Celebrant. What’s that? Well….it’s me. I conduct weddings, baby naming ceremonies and funerals.
Let’s be clear about weddings. If a Celebrant conducts a wedding it won’t include the legalities, but it will be bespoke, personal and meaningful. The couple do the legal part at the register office in their own time with just two witnesses. No guests? Well, no. When we register a baby’s birth, we don’t take family and friends to the register office. And when we resister a death, the funeral will be a special occasion on a different date at a place we choose. So, a Celebrant-led wedding can be held just about anywhere the couple chooses. It can be at a venue licensed for marriages, but it doesn’t have to be. It can be on the beach, on the forest, in a pub, wherever the couple wants.
I am a former Registrar, who conducted hundreds of weddings and I combine that experience with my own creativity and sensitivity to create very special days for couples.
Baby naming ceremonies offer a delightful opportunity, not just to get a cuddle from a lovely warm bundle of joy, but to welcome a child into the world in exactly the manner and the place the parents choose, incorporating their ideas for their little one’s special day. It can involve adopted children, older siblings or blended families.
Funerals can be conducted by people of all faiths or none. Humanists, in my view, are atheist and so would not include a hymn or prayer in the ceremony whereas Independent Celebrants like me aim to create just the ceremony that the family requires, secular or otherwise.
Whichever ceremony I am conducting, I consider it a real privilege to be involved with people at significant times in their lives.
Patricia Bentley