeply into their personal story. They’re  sharing something very, very confidential and significant with you.

Maybe one of them strayed and it almost broke their relationship, but they’ve worked hard, they’ve had help, and now they want to start a new chapter and say, “We’re moving on stronger than ever before.” And to let you into that and ask you to help them write the next page, take that step is a huge thing. I was recently very lucky to work with a couple where one of them has survived cancer. She was given a terrible prognosis, but with the help of her wife, the two of them have come through six years of absolute hell. and they’ve come through because of their love and because of their support and belief in each other.

So, we wrote a glorious gratitude ceremony for them where they talked about how grateful they were for each other’s love and care and also grateful for the future they have together that they really really thought had been taken from them.

It’s pretty special being a celebrant. You’re probably noticing I love what I do.

New family members is another great reason to have a celebrant. And this can be a very simple naming ceremony. Many families don’t want to go for a traditional faith-based uh naming, but they still want that ritual, that welcome to my tribe of our young offspring. let’s announce you to our loved ones and those who will be part of your development and future as you grow. And so to do that through a naming ceremony could be beautiful.

But you know, this can be just as beautiful when two families come together. Maybe you’re marrying a couple or a couple have married for the second time. You’ve done a wedding celebration for them and now you want to say this is not just about two people though, is it?

This is about two families becoming one. And so you can do a uniting ceremony for all of the members of that family. the blessing of being able to offer couples and individuals um ceremonies that acknowledge their gender preferences is so important. I’ve been working recently um with somebody who’s just received her driving license in her new name after many many years of work and unbelievable effort and heartbreak and now two years going through gender reassignment surgery and she gets her driving license in her new name. That is something to celebrate.

And we wrote a naming ceremony as an almost rebirth, something that it was a huge privilege to be able to do as a celebrant.

Moving to a new home can be a really wonderful reason to come and say you, let’s talk about our future, our hopes and dreams for what we hope our family will have in this new home. And of course many, many of us huge proportion of the population in this country work for ourselves and any entrepreneur or solopreneur will tell you running a business is hard sometimes.

And so we want to celebrate when we’re doing well. And having a ceremony to say not always just to you but to your team or your family who’ve supported you to grow that business. Look at what we’ve achieved. Let’s celebrate our five year anniversary as a business is a just fabulous reason to call in a celebrant.

And what kinds of ceremonies could we create for these people? Well, we’ve touched on it, but it’s weddings, vow renewals, funerals, life celebrations, memorials. You know what the great news is? that as an independent celebrant, if somebody says to you, “Does a ceremony exist for this?” Your answer can be, “Well, once we finish working together, there will be.” Because you really can be as creative as you can imagine. There are no limits as long as you’re keeping it legal to what you can create for somebody and working with them as their celebrant, guiding them, helping them form that vision in their head.

Oh, it’s just glorious. It’s a fabulous job.

So, a bit of a kind of grounding moment for you here. If you’re thinking, “This is my chance to stand and deliver wonderful eulogies and make people weep at weddings and talk about how fabulous I was. This is not the job for you. You are not going to be the one in the spotlight. If that’s what you’re looking for, you’re looking at the wrong thing because this is about standing next to others while they have their moment in the spotlight.

Sometimes it’s a joyous, glorious diva moment and sometimes they’d rather be standing  anywhere else. If you’re ready to be the person standing next to that person, this is absolutely the role for you.

So, what are the real key skills and qualities that you need to bring to this role? Now, the good news is you can learn most of these things. You can’t learn all of them, but you can learn most of them. So, don’t think, well, I haven’t got that, so I’m out listening. Gosh, everybody can probably tell I can talk. But I would say that as a celebrant, I spend 80% of my time listening and active listening, being really present, turning off all those distractions and being focused on the person or people that this is all about.

I mentioned before how important empathy and compassion are. Being able to show to another human that we’re there for, that we’re listening and we hear and see their pain or their joy is incredibly important in this role. That human connection will allow you to be the celebrant they need you to be.

You have to have a real love of supporting other people. If you ever find yourself thinking, “Oh, I’m always putting everybody else first.” This might not be the role for you. You have to love doing that. You have to be that person during a challenge or a crisis who can still be confident. Now, you may not be feeling it on the inside. You know that analogy of a duck or a swan on the water looking elegant and calm whilst underneath their legs are kicking like crazy. You need to be that. That person who no matter what is happening can still be professional, can still say, “I’ve got you. Don’t worry.” And a lot of that will come as you build your confidence through your training.

You’ve got to be good at diary management and project management because it is never okay to be late for a meeting with a client. And there is never ever going to be a good enough excuse to miss somebody’s ceremony.

And there’s also a lot of steps to take on that process. You don’t meet someone and write their ceremony. you meet someone and take 101 steps before you write that ceremony and knowing that those steps are in your diary and ready to act on will make you a better celebrant and that’s integral to my training. I was an international event manager for 14 years and the size of events I was managing far surpass any um wedding or life celebration I have ever been asked to do since. So I’m confident that I can manage in a situation from that experience and I’ll share as much of what I learned from that as I can with you as part of the training.

You’ve got to enjoy speaking in public. If you’re coming into this role thinking, I’ll just have to get over my fear of public speaking. I would encourage you to deal with that first. Now, that’s a big thing to say. If you’re not ready to speak in public, this is not your time to step into this role. But I believe that because a bit like it not being you in the spotlight, this can never ever be about you getting your confidence at this event. You have to be in that place already. Now, it may be that that means you go and you work with a speaker coach hand in hand whilst you’re training, but you cannot ever deliver a ceremony for someone hoping that you’re up to it. I hope that’s really clear that I’m not coming from a place of you can’t learn or improve. I think I get better every time I speak. But I would never risk disappointing somebody because I wasn’t ready to speak in public.

So please consider that you’ve got to be an avid reader. Um because being an avid reader will make you a better writer. And if you believe in writer’s block, you need to take the block, take it outside and cut it into little pieces. Because when you are asked to write a ceremony for somebody tomorrow, you can’t say, “I’m sorry, I’m not really in the zone today.” So when you become a celebrant, you also become a writer.

And you need to network. And that’s people to people, not cables or over, you know, internets. It’s people to people probably in your community.

So, if you’re still interested and actually you’re beginning to think, this really does sound like something I’d like to do, then let me tell you about the options we have on offer at the Celebrant Coaching and Training Academy. You can take our training one of three ways.

You can take it as a pre-recorded set of seven sessions and I will give you feedback on the assignments between each session. This means you can take it at your own pace and you have up to a year to complete the training.
Self Paced Wedding Celebrant Training

Self Paced Funeral Celebrant Training

You can take it one to one with me. We will work together over seven weeks to cover each topic. So, seven weeks to cover funerals and life celebrations and seven weeks to cover weddings and vow renewals and naming ceremonies.

You can choose to take both sets of seven week training or just one. And we’ll work together at the same time on the same day each week on Zoom. Those sessions will all be recorded and you’ll have those copies to keep forever.

Additionally, you’ll get my feedback, my support between sessions, and of course, I’ll mark all your assignments.

One to One Wedding Celebrant Training

One to One Funeral Celebrant Training

The third option is to actually come and work with me direct one to one. And we can do that over the seven  weeks so that you come once a week or we can do it over a shortened or even extended period depending on works what works around your schedule. Either way, that’ll be here in my home office. And if the weather in Wales is kind, we can even sit out in the woods.

Whichever option feels right for you, you’ll put in around 30 hours to complete the training. And that includes the time we will spend together if we’re taking the lessons together or or it includes watching the pre-recorded sessions. So, a total of around 30 hours.

Now, what you do need to know as well if we’re working one to one either on Zoom or in person is that when you get your first ceremony, I’ll be there to support you in the background. Whether that’s just to have a chat or whether you want to send me details of what you’re thinking of putting in the ceremony, perhaps asking my help to find the right reading or poem or even just to go over something we covered in training that you feel a little bit anxious about. Whatever it is, I want to be here to support you through that experience.

You also need to know that I have a really simple money back guarantee. Whatever way you choose to take your training with us, once it is completed, if you don’t believe that you had more value than you paid for, I’ll refund you in full.

So, the next step, well, it would be great to have a conversation. You need to see if you think I am the right person to help you start down this path, and I need to see if I think I’m the right teacher for you.

In this last slide, there is a link to book a informed decision session straight into my calendar. I do ask for a small fee of £15 for this session, but if we start working together, I will take that off your deposit to hold your place. I really hope we’ll be speaking soon. And don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions about this video. Bye for now.