Choosing Your Ideal Celebrant
Although I was married by Buddhist Monks who didn’t speak much English, so what do I know
Choosing a celebrant - where do I even start…
It’s such a personal choice. Your celebrant is the chief vibe operator of your ceremony, and the storyteller of your journey together. You want to be confident that the person you’ve chosen will do right by you.
How do I want my ceremony to feel?
My mum raised my sister and I to honour and listen to our intuition above all else. And it’s done me well. It told me when to follow the possibility of a bold, adventurous life living in Cambodia, and when I ignored it I made some wilddd decisions that luckily taught me a lot about my grit and my humility. You want your ceremony to be a testament to your love though, not necessarily your grit. So listen to your gut. What does it tell you when you’re looking through the wide array of content aimed at brides? Do some people feel more genuine, and some not so? Do you feel like they would represent you well? Like they would honour your story and pepper through some of your personality to tell your family and friends what got you here with your partner? Or is their content written by AI just to garner your attention and get to the top of the SEO on Google?
We’re all different
Your celebrant is still a person, after all. We all come to the table with our own stories, our own highlights and heartbreaks, our experiences of love and loss and everything in between. Do you want your celebrant to bring their own personality into your ceremony or to deliver the stock standard ‘to love and to hold’ trope? It is your day; your ceremony is where you welcome your family and friends into the fold of your love story in its entirety. So you want your celebrant to honour that and bring the vibe you need them to bring, with just the right glimmers of their own personality and the smiles in the sound of their voice.
Something to consider
There are many celebrants, especially where I am in Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland). And honestly, we’re all vying for the opportunity to be chosen as your celebrant. Let’s be real here, we’re in it for the love, and (for most of us) we’re also in it to feed our families. This is a reminder to see through some of our salesy speak that we feel icky doing so we can get in front of our dream clients - you. We want to celebrate your love, and to do that there is an element of having to sell ourselves.
Vibe check
The bottom line is - does your intuition tell you that you can trust this person to do right by you on one of the biggest days of your life? The best way to do this is with a vibe check. Call it what you will - a ‘quick call’, an ‘obligation-free conversation’ or a ‘meet to see if we match’; it’s a vibe check for all parties. We want to make sure you, as our bride and groom, feel like you can trust us to tell your story how you want it told. And you deserve that, especially with what a wedding costs you (whether you’re eloping or doing the big celebration, getting married in NZ ain’t cheap!).
We want to meet you almost as much as you want to meet us first, because we truly care about how we can deliver the absolute best ceremony on your day, with all of the bells and whistles you desire. The vibe check helps us figure out if we’re capable (for example, if you wanted something deeply religious, I’m not your girl) and if we’ll do a great job for you. The last phone call I had with a bride - who’s wedding is now quickly approaching and I’m so excited for it - we chatted for over an hour by accident because we happened to get along so well. She trusted me enough to tell me the salacious truth about how she met her man and knew I wouldn’t include in the ceremony the details that will have the grandparents gasping.
Final message
Trust your gut. Always. Always, always, always. You’ll know who’s right for you. And if they’re right for you, they’ll be so excited for you, and be the best person to guide you through the ceremony planning and all the legal bits too.
You’ve got this.
Can’t wait to do a vibe check with you.