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...

Today has been an extraordinary day.  I have never written or delivered a ceremony for an animal before.  I would not normally do so, not because I am anti pet ceremonies.  I am an animal lover and I fully appreciate the joy of owning an animal. Mabel was a border collie cross, she came into the life of her owner as an adult dog and they shared everything for some 15 years. Mabel's owner is a lady in her 60's who has been on her own since her parents died when she was in her middle age.  The lady is alone, she has additional needs; mainly anxiety but also profound loneliness and some autistic tendencies. Mabel was her rock, when things got bad she would press her body against the lady's leg and look up at her with that wonderful smile that collie dogs are so good at giving.  Mabel knew if she was the subject of the conversation; she would thump her tail on the floor and squirm with pleasure, joining in with all that was being discussed. For the last 15 y...

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 like to think that the seeds that we sow will grow and flower and in due course set seed themselves. It was thus last weekend; a young man, the son of one of my oldest and dearest friends, asked me to conduct the Naming Ceremony for his daughter. The family now live in New Zealand and so we seldom see them in England.  It was magical to be in an English country garden on a sunny afternoon in June with four generations of the same family enjoying a glass or two and a slice of delicious homemade cake while the newest member of the family, chewing meditatively on a dibber, was named. We added thumb prints to a fantasy tree to mark the occasion and a wonderful time was had by all.

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...