Marie asks: I married a couple last night and when I got home registered the marriage and ordered their marriage certificate. This morning I woke up to a string of texts from the bride to not register the marriage and that she no longer wants to be married to him. What do I do? Or what do they do?
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A terribly poor recording of the Celebrant Talk Show with Josh and Sarah this week, Josh’s...
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A celebrant friend was complaining to me recently about the market, we’ve all had the same conversation, either us being whined at, or us doing the whining. The truth is that we are not owed our next enquiry or booking, we need to work for it. So here’s some ideas on how to work for it how to grow your business. Take any of these ideas and deploy in an authentic and meaningful way for you.
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Five phrases you can incorporate into sales meetings with your couples to help win the wedding booking.
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It was about 4pm in the afternoon here in Mexico and I had just emptied my inbox, a noble task in 2023, and the email came in. The email that scares me the most: my main domain name’s renewal had failed due a credit card issue. The last thing I want is for our business’s website and email to fail because the domain name renewal failed.
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Karen asks: What are the differences/similarities, restrictions and allowances between a celebrant-led wedding and a church wedding, that is, by
an ordained minister. I have noticed a lot of confusion and even ignorance about what can and can’t be done when the question of faith is raised. Can a celebrant read a biblical text, what constitutes a church and why can’t all ministers perform weddings? I am a civil celebrant who came from a faith background and I know, there are many others as well.
When I talk about being unscripted in a ceremony, people often misread that as the oral version of just shooting from the hip, seeing where the bullets lie. The truth is, I’m more likely to be more prepared, more nervous, more excited, and more rehearsed than the average celebrant.
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Depending on who you talk to, International Change Your Password Day is January 20 or February 1. Either way, in Australia we’ve missed both those dates, and because I’m writing this in Mexico I just saw the tweet from Fastmail reminding me.
Regardless of the “national date” consider this your reminder to change all of the important passwords in your world. In my humble opinion, all of the important passwords in your life should be changed annually.
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Sarah and I have been reviewing the Guidelines to the Marriage Act and one chapter caught my eye and I thought maybe you didn’t know how many things you could do that would end you up in jail for at least six months, or with “five penalty units” whatever they are.
You can find it all detailed heavily in the actual Marriage Act of 1961, but here’s the list of things a celebrant can do that could end them up in jail.
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In early December the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s department’s Marriage Law and Celebrants Section let us know that the remote witnessing of NOIMs has been extended to 31 December 2023.
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Everyone has their little “thing” where they think if everyone else on the planet just...
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Yes, yes artificial intelligence can write a marriage ceremony, but can it present one well?
You’ve probably read the news about OpenAI’s new GPT-3 chatbot, ChatGPT, so I won’t mansplain AI to you, but I simply wanted to share what AI thought should happen in a marriage ceremony.
The preparation for this blog post involved asking ChatGPT a few questions, and minutes later I’ve got a simple and sweet marriage ceremony prepped. I also asked ChatGPT’s big brother, DALL-E to create a featured image for this post.
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A member asks, “Can you claim a tax deduction for the cost of holding a couple meeting at a cafe? Paying for their coffee? I hear different answers to this.”
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There are a few different kinds of marketing and advertising, but they can be mostly wrapped up...
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Jano le Roux, a copywriter, has done a deep dive on the marketing surrounding the new...
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There’s a new podcast episode out and Josh is moving to Mexico. Sarah’s still not at...
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I’ll get the disappointment out of the way for everyone, I’m no AFL fan. Can you blame...
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Where should the celebrant stand in a marriage ceremony? There’s no rule, law, or correct answer, but I’ll lay out the fundamentals on how I make my decision on where to stand, because it’s not always the same decision being made.
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Communicating value, selling your services, and convincing couples you’re worth your fee, is...
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Every celebrant should read this post from Ted Gioia on his 10 rules for public speaking, and my challenge to you is to integrate at least one, if not all of them, into your next ceremony.
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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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S writes in with a question about data loss and iPads: What are your back up plans when it comes...
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Do you sign documents electronically or on paper? Do you witness NOIMs over video? We’re...
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We know, we know, we’ve been away for a whole year, but we’re back! In this episode we talk about where we’re both at in July 2022, and the major things that have happened in celebrancy and at the Celebrant Institute in the last 12 months.
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Starting from zero is hard. I’ve found that creating from scratch, staring at a blank Word document, or an empty notepad, is the hardest work, like pushing a boulder uphill it requires you to muster everything inside of you. It’s a question new celebrants pose to us here at the Celebrant Institute every week: how to get started.
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Sarah and my accounting software of choice – Xero – just emailed us that our Xero plan...
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A few responses to my May 2022 email about having done 27 marriage ceremonies this month before prompted questions from celebrants across our Australian membership base and even internationally. Donna asked “how do you juggle that many” and others asked how I got that many bookings and other questions around the zone. How did I get 27 weddings in one month? Well, first of all, two of them were last-minute additions because a Celebrant Institute member got the spicy cough, and only two were fresh bookings or “new money” if you like. The rest were layovers from the two years of Covid – many couples on their third or fifth date — plus there were a handful of flood postponements as well. In the end, I’ve committed to just getting them done. That said, I’ve always operated at a high level of work in my business, and I’ve always had these words from Kevin Kelly in my mind when getting there:
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When unsure how to act, people copy others, outsourcing their own decisions to others. Not only is this true when choosing a shop, or a cafe, but in weddings as well.
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Elaine asks: When I obtained my Domain Name of domainname.com.au from Melbourne IT when I first...
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When you mention my name to another celebrant, apparently the most common thing people talk about...
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