This question was asked during a recent Open Evening with the Celebrant Circle Training Team.
Our answer: While it IS theoretically possible to become a celebrant without formal training, in our experience, it is NOT recommended!
(For many, many reasons…)
Becoming a celebrant involves learning and understanding a wide array of professional skills and responsibilities while embodying and utilising a huge variety of social, emotional, and technical abilities. Professional Celebrants are trusted to assist clients with some of life’s most important moments and, without proper training, it’s difficult to fully understand and embody the depth and breadth of the role. Setting up a Celebrant business, without an excellent level of know-how and practical knowledge, means it will be near impossible to give the excellent service your clients, fellow suppliers, and professional contractors require.
As a celebrant, you will be responsible for designing, writing and conducting weddings, funerals, and many other memorial and celebratory ceremonies.
As an independent celebrant, our commitment to our clients is that each ceremony is designed and delivered in a sensitive and accurate way, truly reflecting the wishes, beliefs and values of the people involved. Whether a happy celebration or an emotional memorial, our job is to ensure that every ceremony is researched and planned to be meaningful and appropriate for the people involved.
As a Funeral Celebrant, we may find ourselves working with bereaved families who may be grief-stricken or traumatised after a loved-ones passing. Would you wish an untrained individual to undertake the gentle and often deeply empathic work necessary when working in this sensitive situation? Or, how about working with clients in the midst of difficult family dynamics?
In our professional capacity, we may be asked to work with blended families with a variety of heritages, faith systems, and a myriad of ideas around the kind of service that might best honour their loved-one. The Celebrant’s role is to be open and empathic, understanding the diverse needs of their clients, while always remaining neutral, helpful, and professional. It’s a LOT for an untrained person to take on! Celebrants are often likened to Diplomats, as we navigate the sometimes choppy seas of client management!
On the technical side of funeral work, Celebrants must have a good working knowledge of the music and media systems in crematoria and how to research, plan and order music suitable for the service. And how about planning and officiating burials or interments of ashes ceremonies? Celebrants must ensure that all ceremonies or services they officiate conform to health and safety standards and to the relevant authorities' legal requirements.
On the ceremony side of things, without training, it can be difficult to grasp the extensive planning, designing and multi-faceted structures that go into preparing and delivering truly bespoke ceremonies. When working with wedding couples, it is imperative that we fully get to know our clients to offer a variety of ceremony options and rituals. It may be that a couple wants a particular ‘vibe’ for their special day, or to request you help them to honour their heritage and customs. A well-trained Celebrant will understand how to go about researching and designing unique ceremonies and rituals, designed specifically for individual clients. It can be hard work but a LOT of fun! However, the true professional knows where the working contracts and boundaries begin and end.
An additional problem for the untrained Celebrant is how to launch their business. You may struggle to break into the market as a ‘newbie’ without adequate advice and guidance on marketing your new business. Here at the Celebrant Circle Training School we ensure that you are fully competent to undertake this important work and we guide you in identifying your market and your own, individual U.S.P.
To sum up, if you ARE seriously interested in becoming a celebrant, talk to us. It is not a job for everyone and there is a lot to learn and take on board. But…with our training and ongoing support, we will walk with you as you take those first tentative steps into a new future. Our training is intensive, full-on, hard work, and a LOT of fun.
Why not join us at a future Celebrant Circle Open Evening? Or better still, hit the link and book a no-obligation ‘Discovery Call’ with the training team We can then outline and explain further how our Professional Celebrant Training gets you up and running…and actually working!
For information on our Celebrant Training School or to apply for membership of the Celebrant Circle, please click this below.
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