Pros and Cons of Celebrant Life

© Veronika Sophia Robinson

“So, what’s celebrant life like?” you ask.

“It sounds wonderful! What an amazing job” people say when learning I officiate weddings and namings.

“Oh, I could never do that!” another says when learning about the bereavement services I do and the reality of burying someone’s child or officiating a suicide ceremony next to the Christmas tree in the chapel.

Celebrant life is mixed. When training people to be celebrants, I’m honest about the reality. Here, in a nutshell, are the pros and cons. I’ll start with the cons.

 

Accounts
My least favourite aspect is the one day a year I have to dedicate to completing my annual accounts for my accountant. I hate maths. I hate dealing with numbers. For years and years and years I’ve told myself I’d complete them weekly or monthly so that ‘one day a year’ didn’t have to happen. Yeah yeah, here we are after more than three decades of celebrancy and nothing’s changed.

Comparison
What I hate (not for myself, because honestly I just don’t care) about the celebrant industry is the constant comparison that goes on due to social media. “Oh, look at the celebrant: she’s fully booked with weddings for the next gazillion years!” SO WHAT? Fully booked means different things to different people. For some, it could mean three weddings every week all year around. For another, one a month means fully booked. It all comes down to the individual celebrant’s sense of quality, care and time. When I began my celebrant career, there was no social media. Websites were in their infancy. I didn’t have one until about my seventh year of ceremonies. The beauty and freedom of this time has stayed with me. It breaks my heart when I see other celebrants get into a state because they are comparing themselves to other celebrants. Don’t let comparison steal your joy.

Unwavering sense of self
When entering self-employed/sole trader life, the most important thing you can bring with you is a strong sense of self. Without it, you’ll sink. It really is that simple. If you don’t believe in yourself, why should anyone else?

No one is coming to rescue you
You and you alone are responsible for the energy you put out into the world. Whether you attract clients or not, is a reflection of your inner harmony. There’s no point blaming funeral directors, world economics, or an oversaturated industry. What’s meant for you will not pass you by. I’ve seen this over and over again.

Equally, no one is coming to rescue you or warm you up when you’re officiating a burial in minus three and your mouth won’t move. 

To be self employed is to run your own business. You are responsible for your work generation and creation, how people see you, finances, transport, and so on. If you don’t have the ability to carry responsibility, this job isn’t for you. There may be days when you’re tired or rundown or are being pulled in different directions by friends and family or other commitments but if you’ve committed to a client, then they must be your first priority.

This is a person-centred job. You simply don’t ring in sick. You get on with things. Two of the hardest times in my celebrant life were officiating my best friend’s funeral and memorial ceremonies (she took her own life on Christmas Day); and last year, officiating funerals as my mother lay dying on the other side of the world. And then there are countless other days which play on the heart: e.g. our beautiful cat being put down as I headed off to officiate a happy ceremony for a couple whose whole script was about all their pets! Or just leaving the house to officiate a wedding when I get a text telling me one of my brides had died and could I do her funeral? The Universe is nothing if not a tester!

 

Can we do the good bits now?

Pros

Freedom
I love being in charge of my diary. Obviously, if you have a ceremony commitment there’s no getting around that. However, you can look at your diary and decide a week or months in advance how you want to spend that time.

Flexibility
Tuesday is free of ceremonies, I note when looking in the diary. Great. Quick call to a friend and a coffee date is arranged.

On any given day, I can work around my commitments and choose when to walk, hang washing on the line, take a phone call or have a cuppa on the porch.

Creativity
There’s such joy in being able to live a creative life and to be paid for your skills and experience. Whether the creativity is in how you curate a ceremony, write narrative, choreograph a bespoke ritual, or lift words off the page during presentation, this is a job to fall in love with.

Solitude and Micro-connections
Although extroverts might worry about leaving jobs where they have people all around them to one that is primarily solo, there is a healthy mix to be found. I, and my fellow introverts, LOVE having acres of space to ourselves while we work. This is a person-centred job and that means we have micro-connections all the time. This might be with our clients, bearers and bereavement staff, funeral directors, hospice staff, wedding planners, wedding suppliers and so on. We meet a huge variety of people.

Home and Office
I love being at home and working from home. I have three main spaces I work at when home depending on weather, season and mood: my writing room, the sofa and the porch. When working at home, you can grab a cuppa or go to the loo when you want. You can stop to hang up washing, take a walk, visit the dentist or hairdresser during the 9 to 5. However, I also have many away-from-home ‘offices’ from beautiful bereavement chapels, graveyards, cemeteries and woodlands, to castles, beaches, barns, treehouses, other people’s homes, lakeside, riverside, field and fell, stables, stone circles and so on. If you love variety, this is a great job.

A Beautiful Body of Work
There’s a legacy we leave as celebrants, and that is (hopefully!) a beautiful body of work which rests within the hearts of those we serve. There’s no price you can put on making a difference.