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...

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...

In the last year I have conducted all manner of funerals. There have been the timely deaths of beloved people where the ceremony has been one of quiet, or raucous, celebration of a life lived to the full and ended peacefully. There have been tragic deaths through suicide and illness, where the person has been snatched from those that love them in a way that is cruel and heartless.  A cold, bleak time when all you can do is hug the pain into some sort of temporary submission. There have been slow lingering departures where there has been time to prepare and say goodbye, to plan the ending and to tie up all the loose ends, so to speak. I have been in awe of the dignity and composure of both those leaving and those being left.  The stories that I have had the honour of retelling.  The poignant words written by children about their Grandparents. The gut twisting pain of listening to a husband talk of his wife and what she meant to him. The keepsakes that I ha...

The Country Celebrant: Funerals :  It seems to me that striking the right note is the key to a good funeral.  It does not matter whether that is achieved by a piece of poetry, some music, the images that are displayed or the eulogy.  Whatever way you look at it, you have one chance to distil the essence of the person and if that key note is spot on, everything else falls into place. This year I have had the chance to work with a number of families - each one different, all united in their desire to provide a meaningful send off to someone that meant something to them.  Some have been poignant, like the brother who read the diary entry from his brother's last day at school.  Some have been tragic and the best, for me, was the one for the sister who genuinely believed that no one would attend her brother's funeral; we had standing room only and luckily it was quite chilly, or we would have had it rather warm! I always take a posy of flowers from my garden ...