The Celebrants Network Inc - BLOG

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Add a ceremony to your celebration!

Intuitively we know that a celebration is a way we mark important rites of passage.

Many Australians celebrate important events though, by having a booze-up and throwing in a few words towards the end.  We have forgotten that the food and drink were meant to accompany the speeches or ceremony, not be the celebration itself.

Without a meaningful core to the gathering, a celebration may be boring and unsatisfying and more likely to lead to excessive eating and drinking.

Ceremony is an Act of Love - quality time spent together, a way of re-establishing that meaningful core to the event.

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Most professional civil celebrants are professionals in private practice.

That is, unlike most religious celebrants, the civil celebrant has to cover all their costs of operating a home-based celebrancy practice from the fees they charge 'up-front' for their ceremonies, BEFORE they make an hourly rate for their work.

Consider:

• Couples have not 'lay-buyed'  part of their ceremony as couples have via donations to a church or via government taxes to a Registry Office.
• A religious celebrant is usually supported financially by their church stipend and has their travel, phone and other expenses covered by their religious institution. Likewise registry office celebrant.
• A independent civil celebrant is required to ensure the ceremony suits the individual couple.
• In most cases, this requires considerable extra work in sourcing wedding prose, poetry and other materials, or even writing of new material by the celebrant.
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ASK A CELEBRANT BLOG. Merry Christmas! Poem by TCN Melbourne Funeral Celebrant and Poet Graeme Cook.

This is the little verse I put inside a Christmas Card for all the families I have dealt with through each year. It's called  Merry Christmas! I’ll Be Home For Christmas.

Graeme Cook 2007

This weeks featured celebrant is Elizabeth Wilkie from Brisbane, QLD.

My name is Elizabeth Wilkie and I am a newly appointed Celebrant as of June 2009. I’ve been married to Anthony for nearly 20 years now and we have two beautiful boys Paul 16 and Christopher 14. Anthony and I run a small building renovation business which has given me the flexibility to stay home with the boys. I have also worked part time in retail which I loved except the hours were a bit of a juggle especially when the kids were little.

This week featured celebrant is Sonia Collins from Batemans Bay NSW.

My name is Sonia Collins and I am a Civil Celebrant in Batemans Bay, New South Wales.   This is a very popular area for weddings, with couples coming from Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne, and country towns across NSW and Vic, as well as our local area. The area has great venues for weddings and for receptions and with the natural beauty of the coast and the bush it is not surprising that Batemans Bay is a first choice for many couples especially those with happy memories of time spent here on holidays.I have enjoyed a satisfying career in Human Resource Management and my interest in people led me to undertake the training to become a Marriage Celebrant.

ASKACELEBRANT BLOG - Are you a bride or groom wondering about whether marriage is really for you? Marriage is a long term commitment. Even in a country where there is divorce, marriage carries thousands of years of expectations and hope that this is a relationship  "for life".

So what questions do you ask yourself to figure out if you are ready to take that BIG step?

Here's an article that uses no religious arguments - yet would be very much at home in many religious faiths - and what's more it is written by a bloke!

Our thanks to Seth Adam Smith for sharing his personal experiences on marriage :

http://sethadamsmith.com/2013/11/02/marriage-isnt-for-you/