010 Social Media Challenge: Let’s take the conversation to 11
Today we’re taking that controversial thought in your mind, and we’re turning it all the way up to [eleven, Spinal Tap style].
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Author: Josh Withers
009 Social Media Challenge: Your genesis story
Today’s challenge is an easy one, you already know everything about it, the key to the challenge though is 1. Articulating it, 2. Telling it, and 3. Sharing it to as many mediums as possible
Today we’re telling your genesis story, the story of how you started, why you started, and how you felt you could do something important and different.
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Are you a workaholic?
It’s a weird world in 2020, one where our workload has significantly decreased, yet in other...
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008 Social Media Challenge: Beat your own drum and testify
If someone speaks well of you, you’ve got to remember that, embed it deep into your soul, and know that you’re good at this.
And once you’ve done that you need to share that testimony
There’s a whole philosophy behind referrals and testimonies, but I’m not sharing them today, because I’m not a psychologist; I’m just a boy, standing in front a celebrant, asking them to testify! Testimonies about how you are good at what you do, and you do it in a certain way that makes a certain kind of person happy.
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007 Social Media Challenge: Blog a common reply
In computer programming there’s a method of program called Object Oriented Programming, which recognises that some parts of the program are reused a lot. The programmers write the code once, then reuse it every time they need it.
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006 Social Media Challenge: Nutella Day
Who would ever think that there would be a need for an [International Day for Nutella] to raise awareness of the delicious nutty goodness? Sara Rosso did.
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005 Social Media Challenge: Let’s get podcasting
Podcasts are so much more powerful than most people imagine. My little podcast, [The Rebel’s Guide to Getting Married], has maybe…
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004 Social Media Challenge: Reuse and recycle
I’m willing to bet that you have received a question about what you do before today, and you’ve hit reply with a really good answer.
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OPD in 2021 is changing
For your ongoing professional development as a Commonwealth authorised marriage celebrant in 2021, only four hours will be provided by your OPD trainer. One hour of your five hour commitment will be delivered by the Marriage Law and Celebrants Section of the Australian Government Attorney-General’s Department.
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Tasmania (BDM) gets the internet
Sarah chats to Tasmanian celebrant Kathleen Pavlic-Ryan about the brand new online registration system available through Births, Deaths, and Marriages Tasmania!
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Moving a wedding from Queensland to New South Wales
Luke asks: One of my couples that had a Qld wedding booked, now want to change the ceremony location to NSW since the new border easing. What do I need to know and how do I go about doing a wedding in NSW? Is there a set criteria that determines the couples eligibility for getting married over the border into NSW?
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003 Social Media Challenge: Carrot Cake
Today’s challenge is to find something boring (like a carrot) yet necessary (like vegetables are for your diet) in your business
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002 Social Media Challenge: Introduce Yourself
Every month you should re-introduce yourself to your social media audience. I think you’d be surprised how many don’t really know you for the real “you”, and those that do, could probably do with a brand re-alignment.
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Creating elopement packages
A reader asks: “I have a handful of elopement related questions, and I think they will be more relevant than ever given how our world has changed in 2020 and how weddings have changed/will change in the coming year(s).
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001 Social Media Challenge: Lemonade
Making lemonade out of lemons is a popular story, obviously backed by Big Lemonade, but it...
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Should I use a speaker stand, and should I use a PA for 10 guests?
Tam asks: I have my first wedding coming up next month. My question is in regards to using my PA system. I have Bose S1 with Sennheiser microphone. The wedding is only small (approximately 10 guests). Would you use a PA system? They are having a videographer so I didn’t know if this would play into whether or not to use it? If you suggest not using it, at what size wedding would you? Also I have not yet brought a stand. Is this an absolute must/do you recommend any particular brand/price point to aim for to get a decent one? Complete newbie with all this stuff!
All good questions, Tamika, and I’ll address them separately.
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Correcting marriage paperwork
There’s a new fact sheet on the Attorny-General’s department website on correcting marriage paperwork, and it’s an important read. Luckily for us, our own Sarah Aird heavily impacted the final draft. We’re copying and pasting the fact sheet here, but find the original on the AGD website.
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See out 2020 with a social media challenge
I’m writing a social media challenge for Celebrant Institute members to see out 2020…
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If you have a non refundable deposit
An Australian wedding celebrant directory recently emailed it’s members guilt-tripping them into keeping non-refundable deposits. What a guy.
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Approach a wedding ceremony as a work of art
Neil Gaiman made a speech on May 17, 2012, as the keynote speech for the commencement ceremony to...
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Where should we get clients to review us?
Gail asks: Sooo… your couple love you and want to leave a review! Where is the best place/s for them leave this review to really market your business and what links would you send them?
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A marriage celebrant must call themselves a marriage celebrant, and other obligations
I’m sure that all of you have familiarised yourself with the Marriage Act of 1961, so you probably don’t have to read this, but on the off chance that Sarah Aird has schooled you, like she’s just schooled me, on some things in the Marriage Act, I thought I’d share them here. These are new changes since marriage equality was legislated. Today we’re talking about section 39G, Obligations of each marriage celebrant.
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Replying to new wedding enquiries with Bonjoro
A Celebrant Institute member was listening to back catalogue episodes of the Celebrant Talk Show...
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Seth Godin on selling your time
Seth Godin today writing about charging per hour, something I still see celebrants do. I wrote about the same topic a year ago so it’s nice to have beat Seth Godin to something for once.
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You don’t have to do everything
A celebrant enquired today about a couple who wanted to do a live stream of their wedding to family in Europe, but the celebrant didn’t know where to start or what to do. I thought it was a good prompt for me to remind celebrants of what we do have to do, and what we don’t have to do.
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222 reasons you need to secure your domain name for the love of God, please just do it
222 reasons why professionally operating marriage celebrants should secure their domain name registrar account and make sure their domain name is on auto renew.
Read MoreLive streaming a wedding, and what about the music copyright?
A member asks: Am I correct in assuming that couple’s cannot live stream their marriage ceremony given music copyright issues? So there’s a few issues to address in this one short question. The first is...
Read MoreHow to lodge marriage documents electronically with the ACT BDM
The Births, Deaths, and Marriages in Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria, all have their own online systems for logging in online and submitting marriage paperwork electronically. The Australian Capital Territory BDM doesn’t have an online system, but they do accept via email.
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What does Instagram Reels’ launch mean for the wedding industry?
Instagram’s latest feature ‘Reels’ is in addition to it’s existing product suite of regular Instagram news feed posts, Stories, and IGTV. This is a deep dive into how celebrants and people in the wedding industry can take advantage of Instagram Reels.
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How to be your own publicist
A solid foundation of my business success as a celebrant has lay in the realm of good publicity. Good publicity can’t make a filling business profitable, or an unskilled celebrant, talented, but if you’re already rocking a good business operating system, and your ceremonies are resonating with people and getting good reviews, publicity is the cream on top that helps more couples find you, and book you. In this article I wanted to lay out a few tools that I have used in the past, and continue to use today, to “get my name out there” but in a very deliberate and meaningful way.
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