After fifteen years and more than six hundred ceremonies, I still meet couples who want a celebrant led ceremony but also are still very unsure about how this might actually look and feel.  Diving more into their relationship, style and personality and understanding what they know already is often where the real planning conversation begins, and it’s usually also where the excitement starts. Here’s what tends to surprise people most.

Guest participation is welcomed!

Couples often imagine guests as an audience. In a celebrant led ceremony, they become participants and not simply spectators.

One lovely way I like to suggest guest and family participation is with a ring warming, where the rings are passed hand to hand through your guests before the exchange.  It  sounds simple but every person is able to feel or experience it in their own way.  Some guests hold a private thought or a wish as the rings pass through their hands, others might offer a quiet prayer or blessing.

Handtying is becoming more popular, not simply as a nod to any Celtic heritage, but also to help bring family and guests into the circle.  Each may place a cord or ribbon over the couple’s joined wrists or hands, giving them a moment that is close and very special.  The cords are loosely tied and using the ancient colour meanings,  i often write my own wishes and blessings for the marriage to add to the moment of commitment, blending of families and the connections made through this wonderfull resonant symbolic ritual.

The props might be identical from one ceremony to the next, a handtying cord, a set of rings, a small oathing stone, but the ritual itself is never the same twice, because it’s shaped entirely for the couple themselves.

There are many many other ways the family and guests can be involved and participate, all depending on the wishes of the couple themselves, such as communal Vows, a Quiz, finding the Ring Bearer (ring taped underneat a seat),  or ending with a rousing communal Song.

Acknowledging absence is just as important

Weddings are something most couples have to make adjustments about – the budget, the guest list, the venue, even the location and as I officiate many destination weddings in the areas I cover, the wedding party is often a smaller group of close family and friends.  For me, one of the parts I find most moving to write is weaving in messages from those who couldn’t travel, allowing them and the couple to close the gap for a moment and feel the love from afar.  I will also take a moment and speak about or share a memory of someone who’s passed recently and who is being held in the couple’s hearts on such a special moment in their lives. Sometimes it’s a single line acknowledging an absence, sometimes it’s a fuller moment built around  the couple’s own story,  such as rings made from vintage family wedding rings, or the heritage lace or tartan in a handtying cord.  Couples are often surprised that this kind of acknowledgement is even possible within a wedding ceremony, and are often delighted that so much of their story, their heritage and even their culture can be woven into the occasion.

You can have two sets of vows, and both are meaningful

A structure a lot of my couples love, especially those eloping, is exchanging personal vows together in a private moment between the two of them, and then repeating a shorter set of traditional vows in front of family afterwards in a celebrant led ceremony. It means the words that are only for each other between them,  while the ones spoken publicly still carry full weight and meaning. Nobody has to choose between intimacy and ceremony because there is room and time for both.

Spiritual or religious content can be present

Many of my couples come from different faiths, no faith, or somewhere in between, often across the same family. A light touch of religious or spiritual content, a blessing, a moment of quiet reflection, a prayer offered by a guest, can sit comfortably inside an otherwise entirely secular ceremony when it is done with grace, respect and the intention to be inclusive for all present.

Naturally as with all my ceremonies we begin with the conversation about religious content and how this might be included if the couple wish to acknowledge their own faith or that of their family or guests.  It’s rarely all or nothing. It’s usually about finding the one gesture that means something to the people who need it, without asking anyone else in the room to participate in something that isn’t true to them.  This is why I offer my couples resources which showcase religious and spiritual content that might be something to build upon.

How your script actually comes together

 

I don’t write your vows for you, and I don’t ask you to write them from scratch either. What I do is give you prompts, a sense of where to begin, and ways to structure your thoughts, often pulling directly from what you’ve already shared with me in your questionnaire responses. That way nothing gets duplicated, and nothing gets taken from you.

When your script is ready, I ask you to read it aloud before the day, not to memorise it, but so you can feel where the lightness sits and where the emotion lies, and where your voice naturally wants to pause.  I do remind my couples that I will be reading and performing their ceremony for them, with love, warmth and my own delight at being chosen to stand with them.

Beyond that, you get to choose how much of the ceremony you actually see in advance. Some couples want the full script to read and edit. Others prefer a partial version, everything from the introduction through the ritual, readings, vows and ring exchange, but not the closing section that holds your personal story, so that part still lands as a surprise on the day. And some couples, particularly those eloping, choose to see nothing at all until they’re standing in front of me. There’s a real sense of adventure in that choice, and the couples who take it tend to describe the ceremony afterwards as something closer to an experience than an event.

Whichever way you choose, the ceremony itself might be long or it might be short, but it’s always built entirely around your story, not a template.

Where the legal side fits in

None of this replaces the legal step of getting married, which depends on where you’re from and where your ceremony takes place. For couples travelling from the UK, the US, Canada or Australia, to Europe, this is worth understanding early, since a celebrant led ceremony is still considered symbolic and you will need to organise your own legal registration of your marriage.

The Marriage Law in England and Wales is being modernised and there is an open government consultation looking at reforming wedding law in England and Wales, and one of the questions it’s asking is whether independent celebrants should be able to conduct legally registered ceremonies themselves. If that changes, a celebrant led ceremony in England and Wales could one day be both the ceremony you want and the legal step itself, in one moment rather than two. If it’s something you’d like to have a say in, the ongoing consultation is open here  It closes on 24th September 2026.

I’m Yvonne, a bilingual celebrant based in Germany and working across the UK and Europe. For fifteen years I’ve been crafting personal, meaningful ceremonies for couples who want their day to feel entirely their own, whether that means a grand celebration or a quiet elopement in the mountains.