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A few days ago I hinted on my social media channels that I have something big coming up and that I’m working on becoming a Master Certified Life-Cycle Celebrant®. In the world of Celebrancy, this is a really big deal and I’m excited to share with you exactly what it means. But first, I want to tell you about the Celebrant Foundation and Institute and the current credentials I have from this wonderful school. The Celebrant Foundation and InstituteIn 2001, the Celebrant Foundation and Institute was born. The idea of Celebrancy, that is, the art of creating beautiful custom ceremonies, originated in Australia and New Zealand. When it was realized how few non-denominational ceremonialists we had in the United States at the time, it was decided that the Celebrant Foundation and Institute would be created. The goal of the Institute is to educate students on the crafting of ceremonies. The Celebrant Foundation and Institute describes Certified Life-Cycle Celebrants® in this way: “Life-Cycle Celebrants® bridge generations by creating ceremonies that are a genuine expression of the honoree celebrated. Each ceremony is a unique reflection of personal rites of passage, transitions or celebrations. They are empowering testimonies of life that become treasured legacies to be passed down from one generation to the next.”  The school offers courses in a variety of ceremony types including the three that I am certified in: Weddings, ceremonies across the life-cycle, and funerals. My Certifications I get asked all the time by potential clients, “what made you decide to become a Certified Life-Cycle Celebrant®?” I had discovered the Celebrant Foundation and Institute in the Toastmasters magazine years ago in the advertisement section. I chose not to pursue that path at the time because I was also going to college to become a teacher. At the time, I wasn’t sure if these two things would fit into my world together. Years later when my grandmother passed away, we had the opportunity to have a Certified Life-Cycle Celebrant® perform the funeral and I knew right then and there that we had to hire her. I had done the research and I knew about the amazing ceremonies that these people created! After the funeral, as odd as it sounds, I walked away thinking that it was the best funeral I’d ever been to. I know, it sounds really strange. Can a funeral really be “the best?” This one was. It was in that moment that I knew I HAD to become a Certified Life-Cycle Celebrant® so that I could help others experience the same profoundly life changing experience of an amazing ceremony. The first certification I got was in weddings. Weddings have my heart for sure! I love working with my couples(brides/grooms, brides/brides, grooms/grooms, gender variance couples...I love them all and I work with them all)! I was drawn to weddings in part because I felt that writing for funerals was much more challenging, and in a lot of ways it is. With weddings, I usually have several months to craft a ceremony, I really get to know my clients, and we come up with something amazing just for them. My second certification was in ceremonies across the life-cycle. Yes, that’s super vague so I’ll explain. This certification is for ceremonies that don’t really fit the weddings category and the funerals category. Ceremonies that might fall into this realm of work include: -Baby namings/welcomings -Retirement parties -Coming-of-age ceremonies -Housewarming ceremonies -Coming out ceremonies The possibilities with this certification are endless! Even though I can do these types of ceremonies, I don’t market them in part because not many people understand what they are all about. It seems also that the general population isn’t ready to take these types of ceremonies on. My hope is that as I move through my Celebrant practice, I can expand the minds of the community to help them see how powerful ceremony can be for many events in their lives. The final certification I worked toward was my funerals certification. No. I don’t really do funerals, and when I do it’s usually pro-bono. There is a lot of stress with funerals. In this world the Celebrant is working with clients who are grieving and even though we keep control of our own emotions during this time of pain for them, it is exhausting to hold space for grieving families. Funerals also need to be delivered very quickly after you’ve gotten the client. Usually with funerals the ceremony is taking place only a few days after the passing of a loved one. It can be stressful to put together a ceremony that quickly! It’s really just not for me. I got this certification solely so that I could become a Master Certified Life-Cycle Celebrant®.  What is a Master Certified Life-Cycle Celebrant®?Ok so, what is a Master Certified Life-Cycle Celebrant®? These folks are the ones who have fallen in love with ceremony and ritual and continue to dedicate their time to learning all there is about the ceremony and ritual world. Master Certified Life-Cycle Celebrants® have to complete at least three certification courses and then complete the Master program (which is a lot like a Masters program at a traditional University). When a Celebrant becomes a Master Certified Life-Cycle Celebrant®, it means that they have a deep understanding of the ceremony world, public speaking, and interacting with clients. They have a heart for their work and are professionals through and through, dedicated to growing, learning, and helping the community bring ceremony into their everyday lives. Why did I choose to become a Master Certified Life-Cycle Celebrant®? I have seen the power of ceremony at work in people’s lives. I have been moved so often at how excited couples are to learn that they can have a ceremony that is not only 100% unique to them, but also a ceremony performed by a professional public speaker. Their eyes light up when they realize that they can have a ceremony that is so much more than the typical! I have seen the power of ceremony at work in the funeral world. When a family gets to hear the story of their passed loved one told again through someone else’s words...it’s profound. It’s beautiful...and it moves people through their grief. Ceremony and ritual have the power to change the world. They have the power to move us all through huge, monumental changes in our lives, and unfortunately, ceremony and ritual are underutilized. We often hire the cheapest person to create a ceremony because we don’t understand how important ceremony and ritual are. We don’t understand how a well done ceremony can move mountains, or at least begin to move some of the boulders out of the way so that we can climb those mountains ourselves. THIS is why I am working toward becoming a Master Certified Life-Cycle Celebrant®. I want to help those in my community begin to move through the changes in their lives in a more meaningful way, a way that ends with them feeling stronger and more empowered at the end of it all. 
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 Last week I got an email from a bride. She seemed overwhelmed, stressed out, and wasn’t quite sure what to do. Her concern? Their children. One of them is a toddler, and a quite vocal one at that. He’s a daddy’s boy through and through (happy late Father’s Day by the way!) and when he’s not able to hang with dad, he’s not a happy camper. The other child is an infant. A little one only six months old. She’s not so much of an anybody’s girl just yet, and she doesn’t actually make a whole lot of noise. The bride isn’t so worried about their infant daughter as she is their son. Her fear, and a legitimate one, is that their son will lose his cool during their nuptials and run to dad, causing a scene for the ceremony. My bride just doesn’t know what to do! What I’m about to tell you MIGHT sound a little harsh, and I’m apologizing now if it comes off that way. My goal here really is to make sure you are as well prepared as possible for the chance that your child, or someone else's, may fly of the handle on your big day. So here’s part one: Part One-Your Kid/Kids
The following situation is one I actually witnessed and it was stressful for everyone. At a wedding I attended as a guest (I was not a vendor mind you), the bride and groom had a five year old child. This little lady was a mamma’s girl and she wanted to be up with her mom during the ceremony. The bride’s mother had been put in charge of the little girl so every time the little girl went running up to her mom, the bride’s mother went up after her to grab her. Each time the little girl went up, was told she couldn’t, and brought back to her seat, the louder the little girl cried. It was uncomfortable for everyone involved. In part, because we couldn’t hear the officiant. We also missed the vows section of the ceremony because the little girl was wailing so loudly. The videographer, who is a good friend of mine, told me later that he would have to scrap a lot of the ceremony footage because of the constant wailing. After the ceremony, I caught up with the bride in her dressing room after she’d taken some pictures. She broke down crying because she didn’t know what to do when her daughter started crying. The bride didn’t want to tell her little girl “no,” but the bride also felt like she missed out on an amazing ceremony opportunity because of her daughter. If you have children and you are planning to have them at your wedding, it is your job to find a plan B for disruptive behavior like this. It’s one thing if a little baby is crying in the back of the seating area. It’s quite another if a child is wandering up to the ceremony space to intervene. As a Celebrant, I cannot stress enough how uncomfortable it is for me to officiate ceremonies where children are not given parameters. In those situations I have to make a decision: do I ask someone to grab the child so that we can continue the ceremony and risk looking like I hate kids? (P.S. I don’t hate kids. I teach 6th graders) OR do I let the ceremony continue with a child crying so loudly that no one can hear and risk the couple being angry with me because their videographer couldn’t pick any of their words up over the crying? It’s a rock and a hard place folks, and it’s not one that’s fun to be in! This is why I tell my clients, it is YOUR responsibility to know what to do with your child if they begin to lose their cool. Outside of the officiant being impacted by this situation, photographers and videographers are as well. When you hire a videographer, they are going to put a microphone on the groom and it will pick up both of you speaking. They will also put a microphone on me so they can pick up the ceremony. When you’re trying to read your vows or exchange rings while holding a crying child, that’s what the microphone will pick up. All of that money you spent on hiring a videographer is going to feel like it was wasted a little bit because you didn’t pick up good video of the ceremony. And your photographer. They need to be able to see you! They want to get pictures of your face in this happy moment. If your face is being obscured by a little one who is crying and kissing you and pleading with you to stay up there, again, you will look back on those photos and realize that there aren’t many of you to see.  What might you do with your own children in this case? First of all, make sure you have a family member or friend that is ok with missing part of the ceremony to help. I mean that. You will possibly need this person to miss out on the ceremony to take your child out of the space. It sounds harsh, sure, to have to remove your child from the ceremony site, but you are spending a LOT of money on this. Like...a lot. Between your awesome officiant (which should totally be a Celebrant), your venue, the decorations, videography, and photography, the ceremony is an expensive piece of your day. It’s also an important part of your day. This is the part where you actually legally get married. Let me say that again for the people in the back. This. Is. The. Part. Of. Your. Day. Where. You. Actually. Legally. Get. Married. This is a pretty big deal. You PROBABLY want that part in your pictures and on video. Just ask a friend. Any friend worth their weight in gold will understand the request. You could even come up with a signal to indicate to them that they need to take your child somewhere else. Part Two-Other people’s Kid/Kids This is a little bit more tricky and one of the reasons I recommend that children not be invited to a wedding. I know. Ouch Heather. Dang. I thought you liked kids? I do. I do! Don’t get me wrong here! But, that being said, a wedding is an adult event. It is two adults doing an adult thing (which sounds kind of dirty but you know what I mean). These are two adults signing a legal contract, drinking alcohol, and hanging with friends and family. It’s not exactly the best place for kids. When I gave one of my friends her save-the-date, she came up to me and the following conversation ensued: “Hey Heather, are kids invited to your ceremony?” “Hey Lynn! No actually. We’re hoping to keep it to adults only.” “Ok, that’s so smart. Weddings are for adults anyway.” So even my friend Lynn knew to expect her children would not be invited. If you’re worried about other people’s children causing a scene at your wedding, I suggest you just don’t invite them. Ask your friends to make it a date night instead...a night away from the kiddos!  Let’s say though that you have a lot of littles in your family and you want to have them present. That’s fine too. Go for it! But again, it’s going to be up to you to have a plan B. If you are planning to invite children to the wedding, talk with your friends first. Let them know that you are going to have a videographer there and you would like to make sure that the sound quality is the best it can be. Or, if you aren’t going to have a videographer, let your friends with children know that you have been to so many weddings where you could barely hear the officiant and you have hired a great officiant (hopefully a Celebrant) and the ceremony is written so perfectly, that you want everyone to be able to hear it and enjoy it. Then move to asking them to consider taking their children out if they begin to get noisy. Two things will happen after you make this request. The first is that they will totally understand and agree to take their kids from the ceremony space if they begin to get rowdy. The second is that your friend will just decide to keep them at home. The third (hopefully not likely) possibility is that they will think you’re a big fat jerk who hates kids, and in that case, I’m surprised you are friends with that kind of a person. You’re way more sweet and understanding than that! All jokes aside, possibility three has NEVER happened to anyone I know after giving them this advice, so you should be in the clear. What can Officiants do to help? Officiants, yes, it is the job of your clients to figure out what to do with kids on the day of their ceremony, but there’s still some things you can do to make sure things go smoothly.
Main Take-Away The point I want you to take away here is that it is YOUR responsibility as the couple to come up with a plan of action for children. Your vendors, as much as we would love to say we know you, we don’t know you well enough to make these decisions in the moment. This is your big day and we want you to experience it how you want to, but we can’t read minds. Keep us updated on what you expect as well. If you are worried that a child will come up and pester you, let us know so that we can prepare the right wording to ask someone to escort them out. Let us know who you’d like to have escort them out so that we can invite that person up gently to do so. We want to support you. We love you. We love your love story. But this is your day and you are responsible for ensuring that children are taken care of however you best see fit.
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AuthorHeather is a Certified Life-Cycle Celebrant serving Denver and the surrounding areas. Archives
August 2019
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