For the most up to date information on Ongoing Professional Development/OPD for Australian Marriage Celebrants, please view celebrant.institute/opd

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.

In simple terms this means that a one hour compulsory topic will be provided at no extra cost by the AGD online, and the remaining four hours of your commitment will be fulfilled by either:

  • attending OPD face to face if it is safe and allowable
  • attending OPD in a live webinar online
  • attending an approved conference
  • completing the distance education units and submitting them to the OPD provider

The department says of the one hour topic being provided by the AGD:

Every celebrant will need to complete the activity as part of their five hour OPD obligation.

So keep an eye on your inboxes in early 2021 for information on how to do that.

The news is fresh but our early prediction is that OPD is changing for the better. Even though it’s only one hour difference, a four session is a remarkably different event to a five hour session, online or in person. This will reduce hours needed for renting rooms, trainers, and even catering. A four session can be done after lunch with a coffee break in the middle, whereas a five hour session with lunch needs a break in the middle. Freeing up the schedule and the financial resources allows you to choose better OPD subjects and actually professionally develop yourself.

This is a win for celebrants and RTOs.

And in case you were wondering, or for many of you, as you might expect, we highly recommend completing OPD with us!