Category: The Business of Celebrancy

A few recent conversations with celebrants on social media have prompted me to the question: what is membership in a celebrant association for? Traditionally the associations lobbied the Attorney-General’s office, and the BDMs of each state, on our behalf – but that role has diminished seriously in recent years, with individual celebrants getting more done than an association has …

I believe with all my mind, body, and soul, that service people aren’t paid per hour, they’re paid for how much value they bring to that hour. So here’s my July challenge for all celebrants …

After dropping my car off to be serviced this morning I hit the local cafe strip to find a breakfast befitting of someone wanting to sit in a cafe for breakfast and a coffee while answering emails and writing blog posts.

The first cafe was offering a $6 breakfast, and without inspecting the actual offering, I knew instantly that I didn’t want a $6 breakfast. Everything in me knew that I was not a $6 breakfast person. On a morning like this I was thinking that breakfast would cost at a bare minimum $10 but probably closer to $20, and there’d be a coffee as well, a large one, so I was expecting to pay no more than say $25.

Jeff asks: A general price question: when you both set your prices (to their current rates), were you/are you in line with what others charge or are you much higher? Pretty sure I’m the highest priced officiant in my region of 500,000 folks, but @ $650/ceremony I’d have to perform about 27 weddings/week to go legit. That doesn’t work. I have right around 75 weddings on the books for 2019 and it’s great since this is a side hustle, but I want to make the leap but for suuuure can’t at this rate. I’m hesitant because if I jump up to $800-$1000 I’ll literally be charging more than double the price or most others…but I guess someone has to be most expensive, I might as well be that guy…was just curious your thoughts on that.

Some emails get quick replies from me, others have to wait a week. Sometimes I’ll go a few days without posting on social media, but I haven’t missed a wedding yet. I have a simple set of priorities in my life. My family, Britt and Luna, are first. Second is a marriage ceremony, third is my friendships and wider community and family. Fourth is sales and marketing, and replying to enquiries. Fifth is the admin side of the business, and sixth is tidying up my office.

I’m sitting in a cafe in Queenstown sitting next to a table of people I don’t recognise, but judging by their conversation, they’re actresses from the USA who have varying thoughts about the Tony Awards.

Liene at Think Splendid has dropped some absolute fire on the wedding industry today. I love this. You should read the piece and follow her links for context, but here’s the drop:

If you’ve been lucky enough to create a marriage ceremony recently, and it was in New South...

Self-employed creatives can talk about price and fee until the end of time. I’ve had celebrants privately, publicly, to my face, and behind my back, make all of the comments about why I charge too much, or not enough, and how that’s a problem, or an opportunity.

Jo asks: What professional association do I join? One? Two? All? I know this is tricky question and high levels of diplomacy may be required – but how does a newbie choose between the associations? My RTO has given no advice and all associations seem to offer the same or similar benefits. The good news is that you don’t have to join a celebrant association, it’s a choice you get to make. As for which association, and there’s many, you ought to look at the benefits membership brings you. As I skim the membership benefits pages of many of the associations, I see insurance being offered by many, although because of my corporate structure I have public liability insurance separately, some offer celebrant software, some offer copyright licensing, and others offer mentoring, meetings, and online forms and Facebook groups (oh so many Facebook groups), and if pushed I personally don’t see immediate benefit to many of them outside of discounted insurance.

I have been simmering on the idea that our clients don’t actually know what they want, despite almost all wedding vendor websites claiming to give them whatever they want, for quite a while now.

222 reasons why professionally operating marriage celebrants should secure their domain name registrar account and make sure their domain name is on auto renew.

Liene over at Think Splendid has published a super insightful blog post about how she prices herself for her speaking gigs.

I wonder if we as celebrants have considered not only our costs of doing business expenses, living wage, the average celebrant fee, the market’s response to fees, and everything else we can talk about when it comes to pricing yourself, but have we considered this important point.

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.

“Inside baseball” is one of my favourite Americanisms, it’s a figurative adjective meaning the details are appreciated by only a small group of insiders or aficionados. It usually refers to a detail-oriented approach to the minutiae of a subject, which requires such a specific knowledge about what is being discussed that the nuances are not understood or appreciated by outsiders.