The Country Celebrant and The Country Carer

Winter is, hopefully, over and the wedding season is fast approaching. At the moment, those of us involved in weddings are invited to attend showcase events - glitzy affairs where outfitters, cake makers, planners and venues vie for business. The brides to be are schmoozed with bags of goodies, samples of this and that to whet their appetite and empty their pockets. Celebrants too are invited to attend these fairs and I wonder why?  You seldom meet a vicar or a registrar at a wedding fair. The vicar is safe in the knowledge that should a couple wish to be married in a specific church then he will get the gig. The registrar hides behind the legalities of a civil wedding - rolling out humdrum ceremonies in ghastly offices or worse still, fleecing couples for the same prosaic ceremony in a fancy location for an extortionate fee. Hand-fasting Ceremony The Celebrant has to work very hard at getting to know the couple they are working for, researching music and poetry tha...

The Country Celebrant: The Country Celebrant:   Christmas Weddings: I was asked today whether I had ever conducted a wedding at Christmas.  It got me thinking .... I never have and I wondered why that might be. What influences the choice of date?  Is it that we are most likely to have decent weather in the summer, or is that the choice of flowers and the comfort of a beautiful dress without the worry of being cold is uppermost in our minds? Christmas is a time for family and couples often get engaged at Christmas, but actually if your family are all around you anyway - why not get married then. I feel I posing more questions than I am answering; historically the short days of winter are a quiet time and what better way to spend a quiet time than celebrating your love for one another?  A wedding dress in sumptuous velvet, red and gold and green decorations, such a panoply of light and delicious scents everywhere.  The weather is expected to be dreary ...

I have been asked now, by a number of people, what a civil celebrant does that is different to a registrar or religious leader I  do not want to offend anyone by leaving religious belief at the door; I was married in Church, I am confirmed and my children were christened. I am also a realist and I am aware that the family dynamic is altering; that fewer people hold religious beliefs and that many ceremonies these days are secular. Every element of a celebrant ceremony is designed to show the participants their role in the joining together of two people so that there is recall and a sense of collective responsibility for the happiness of the couple; the security and future of the child or the cherished memory of the person who has died. Weddings Handfasting ribbons My ceremonies are personal – no two are the same; they are hand written and my aim is to distil the spirit of the couple that I am marrying and present it to them and their guests as the finest expressi...

Weddings with a Difference! Mothers of the Bride and Groom filling the sand frame as part of the ceremony. This summer has been joyous, it has been all about weddings and the celebration of union.  Families brought together by the joining of couples with hand-fastings, sand and candle ceremonies.  There have been many different types of wedding, some quite traditional and others very definitely not. The cast has been roughly the same; the happy couple - often with little children, some with dogs, a pony and a very badly behaved parrot!  Proud parents and grand-parents, emotional bridesmaids in a rainbow of colour, best-men and in one case a best-woman who have delivered speeches that are funny, poignant and blooming cheeky. There have been wonderful impromptu moments that you could not script.  Sunsets and rainbows, a downpour so loud that it stopped proceedings momentarily. I have loved every second of it all - it is a huge privilege to shar...