365 ways to transform your celebrant practice

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You’ve got your Celebrant Certificate and off you go into the world. It’s an exciting, nerve-wracking and hopeful time. Regardless of how thorough or rigorous your training was (and, frankly, most courses aren’t no matter how fancy their marketing strategies), the bottom line is you are not (and never will be) a finished product.

The years ahead will shape you in many ways. The one mistake celebrants make (regardless of how many ceremonies they’ve done) is to neglect their personal and professional development. To be clear, I’m not talking about doing a workshop or CPD on SEOs or marketing or networking events or attending wedding fayres or funeral exhibitions. I am suggesting that our most important development work is both our inner work and reflection and in improving our manner, style, vocal quality, energetic frequency, and awareness of human psychology (to mention a few).

 

Developing excellence as a celebrant means infusing your life with awareness of how you can improve so that:

  • you don’t determine your celebrant worth by the number of ceremonies you do or frantic levels of busyness or vanity awards you’re nominated for but by the QUALITY of your craft and the way you leave your clients and mourners/guests feeling from the beginning to end of their experience with you
  • you listen to yourself and the tone, quality and patterns in your voice (this is neglected by the vast majority of celebrants)
  • you watch videos of yourself to forensically examine mannerisms and habits
  • you have an awareness of self and others

As I write this blog, I’m in anticipatory grief of my mother’s passing. (This is a completely different experience compared to the sudden and shocking deaths of my father and my best friend.) It has heightened for me my role as a celebrant, and the incredible RESPONSIBILITY we have when we step, as strangers, into people’s homes and expect them to trust us during their time of heart-breaking sorrow. This can never be ‘just a job’. From the deepest level of our being, it must surely be a vocation. A calling that comes from a place of love for others.

Too many people come to this job because, in their words, they “love to be the centre of attention!” Personally, I feel they’d be better suited to the acting profession.

Mum is on the other side of the world. As I wait by my phone or by Messenger for updates, and spend time in meditation sending her love, healing, and my blessings for a gentle passing, I am also still working as a celebrant. All the time I am being gentle with myself, meeting my need to express grief, ‘pulling up the drawbridge’ to minimise the amount of time spent listening to people’s mundane minutiae of daily life. I’ve learned the hard way, during previous experiences of grief, that most people are fundamentally selfish and just want to share their own stories and have little ability to hold space and just be.

My hard and fast rule as a celebrant is about not sharing ‘relatable stories’ with my clients or keeping it to a bare minimum. THE GRIEVING DON’T WANT OR NEED TO HEAR OUR STORIES.

At every second, I wonder how to navigate the next couple of weeks with scheduled wedding meetings, funeral visits and ceremonies to officiate. When to step forward, when to step back. It has made me reflect more on my celebrant practice than ever before. A conversation I often have with my husband Paul (co-trainer here at Heart-led Ceremonies) is “who would I ask to be a celebrant for me to officiate one of my loved one’s ceremonies?” And here’s the truth: even though there are plenty of ‘good’ celebrants out there (including ones we’ve trained), I can count on one hand the celebrants who I would call on. What’s the difference between a good or even great celebrant and one I would choose? A world of difference, that’s what. In many ways, it can be hard to define what that elusive quality is but in the end in comes down to:

  • energetic vibration
  • self awareness
  • grace
  • kindness
  • empathy (a word that’s so overused and used interchangeably with compassion)
  • sensitivity
  • sincerity and authenticity

This isn’t necessarily something you have after decades as a celebrant or officiating thousands of ceremonies. It is fundamentally about who you are as a person. I always come back to that quote: “How you do anything is how you do everything!” If you’re ripping around the place doing this, that and the other with little or no time to be still, to breathe, to live in the calm as a matter of course, then the above qualities will elude you. And, of course, it goes with out saying that if the above qualities are your foundation then everything and anything you do to improve your voice, communication, writing, performance and so on will only be of benefit to all concerned. It’s a choice though. You can live a life of thinking you’re the finished product because ‘you’re used to public speaking’ or ‘like to be the centre of attention’ or you can take steps every day to become the best version of you.

So, 365 ways to improve your celebrant practice? It is as simple (and as complex, complicated and hard as you want to make it) as waking up each day and deciding to do one new thing to improve yourself, the world around you, and the interactions you have with your clients and industry suppliers and your craft. One thing for every day of the next year. You will literally be a new person this time in a year from now. Examples include:

  • developing a daily meditation practice (use a guided meditation if it helps)
  • stopping throughout the day to practise deep, connected breathing
  • not gossiping or bitching
  • being mindful of the thoughts you think
  • stepping into a bereaved person’s home with awareness that their heart is shattered (or they were estranged and are angry, and a thousand variations) [an aware celebrant picks up on energy, and doesn’t need words to tell them the nature of the relationships]
  • recognising that we are ‘all one’
  • walking softly in this world
  • shining the light on others 
  • make a commitment to not interrupt someone’s sentences at work or socially (especially sharing relatable stories to the bereaved)
  • focus less on the colour of your nail varnish and hair but how you can stand with grace and be a channel of healing/loving energy
  • developing ‘an attitude of gratitude’ by regularly stopping in your day to give thanks (internally or verbally) for moments, people, things, nature, pets, and so on
  • consciously considering (and adjusting) the energy you emit to others (are you brittle, fragile, angry, nervous, tense, stressed, and so on). We take our energy with us everywhere we go, including our client meetings and ceremonies. 
  • Be alone in Nature every day as this will allow you to connect with the source of All That Is and to infuse that soul-being into your life and your work

Each celebrant who undertakes a year of transformation will find their own ways to grow and blossom. I can promise you though, awareness changes everything. So, go on, try it: commit to one new thing or way of being each day. We’d love to hear about your list and new practices.