More and more couples are thinking carefully about their wedding day and are looking for a really personal experience - including a fully bespoke ceremony that reflects them and celebrates their love & their story. The easiest way to achieve a unique, personal wedding day - and my number one tip - is to work with a Wedding Celebrant!

A celebrant-led wedding will give you a completely unique experience. Every ceremony I write is bespoke for each couple I have the honour of working with. Here are my top tips for creating a ceremony that is complete personal to you both.

• Choose a truly personalised wedding ceremony

As your celebrant, I will create and craft a personal ceremony where every single word is written just for you both.  Your wedding ceremony will start as a beautiful blank canvas, with each element chosen to reflect your relationship. 

With a civil or religious ceremony there are certain ‘legally prescribed words’ that have to be spoken and you will usually be given a choice of a couple of standard ceremony scripts to choose from with little to no ability to amend them. A Humanist Ceremony is the opposite of this. It can be as formal or as informal as you like, with as many friends, family and loved ones taking part as you like (or not!) it can truly reflect your values as a modern family. Most of all, a Humanist wedding will be fun, feel-good and fabulous, kickstarting your wedding celebrations! 

• Hold your ceremony somewhere truly meaningful! Outside, at home, absolutely ANYWHERE you like!

Always dreamed of getting married on a hilltop? Want to hold your wedding at the coffee shop where you met? Want a relaxed wedding ceremony in your garden under your favourite tree? With a Humanist wedding you can do just that! 

Perhaps you want to say your vows in a beach wedding ceremony, or use the backdrop of your local art gallery as a wedding venue, or maybe your gran isn’t well enough to travel so you want to get married in her garden. With a Humanist wedding ceremony, you can have your wedding ceremony exactly where you want.

• Why not involve family, friends and fur-babies in your wedding ceremony!

While your wedding day will definitely focus on the two of you, there may be loved ones that you really want to involve in different ways.

Perhaps you want your Schnauzer to be your canine ring-bearer or both sets of parents to add ribbons to your handfasting wedding knot. You might even want your friends to lead a wedding sing-a-long to your love song! All of these things (and so many more) are possible at a Humanist wedding ceremony!

• Handpick the person conducting your ceremony

Your wedding will be a day when you want to be surrounded by people you like and love, now more than ever -am I right? Having a Humanist Celebrant means you can do just that. With a celebrant-led wedding, your ceremony will be delivered by someone you have come to know, like and trust. Not just by the person allocated to your date and who you meet that morning.

Your Humanist Celebrant will take time to meet with you both in the lead up to your wedding, getting to know you both, your story, your likes, your values, crafting a personalised ceremony that is absolutely unique to you and your wedding. On your wedding day, I’ll deliver a ceremony full of true joy and warmheartedness, because, as your celebrant, I will have got to know you both and I will be delighted and honoured to share your wedding ceremony with you.

• Reflect your shared interests, cultures or heritages - include wedding rituals to reflect you

There are so many wedding rituals to choose from to symbolise your partnership. Perhaps you want your different cultures reflected in your wedding day or for all of your children to play a role celebrating your new blended family. Exchanging rings is just one option, and while it’s lovely, it is the only wedding ritual that is included in civil ceremonies. What if you want to be able to include a different or additional symbolic act?  In fact, if you have a civil ceremony you cannot have any ritual that has any connotation to any faith. So you may find that blending all the elements of your shared heritages isn’t an option. So what options are there in a Humanist wedding? You might want to consider: Ring-warming, handfasting, lighting a unity candle, sandblending, planting a tree or sharing a drink from a quaich. A Humanist Ceremony will be crafted to celebrate all of the strands you are bringing together as a partnership and family! 

• Step off the Wedding ceremony conveyor belt! As your Celebrant, I’m focused on your wedding day

No one likes to feel they are on a conveyor belt on their wedding day! As your wedding celebrant, I am committed to performing only one wedding a day. I’m not looking at my watch worrying about getting to the next ceremony if you run a little late and I’m not going to get the two of your names confused with any other couple! You’re not going to be my ‘2pm that day’. I’m focussed on your wedding day, your ceremony and you both all day, nothing else!

• Celebrate each other as individuals as well as an awesome couple!

As a Humanist Ceremony is not legally required to include specific wording and is crafted as a bespoke ceremony just for you, it is much easier for it to reflect your values and celebrate not leaning on those hetero-normative or patriarchal tropes that often crop up in standard weddings. Want to walk down the aisle together with all your parents? Amazing! Want to honour your chosen family in a fitting way? Fantastic! Want a ceremony that doesn’t assume that a wedding equals children? Definitely! Want to announce your new, blended surname in a big-reveal? Let’s do this!

• Invest in quality & feel reassured with a Celebrant who is fully trained to deliver your day!

One of the unique things about a Humanist Celebrant accredited by Humanists UK is that we are all required to complete a recruitment process and intensive training with multiple assessment points before becoming accredited. We also have to record that we are undertaking continuous professional development to keep that accreditation.

You can rest assured that you’ll have a really high-quality ceremony. One you’ll always remember with joy and that will set the scene for the rest of your wedding day and for your marriage!

There are so many ways to create a unique meaningful day - One of the easiest is to choose a celebrant-led ceremony!

You’ve likely invested time in planning a wedding that is completely personal to you both. Why not start the celebrations with a ceremony that is just as meaningful and unique as the rest of your day.