Why did you become a marriage celebrant?

Friends of mine – she was Catholic, he was not necessarily sure what he believed and he didn’t want to get married in a church and she didn’t necessarily want to get married by just anyone they saw online or out of the phone book – asked me if I would consider becoming a marriage celebrant to marry them and that’s where it all started. So I married them last year.

I’d already done a few weddings before I married them, so I’d had a bit of practise. It was really quite special to be asked to marry two of my best friends. A business has grown out of that.

So, in your day job, you work at Charles Sturt University?

I work in a managerial position in a community relations-type role at the university. Being a celebrant is more or less an extension of what I do on a day-to-day basis and what I’ve done throughout my career, working for politicians and working as an advisor.

You’re always talking to people, finding out people’s stories and being interested in people and actually building on their story and making it something special to them and everyone who’s there to listen to it.

Are you just doing weddings?

To date, I have just done weddings. I am confident and able to do funerals, but as this is a job I am just doing on the weekends, that lends itself to weddings. At this stage, I’m just focused on weddings, but if I’m called upon to do a funeral, yes I’d happily assist with that.

A funeral is a very special time in someone’s family, although it may not seem like that as someone’s just died. But it is part of life’s journey and, again, it’s really special to be part of someone’s vulnerable moments, to be there to provide support for them.

How does a wedding service that you perform come together?

It’s very interesting for me. I’m a practicing Catholic. I attend weekly Mass. When I’m meeting with couples, some of them are adamant – not that I offer it – that they don’t want a church wedding, they don’t want something traditional. They want something they can write themselves, something unique.

Coming from a background that subscribes or adheres to a traditional religious framework, ceremonies and events come as second nature, I suppose, because you’re used to participating in those kinds of things.

So when a couple comes to you and says ‘we want something special, we want something different’, you’ve got in the back of your mind ‘well this is how an event normally runs’ and ‘this is what would typically happen in this environment’ and sort of, not replicating, but using it as a basis or foundation for building something new and different.

That’s what I say to couples: So long as you have the four legal elements, your marriage is legally sound and you’re married according to law in Australia, everything else that is part of a typical wedding – walking down the aisle, being given away, those types of things are traditions don’t necessarily have to happen.

I’ve had some couples and they will walk down together or the bride will be brought down the aisle by her father and mother halfway and then her husband-to-be will meet her and take her the rest of the way. There’s lots of new and different things: Other couples who do their first dance as a part of the ceremony or a groom will sing to his wife-to-be at the wedding ceremony.

Any funny or unusual stories?

There are little bloopers, you could say. Sometimes the best man will jokingly say when you ask for the rings ‘oh, was I supposed to bring them’, but I did have an occasion when they really did forget the rings.

Luckily they didn’t get dressed very far from the wedding location, so they did quickly bolt around the corner and get the rings and come back. 

Some people will have themed weddings. Lord of the Rings fans had themed vows, themed tiara, suit, that type of thing.

I was in Thailand earlier in the year and did a beach wedding. I’m going to London in August to do a wedding by a lake over there. It’s a friend of mine. I met her in Africa and I’m marrying her in London, so it’s quite a juxtaposition.

It’s a very exciting. It’s a very special and very intimate role, something that I really like to be a part of.

It sounds like the role has taken a really special place in your heart.

Yes. Next year, for example, I’m marrying my sister, and that’s quite special. For her to actually ask me to marry her. Friends from school, and then others that you don’t know from a bar of soap, but they invite you to the reception and then you become good friends.

There’s no other way to describe it except unique, really. They people you get to meet, the places you get to go, and the moments you get to create with people are really special.

Love is love.

It’s great that in Australia people of same sex, same gender, have been recognised as being as equal and having the same rights as everyone else. 

I have to say that in the Riverina – I’m doing weddings outside the Riverina for same-sex couples – I don’t think there has been the boon that everyone had anticipated or expected.

I don’t know if that’s a sense of hesitation or there’s not necessarily as many coupled-up couples in the Riverina as we thought.

My personal opinion is that people now have the right, so they have the option to marry if they choose to.

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