How Much Can You Earn As a Celebrant in 2026

© Written by Veronika Sophia Robinson

At Heart-led Celebrants, our focus at all times is on our certified celebrants creating, writing and officiating beautiful and meaningful quality ceremonies. We trust that our celebrants are coming from a place of integrity, empathy, creativity and acceptance. These are core values and qualities.

On a celebrant-in-training’s journey to certification they will ask and learn about what to charge for their ceremonial work. There is no set answer. Each celebrant must set their own fee. Alongside this, they need to ascertain and consider what it is that they bring to the table i.e. their qualities, skillset and experience. They may or may not consider what celebrants in their local area are charging. A celebrant must make these decisions in a way that feels congruent.

 

Here is a guide:

What Does a Funeral Celebrant Charge?

A funeral celebrant may charge anywhere from £160 to £400 per ceremony (e.g. cremation or burial). The fee will depend on whether they’re a ‘cut and paste’ celebrant (no creativity or using AI or asking the client to write the eulogy) or, if they’re a Heart-led Celebrant and each ceremony is bespoke, or if someone is just starting out and has zero experience. Location makes a difference, too. A celebrant in London will charge more, almost certainly, than one in the rural valleys of northern England.

Some celebrants don’t charge for baby/child funerals, while others charge half their normal fee; and others charge their normal fee because they recognise this is a specialist role.

An Interment of Ashes fee ranges from free to £150/£200 depending on if they use a set script or create a bespoke ceremony.

 

How many funerals a year?
Again, this depends on the individual celebrant. While there are funeral celebrants churning out 15 to 20 funerals each week, at Heart-led Celebrants, we say that, if you’re doing your job well, then four funerals a week is a full-time job. So, at say £250 a funeral, that’s £1000 gross a week.

 

 

I heard one celebrant (NOT a Heart-led Celebrant) say that he has to do at least seven funerals a week so he can have his Spanish holidays (this is on top of a £50K pension).

 

Five funerals a week is doable but it means you won’t get time off for good behaviour. You want to allow 10 to 15 hours per funeral: meeting the family (2 hours or so), travel to and from family, creating and writing the funeral (2 to 10 hours depending on style, experience, typing speed, complexity of family dynamics), possible redrafting of script if you’re inexperienced, rehearsing the script many times so you can ‘get it off the page’ (several hours), officiating the ceremony (20 to 30 minutes), plus travel to and from venue and ‘waiting’ time beforehand.

 

 

What Does a Wedding Celebrant Charge?

What do you charge for a wedding? Again, that comes down to experience, location, value for money. Celebrants charge between £750 and £2000. Say, for example, you charge £1000 for a wedding. You might decide you only want to do one a month. This is £12 000 per year. On the other hand, you might want to officiate one a week. Assuming you did fifty weddings a year, you’d earn £50 000 gross a year.

Again, from a Heart-led perspective, you could be spending 20 to 30 hours per wedding client (meetings, writing, venue visits and so on). This needs to be taken into account in terms of time management, creativity, energy levels and practicalities.

 

Are you just doing funerals? Are you doing weddings only? Are you doing both? What about naming ceremonies? And there are countless other rites of passage, too. For example, Blessingways, New Home Blessings, Parting of the Ways Ceremonies, Botanical Ash Scattering, Healing from Divorce, and so on.

The beautiful thing about running your own business is that you are the gatekeeper of your diary. Do you want to work every week of the year? Do you want to work seven days a week or two?

At Heart-led Celebrants, our focus is on quality over quantity.

You could earn £100 000 a year doing four funerals and one wedding a week. But would you want to work that much? If £50 000 a year (2 funerals a week, two weddings a month) isn’t enough money, then maybe celebrancy isn’t the right path for you. Remember, this is a person-centred job. We need to be on our A-game. If you don’t have discipline and stamina as foundations to creativity, then you’ll burn out quickly.

 

It is far more helpful to consider what you want to put out into the world, the style and manner in which you’d like to do so, and then go from there. If the focus is only on bringing in the big bucks, you might just find that your focus isn’t in the right place. Keep your eye on attracting ideal clients, keeping space in your diary for self, and being the best celebrant you can be, then everything will fall into place.

Rather than asking “How much can I earn as a celebrant in 2026?” why not ask “How much can I give as a celebrant in 2026?”