The Celebrant

Hi,

Yes we have finally completed The Big 4 of wedding planning:
1. Book venue for ceremony and reception - check
2. Book photographer - check
3. Find and buy wedding dress - check (one could argue that it should be number 1)
4. Book the celebrant - check (if you were wanting a specific religious celebrant apparently this should be done very early)

Once those 4 items are done, I would say you've already got the foundations, the most significant components of a wedding - everything else will just help make it all nice and pretty for the lovely guests.

One of the most important components of the wedding ceremony is having the right celebrant there to marry you.

How did we choose such a celebrant?
Well we needed to decide whether to go with a civil or religious celebrant first. Andy is Christian and I do not identify with any particular religion but I was fine to go with a priest if Andy wanted. Andy was not really fussed either way. I also considered getting a bilingual celebrant who spoke both English and Chinese. However, to my disappointment, a decent-looking professional celebrant who was adept at both English and Chinese (Mandarin) is quite difficult to find - which isn't surprising really, how many Asians aspire to become wedding celebrants anyway? But that's ok, because my mum assured me that the few guests of mine that do not speak English would be taken care of.
So then after looking online through many different celebrant sites and reading through many unimpressive celebrant profiles, I finally found a few potential celebrants. You really have little to go by when assessing these celebrants. It's quite superficial really - you basically go on looks and price, and reviews help if they're available. But seriously, unless you have a recommendation from someone you know, you just don't know who is good.

I found one initially that I really liked, she had a fun and lively energy and seemed to really personalise the wedding for each couple. However, Andy's first reaction to her was "she looks like a drug addict". Needless to say we didn't end up going with her.

After many fruitless emails to various celebrants we finally found one that seemed promising and was not over-priced! She was the only celebrant we actually met and we liked her instantly. She later told us that she knew she was going to marry us from our first meeting - it was meant to be! She was extremely experienced, has won so many Australian Bridal Industry Awards (ABIAS), always looks and dresses elegantly and professionally, and knew Gunners' Barracks and their staff like the back of her hand - what else could we ask for? She ran through a plan of the ceremony and how it would be conducted and gave so many great suggestions that had never even occurred to us.

This is her website (www.getmarried.com.au) below:

Coral has already sent us two massive documents with wedding proceeding information including hundreds of sample vows, poems and so forth. Of course we are free to write our own and choose our own poems and readings but this just makes things so much easier. We have yet to actually read through them all, I suspect that might take some time. She has been very helpful in other areas of wedding planning too and, mostly importantly, seems to genuinely want to help you out.

We have now officially signed our Notice of Intention to Marry forms as bride and groom and handed them over to Coral!

Now all we have to do is find a DJ, bridesmaids dresses, hair and makeup artist, flowers, decorations, cars, invitations...

Until next time,
Diane