Becoming a Master

6/20/2019

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 Institute

In 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.”

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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