We have extended this competition until this Sunday 13 March. Send in your answers now!

The friendly folk at Classic FM have been doing a spot of research recently and found that nearly 80% of the women surveyed would choose classical music over pop on their big day – whether for a church or civil ceremony.

To help brides choose the perfect classical accompaniment to their journey down the aisle, Classic FM has released ‘The Wedding Collection’, a double album featuring over 2 hours of music to play at every stage of the service and including favourites ‘Wedding March’, ‘Arrival of the Queen of Sheba’, and ‘Canon in D’.

The double album also comes with Classic FM’s free Guide to Wedding Music.

Win one of 5 copies

We’re delighted to have 5 copies of this beautiful album to give away.  To be in with a chance of winning one, all you need to do is answer this question:

The famous ‘Wedding March’ from A Midsummer Night’s Dream was written by which composer?

a) Mendelssohn

b) Handel

c) Bach

Email us your answer with your name and address by 28 February 2011.

The 5 winners will be announced in our March newsletter.

The Wedding Collection is out now and available to order online at Amazon.co.uk

What next?

• Talk to other brides and grooms in the Ethical Weddings Forum
• Sign up for our Ethical Weddings monthly newsletter

Katie

There’s something about saying those words of love and commitment that have been spoken through the ages (ok, have not fact checked this – please don’t burst my bubble!) that sends a (pleasurable) shiver down my spine.

But if you’re nervous, speaking words that aren’t your own can be difficult. You might stumble, mumble… not really take in what you’re saying in the heat of the moment.

And this is where the speeches come into their own. The English have a bad reputation for wedding speeches – stilted, embarrassing, excruciating even (see the prime foot-in-mouth examples on ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral‘) .

But this has not been my experience. We went to 3 weddings last year and at all 3 the speeches were beautiful. Brides as well as grooms got involved. Best Men told tales of memorable moments and strong friendships.

No more nerves

By the time we got to the speeches the nerves seemed to have gone. The joy of the day was at its peak and the speakers wanted to share it with everyone.

We actually missed the speeches at the last wedding as we had to put Polly to bed – but they were pretty much all we heard about for the rest of the evening. I ended up asking the happy couple for a transcript.  Guests were almost in tears just talking about them, how sincere they were, how moving, how loving.

Rather than a chance to humiliate the groom, the speeches have become an opportunity for the couple to express their real feelings for one another, and for their friends and family. To say all the things they wouldn’t normally say – in a good way!

Some people dread them. I say pour the champagne and keep talking.  Please, Ladies and Gentlemen, raise your glasses and join me in a toast to the wedding speeches.

Katie

Seasonal wedding flowers

The church was beautiful, we found a florist who was a friend of my parents, and who was sympathetic to our green ideas.

She sourced flowers and greenery as seasonally as possible, including some raided from my parents’ garden the previous day (!), and also made up some planters of growing flowers and herbs that we took away to keep afterwards.  The results were stunning.

A very personal wedding ceremony

Our church wedding was fantastic too.  As we are both Christians, the spiritual aspect of marriage was really important to us, so getting married in church was particularly special.

The service was wonderful – our friend and university chaplain led the service so he was able to tailor it to us quite a lot (his address to the congregation after the marriage involved Bagpuss!) – and as there is quite a lot of choice about what wording to use for the marriage service, and which readings (Bible or not) and music to use, the whole thing felt very personal.

We entered the church to the Beatles’ ‘Here comes the sun’ in the end, very happy! We involved friends and family in leading the readings, prayers and music too, which was lovely.  We exchanged wedding rings from Cred (who really impressed us), and our little ‘engagement ring’ trees made it along to the church too as decorations.  And we made our own service sheets (using Evolve recycled printer paper), including our story in them.

Snap happy guests

After the ceremony we did a big photo session in the pretty churchyard, with my keen amateur photographer uncle doing the ‘posed’ photos, and the rest of our photos taken by the guests who then posted their digital photos on to us.

It worked out really well, despite what you hear about how you must get in a professional.  With so many people doing your photos you are bound to have a fantastic selection of shots, and they covered different groups of guests, as well as getting some fantastic informal pics to add to the posed ones.

Homemade confetti

We had made our own confetti the previous summer, by drying rose petals in the oven and storing them in warm, dark and dry boxes. We decorated the boxes we stored it in with some shiny red paper from Oxfam (again – they did well out of us!) to make pretty serving boxes to pass round for guests to pick out handfuls from.  And it was so beautiful, the colours were preserved really well.

The cherry tree in the churchyard decided to add to our confetti and showered us with blossom as soon as we stepped out of the church, which was VERY cute.  It made a wonderful backdrop to the photos too.

Love,

Helen and Mike

After I got in the mosque, I wasn’t allowed to sit next to the groom. Again, as we were not ‘official’ yet. So I sat behind my father and the Officer of Marriage Registration Office, next to my older brother.

In Islam, we are not allowed to sit in chairs inside mosques. But below, there was an exception for the officiant who sat in a plastic chair. He just got an accident, he wasn’t able to sit on the floor. This is the part when the officiant led the groom to pray first.

Behind the groom are the wedding witnesses; my uncle (in glasses) and the groom’s older brother.

Behind the photographer, we separated the rows of the women and the men, as it is the rule in our religion (you can’t see the row of men in the above photo, by the way).

And before the photographer are several boxes of the groom’s gifts for me, the bride (I’ll talk about that in another post later), as a custom in Indonesian weddings.

In Muslim weddings, it is not the officiant who has the main ‘power’ to let a bride married to the groom, but the bride’s nasab guardian (nasab = has blood relationship—father/grandfather/uncle/brother; with the father being the ‘main’ man). When a bride no longer has living paternal family members, the officiant can be the guardian.

In my case, my father has the ‘power’ to let me married in a session called ijab-qabul, while the officiant became the registrar. But before that, the officiant re-checked the bride and the groom’s readiness (both administrative and mentally) and he also gave a short wedding sermon for us.

The peak of the ceremony was the ijab-qabul:

The ijab is when my father said a line that he ‘gave’ me to the groom. The loose translation would be something pretty much like “[Insert groom's full name], in the name of Allah [the way Muslims call God], I let you married to [insert bride's full name], with the dowry in term of [insert what the groom gave the bride as the dowry or mahar, for example a gold ring], cash.” (this line and the groom’s line below were given by the officiant weeks before the wedding, when Mr. H and I visited the Marriage Registration Office to attend the pre-marital advice session)

And the qabul is when the groom responded with something pretty much like “I take the marriage of [insert bride's full name] your daughter, with the dowry in term of [insert the dowry], cash.”

The two witnesses have the right to determine whether or not the ijab-qabul is ‘valid’. They judge that based on the clarity of the guardian and the groom’s voice and words. In some weddings, either the guardian or the groom have to repeat the ijab-qabul for several times when they uttered it unclear or if the words aren’t as the same as what the officiant tell. So, this is really a serious stuff.

After the witnesses declared that the ijab-qabul A Mighty Wind hd was valid, Mr. H and I i became husband and wife, and then the officiant led everyone to pray.

I was allowed to take over my father’s seat before my husband and the officant led the groom to utter words in giving me the dowry (you can see what the dowry is by seeing the red heart-shaped box on the small table in front of us). I was also led by the officiant to respond the husband’s words in receiving the dowry. After that, my husband put the ring (yup, that’s the dowry) in my right wedding finger (no, not left, and no, I didn’t put a ring in his finger—but more about this on another post).

In Muslim weddings, after the marriage ceremony was done, the husband uttered/read and signed the taklik talak (sighat taklik), a kind of vow (the line of the vow is as exact same as the one stipulated on the marriage certificate) in which my husband promised before me to treat me with love, and that if he abandoned me in any ways I had the right to report him to the court, etc.

The next tradition is for the bride and groom to do sungkem to the elders and immediate family members (parents, brothers, in-laws, uncles, aunts, etc.). I don’t know how to translate ‘sungkem‘, but it’s when we ask for both blessing and forgiveness from the elders and the people we respect to.

Below is me, doing sungkem to my mother:

Me, doing sungkem Death Wish on dvd to my mother-in-law and my husband to his aunt:

The ceremony was ended with the symbolic giving of the groom’s gifts to the bride, done by each side of the family’s representation (on the left is my neighbor and on the right is my husband’s cousin):

Still more stories to come

It is a common thing in my city, Pontianak, to have the groom came to the ceremony site right from his family residence. He actually only rented three cars, but it turned out that more members of the family joined with their own vehicles.

Another common thing is that the groom and his family must walk a little bit to the ceremony site. The little mosque that was designated as our ceremony site has a huge parking lot, but since the groom’s group had to walk, they parked farther.

This is them, getting ready to walk a few hundred meters or so, and that’s the groom, wearing all white (I’ll talk about the outfits on another post):

Maybe you don’t see clearly, but the guys in blue with pink Malay sarong behind the groom and who are holding tambourines were from a traditional tambourine group or something (I don’t know the term) that my husband rented only for that occasion. It is a custom for grooms to be accompanied by sounds of tambourines
when they come to the wedding ceremony site.

And the two decorated wooden sticks behind (those are actually Boy Scout sticks) are traditional decorations in weddings. A pineapple is embed at the top of the big stick and smaller sticks already decorated with colored papers are embed in the pineapple. Children attending the ceremony took them to play with, but I don’t know what happened with the pineapple. Eaten, maybe?

Below is the scene where my family and neighbors welcomed the groom and his family in the mosque next to my parents’ house:

You can see there are two guys from the groom’s side bringing in another kind of traditional wedding decor. They are called egg trees, as eggs (boiled ones, still with the shells) are embed in each of the fake flower stem stuck in a stick. Children and adult took them until nothing was left except the place of the trees. They are made from velvet wrapped plant pots and sticks (my husband asked someone to make them, and later we found out that it would be rented to another groom, and to the next groom, and the cycle goes on).

You can also see in the above picture, there’s my aunt next to the mosque pillar holding a bowl containing yellow rice. It is a custom in weddings in my country to welcome the groom and his family by tossing yellow rice (usually the rice is colored with turmeric). I don’t know what happened then with the tossed rice, but as far as I noticed, the complex was always full of birds. So hopefully, birds ate those rice.

While all those scenes happened, I was still ‘hidden’ in the house, waiting until I was called. So yes, the ceremony was started without me. This is a usual thing in Muslim weddings, as a gesture that we’re not yet ‘official’ as husband and wife. But when the groom was about to take the marriage of the bride, my step mom (in blue gown below) and my sister-in-law (in white and holding her daughter) came to pick me up to the mosque. My two good friends who accompanied me since I was getting ready, helped me with the long batik skirt. I actually hoped for something more dramatic in my walking to the mosque, but well then, this was also fine

In part 2 of this post, I’ll talk about how the ceremony went on. I didn’t say “I do” and neither the groom did. Well, we said something else. Stay tuned

[The first two photos were taken by our professional photographer, the last one by the bride's friend]

Because of Winn-Dixie divx

• where the heart is online download

We’ll leave you in Tim’s capable hands…

Since Humanist Weddings became legal in Scotland in June 2005, hundreds of couples have been travelling here from all over the world to get married by Authorised Celebrants of the Humanist Society of Scotland.

Why Humanist Weddings?

The reason they all give is that they want to have a truly personal ceremony that reflects who they are and allows them to say in their own words why they love one another, what their hopes are for the future and what they promise to one another.

The rise in the popularity of Humanist Weddings has been astonishing and by 2008, they had already become the 4th most popular form of marriage in the country, overtaking the Episcopal Church of Scotland in the process.

One big difference is that they are secular, or non-religious, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t have a spiritual element: we always make a point of welcoming people whatever their beliefs and often have a period for quiet contemplation during which everyone can think about the couple in their own way and people of faith may use this time to say their own private prayer.

Our own Humanist Wedding

I got married in a Humanist ceremony in May 2005, just before they became legal, so my wife Juliet (see Juliet’s Humanist Wedding Blog) and I had to have a civil ceremony as well as a humanist blessing.

Our friends and family all said it was the most moving and inspiring wedding they’d ever been to, and that inspired us both to train to become celebrants. Now, four years later, we’ve both separately conducted hundreds of funerals, baby naming and welcoming ceremonies, and of course marriages. It’s a huge privilege to become part of people’s lives in this way and it’s a responsibility we take very seriously, but it’s also a great and lasting pleasure.

Where do we begin?

The first thing to do is visit the Humanist Society of Scotland’s website. There are now over fifty celebrants authorised by the Registrar General of Scotland to conduct legal weddings, and our contact details can be found here.

Many, but not all of us, have detailed profiles that tell you how and why we do what we do, and some of us have blogs where we share our ideas and talk about the weddings we’ve celebrated. Choose several, call them up or drop them an email and arrange to speak over the phone or if you can, go and meet them in person.

We’re all different, but we’re all the same, in that we treat people the way we would like them to treat us, regardless of their age, race, gender and beliefs. As we say here in Scotland: “We’re a’ Jock Tamson’s bairns“, or in other words, we’re all the same under the skin.

What’s next?

The whole point of the marriage ceremony is to tell your friends and family:
a) why you’re here
b) where you’re going
c) what you’re promising

Working with your celebrant, you’ll find the right way to do that. When I meet a couple, as well as telling them how a typical ceremony might go (and pointing out the many ways in which all the parts of it can differ and be personalised), I ask them to go away and do a little homework, which sounds boring but is actually really great fun, and every couple I’ve ever married has thanked me for suggesting it. This is how it works.

When we decide to ask someone to marry us, or to accept someone’s proposal, we just intuitively know that it’s the right thing to do: we don’t sit down with a tick list and go through all the things that have happened since we met that led to the decision. Or so you might think.

But actually, our subconscious minds have been keeping that list ever since we first saw one another, first spoke and went on our first date. Human beings can’t help judging – like, don’t like, like, like, don’t like – and when we finally decide that this is the only person we can’t live without, or that this person is the one that we want to spend the rest of our lives with, it’s the culmination of a long process where the likes outweigh the don’t likes by a long, long, long way!

So the homework is designed to encourage you – separately – to go back into your memories and remember not just what happened and the story of your courtship, which is fun, but even more importantly, what it was about your partner that made you think, “I love the way he or she is X“.

What’s your story?

During a typical courtship, a lot of stuff happens: good stuff, bad stuff, difficult stuff. And it’s the way that we deal with it that reveals who we are to our partners. I did a ceremony some years ago for a couple who came to me wanting “a plain simple ceremony with no romantic guff“. They did the homework and sent it to me and I read something incredible.

Colin, the husband-to-be struck me as a very normal guy. He was a man of his hands, a football fan, and he’d been a season-ticket holding supporter of his club for twenty years: he wasn’t the flower-arranging type. But when his mum became ill, with Alzheimer’s, he did something remarkable: he gave up his season ticket so he could look after her.

And in her homework, Barbara, the bride-to-be, wrote that she suddenly remembered something that her mother had told her years ago (and that she had dismissed because her mother had told her and let’s face it, what do mothers know?). Her mother had told her, “If you want to see how a man will behave towards you, look at how he behaves towards his mother.”

Now that was Colin and Barbara’s story, and it’s not yours. But you can probably understand from reading it why Barbara chose Colin; and I know that on the day, at least half of the guests, who knew her better than they knew him, really understood why she wanted to spend the rest of her life with him.

Not everyone’s got that kind of story; and not every one wants to talk about things like that. And that’s the real beauty of the Humanist ceremony. You don’t have to. There’s no right way or wrong way: only your way. If you’re a bit shy and want to be discreet, fine. It will be discreet. If you’re natural comedians, it will be funny.

But the most important thing to remember is that it will reflect who YOU are. And no other form of marriage ceremony allows you to do that, in Scotland or anywhere else in the world!

Tim Maguire
Authorised Celebrant
Humanist Society of Scotland

Thanks Tim! What a great introduction to Humanist Weddings. If you want to find out more about Humanist Weddings you can visit Tim’s blog.

And if you’ve had a Humanist Wedding and would like to share your story with us on the Ethical Weddings website, just drop us an email – we’d love to hear from you.

Katie
Chat about Humanist Weddings in the Ethical Weddings Forum

The debate in the Ethical Weddings forum on taking your other half’s name is hotting up.

Does it make you a closer couple to share the same name?

Do you lose your independence when you give up your original surname?

Or does it make no difference because your surname came from your father anyway?

In the middle of heated debate, we realised that while the decision for a woman to take or not to take her partner’s surname is a personal one, the legal structure behind it is outdated and smacks of inequality.

A woman can take her husband’s surname, no problem – she can do this as soon as she has the marriage certificate to prove their union.

She can keep her own name – with a few more problems from some of our venerable institutions who will assume she has taken her husband’s name!

But if the man wants to take his wife’s surname, or the couple wants to create a new surname together, it involves deed poll and a payment.

Our petition

Recognising this inequality, we have started a petition to the government to make the surname decision (whether to keep current surnames, take the husband’s or wife’s, or create a new surname) part of the marriage certificate.

This is what we say in our petition:

It is outdated and seems to contravene equal rights that a woman can automatically take her husband’s surname after marriage but that a man wishing to take his wife’s surname must pay to do so by deed poll.

We propose that the surname decision (whether to keep current surnames, take the husband’s or wife’s, or create a new surname) be incorporated into the marriage certificate. Once signed, the certificate would then provide legal proof of the name change or the decision to keep current surnames.

* Sign our petition at petitions.number10.gov.uk/changingnames *

20 people have signed so far – can we make it 100? Then we’ll try to get it tabled as an Early Day Motion and pushed through parliament… watch this space!

Want more? Read the debate on equal rights on surnames on Facebook.

Katie

I believe it’d be a gorgeous memory to be married in a holy place like a mosque, yet my parents argued that it would be a bothersome to walk to and from the mosque and our house. This mosque I’m talking about is only about two meters across the window of my bedroom and they talked about being bothered by the distance!

Another reason why I’m so inclined to have the mosque as the ceremony site is because it can accommodate a quite big amount of guests (in most weddings in my country, only certain people are invited to the ceremony—close neighbors, the elders in the family, and close friends—while you can invite anyone you wish for the reception, including the ones you have invited to the ceremony). I can envision that as we’re inside the mosque, I suppose that my parent’s house (the reception venue) could be ‘safe’ without any disturbance on the already-arranged décor, chairs, and stuff.

My parents suggested the ceremony to be held at our living room (where the dais—on which the bridal couple and their parents sit—will be placed), while the rest of the large spaces at the house are left for family’s private uses. Our living room isn’t so big and with the dais built, you can count how many people can really fit in there. As the consequence, guests have to sit at the front yard and won’t have access to clearly see and observe how the ceremony goes on (this would be the silliest wedding ceremony I’ve ever experienced in my life—and at my own wedding!).

Well, in my country, your wedding is your family’s event (not really yours), so no matter how hard you argue and debate, your words are not really counted *sigh*.

I’ve said it before, but Lachie and I are simple people. We dreamed of a small chapel in a field, with family and nature around us. We hadn’t bargained on England’s foolish marriage laws! In Australia, you can get married anywhere that a celebrant is willing to undertake the ceremony. The list is endless, and friends of ours have married in the most divine small ceremonies under rainforest canopies. Not so England!

For those who might be new to the wedding game, England allows civil wedding ceremonies in approved buildings only. The rules specify that the building must be fixed, permanent and be usually open to the public. Religious weddings are allowed to be organised directly with the appropriate religious centre, although all but Church of England weddings still require civil paperwork to be completed.

As Lachie is a Catholic, we set off to find that perfect old Catholic chapel, but soon discovered that the Reformation and Henry VIII had left us with little functional choice. Determined not to be married in a Register Office, I went to the internet to find the perfect venue.

Fact: it is very difficult to find a venue that will respect your wishes to be simple and eco-friendly in the North West. I gradually started finding barns which looked wonderful: rustic, simple and honest, but further inspection found the same opulence as the most up-market hotel.. and the same price tag!

Overwrought by more than 50 hours of searching, disappointed by the lack of appropriate venues and upset that England should have such silly laws regarding the union of two people, we spent several nights feeling quite flat and low after the lovely highs of our engagement. Fortunately, a couple of days to remember WHY we were getting married allowed us to see beyond the venue, and reminded us that we were more than just wedding planners!

After a week’s break away from wedding planning, I sat down again to find the right venue. I had a mental list of what we wanted: simple, inexpensive, eco-friendly, ethical and down-to-earth, preferably in Cumbria. Initially happening upon Rheged, an outdoor centre set into a hill near Penrith, we started to hope that maybe it wasn’t a fruitless search. Rheged uses produce supplied by local farmers, and seemed to share some of our ideals, as well as our budget! We drove up there one day to investigate, and although it is truly an exceptional building, it wasn’t quite for us.

We next discovered the Matara Centre. Not quite Cumbria: in fact, the search had taken us to Gloucestershire. However, I was so thrilled by the concept of “total freedom to express their own feelings and beliefs in creating a unique wedding experience without limitations” on its website that I would happily have relocated there. It was, however, so far from home that we simply couldn’t justify the transport and logistics of relocating our wedding down there. Buoyed up once again by a near-success, the search continued.

Browsing through the Ethical Weddings suppliers list one day, I embarked on an internet journey which took me ultimately to Yurtopia. At which point, I fell in love. The natural lines of the yurts drew me in, and their simple, honest structures were like heaven after all those fancy old hotels! We both love eco-friendly buildings, and the low carbon footprint and flexibility of a yurt just makes sense. After a few emails, during which my respect for Yurtopia sky-rocketed, I decided that transporting a yurt all the way up to Cumbria from Brighton just wasn’t viable.

Hurrah for Full Circle, a company offering three yurts in the grounds of Rydal Hall in Cumbria. Speaking to owner Sarah as I booked two yurts for the week after our wedding was refreshing: it’s a family-run business, and they share our aims for a natural existence. I was able to book the ‘honeymoon’ yurt for Lachlan and I, and a second yurt for his family to stay in, as we wanted them to enjoy the week with us.

The yurts and surrounding countryside are just beautiful, and knowing what was in store for us after the wedding cleared my mind and allowed me to finally agree to what had been right for us all along.

We’re getting married in the local register office. Who cares where you are when you say your vows? It’s thirty minutes out of a lifetime together!

With half the battle won, I started searching for organic and vegetarian-friendly caterers. As I have a poor attention span at best, I found myself searching vacantly for local cafes we could visit while we were ‘honeymooning’, and found myself looking at Wilf’s Cafe.  Although they’re not organic, Wilf’s is well-known through outdoorsy circles as a great caterer, with a famous vegetarian chilli. More than that, they use local ingredients where possible and are situated in an old wood mill in the village of Staveley, outside Kendal.

It struck me as an honest, down-to-earth place to get a good feed and enjoy yourself: which is oddly enough just what we wanted! We visited and found ourselves smiling broadly to realise that Wilf’s suited us perfectly.. right down to their request that all venue hirers recycle their waste!

Our search hasn’t been easy: at times we contemplated putting off the wedding until we were back in Australia and free to get married wherever we liked. However, we are both genuinely excited by the places we have found, and feel that ultimately, with your friends and family around you, where you say your vows doesn’t really matter.

Of the entire wedding planning process, this has been the most difficult. I’m sure, though, that over the next few years, it will be easier to find good venues in the North West, and I hope that other couples won’t give up if they find obstacles in their path. It’s worth it!

Celebrant Belinda Chapman of Light on Life works from Arka Eco-Funerals in Brighton and from nearby Lewes. She got in touch to see how Light on Life might be able to work with Ethical Weddings and I was keen to meet her, not least to find out exactly what being a celebrant involves…

EW: Nice to meet you Belinda. I’m really intrigued by what you do. We’re meeting in an Eco-Funeral parlour but you’re interested in Ethical Weddings. Can you tell me exactly what it is a celebrant does?

BC: My main job as a celebrant is to create ceremonies for all life events. Those occasions that mark beginnings, transitions and endings in our lives. Each ceremony is designed to meet the individual’s needs.

EW: Is this the same idea as having a Humanist ceremony?

BC: It isn’t, that is a common misconception actually. Humanism has a clear set of beliefs and a Humanist ceremony would not have any religious elements at all. As an independent celebrant, I can make the ceremony suit the people at the centre of it whether this involves no religious reference, a combination of different beliefs (if the couple getting married were from different religious backgrounds, for example) or an emphasis on the green and ethical issues which are more and more a part of our lives – as you have found with Ethical Weddings.

EW: And as a celebrant, are you able to perform the legal side of a wedding ceremony?

BC: Not at present – a Registrar would still need to contract the marriage or civil partnership – and I often work with one. However, I am in the process of setting up an association of independent celebrants (there are about 30 of us in the UK at the moment) so that as a body we can lobby for the right to legally contract a marriage or civil partnership – we had our first meeting in March.

EW: And why did you decide to be a celebrant – where did the idea come from?

BC: As your idea for Ethical Weddings was a result of your own wedding, sadly, for me the path to becoming a celebrant stemmed from my mother’s funeral 3 years ago. I was not happy with the funeral, it did not seem to reflect her life, and I thought: if only there was someone to help with this when you were at your most vulnerable, to draw out all the good things and make it an occasion for celebrating and remembering. And it was after this that I began my research into becoming a celebrant.

EW: How did your previous experience qualify you for this role?

BC: I came from a performing background – theatre, TV, radio and community theatre – and was involved in Lanternhouse International [a theatre company started over 25 years ago to create 'poetic, daring, visually stunning, emotionally arresting works of participative and celebratory arts and performance']. I attended their ‘Rites of Passage’ course looking at ceremony and ritual with artists and performers, and now teach on these courses myself.

EW: And where do your clients come from – what are they looking for when they get in touch with you?

BC: The circumstances are different in each case – I have done ceremonies in a front room, on a beach, in a hotel – although more and more people are looking for the greener options such as the eco funeral we offer at Arka or a green wedding, such as one I did in Lewes recently in a field with all the food sourced locally.

At first, people came to me through word of mouth, friends of family and friends of friends. They wanted a ceremony that wasn’t just about tradition or the way things had always been done, but that was about them, that reflected who they were and the lives they led. I talk everything through with the family or couple and find out what is important to them and from that I create the ceremony – through songs, poetry, literature, whatever they choose. Before the Civil Partnerships were introduced I created ceremonies for many same sex couples – although now many are opting to go via the Registrar only.

EW: And what do you find you do more of, weddings or funerals?

BC: In the last 12 months it has mostly been funerals – people are increasingly interested in the idea of the eco coffin and leaving as small a footprint as possible on the earth when we leave it.

But I am very keen to develop the wedding side and hope to get the word out through Ethical Weddings. The latest development is to open a ceremony shop in Lewes – and to make the service and products on offer as green as they can be!

EW: Best of luck with that, Belinda. And I’m looking forward to working with you through Ethical Weddings!

If you want to get in touch with Belinda about your ceremony or celebration, visit Light on Life or click here – she will be more than happy to hear from you.

Take care,

Katie
ethicalweddings.com

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