Who’s marrying you?

The perfect day - Olly & Meg’s wedding at Tonnara di Scopello, Sicily. At this point I’ve sung our beautiful bride Meg up the isle and have just concluded the ceremony!

Ok, hopefully you have a pretty good idea who you’re getting married to, but who’s going to be the person standing up there walking you through the most important moment of your life?

It’s a little while since the majority of weddings took place in a church, most people now opting for a venue that provides the picture perfect backdrop. I’ve had the pleasure in recent times of playing at weddings in forests, in castles, on hills, in farms, on mediterranean islands, and still of course the occasional classic church. But I’m starting to see a new trend, and I like it very much; people are asking someone ‘a bit different’ to perform their ceremony.

I’ve heard of people asking a loved one to step in and do the honours, but thrillingly, I’ve also been asked to perform a few myself. As someone who spends so much time around wedding ceremonies, I’m well versed in the classic structure, as well as several slight variations - some will include guest readings, some will have a register signing, I’ve even been celebrant at a traditional Scottish ceremony where a ‘quaich’ (a ceremonial bowl of whisky) was handed around the immediate family members while old poetry is read.

The first time I was asked to do it, I was surprised, having never intimated that I might be capable of it. But I quickly realised that as someone who attends more weddings than most, it’s something I could really get into, and it was a great success. Having been asked several times now, I thought it was about time I offer it as a service and put it on my website! If you want a traditional civil celebrant to do the business, that’s absolutely fine, but if you want someone in a great suit & hat with a beard and the odd tattoo peeking through, that’s when you might consider asking me to get involved.

Why would you ask me to do the honours?

Well firstly I should point out that if you book me to play music at your wedding ceremony, I don’t expect you to book me to marry you! Nor do I have to play your music if you’ve already got that covered and you just need someone to help you with ‘I do’. If you haven’t considered it before, these are the questions I’d urge you to ask yourself:

Do I want a stranger to marry us?

How do I want my chosen celebrant to make me feel on the day?

Do I wan’t to be tied to a magistrate’s timetable on my big day if they have a tiny window and other places to be?

And…how do I want my wedding ceremony photos to look? ;)

I must make it expressly clear that I’m not an ordained priest, nor am I a legally appointed civil celebrant so a ceremony I perform won’t be legally or religiously binding; you will need to take steps to tick those boxes at another time. But what many couples are doing now is taking a separate day out to get married in the town hall or a small chapel and go for a low-key celebration locally, perhaps with a super intimate handful of their nearest and dearest, and that means they can invite all their friends to attend their ‘official BIG day’ wherever they like, be it on a volcano, in a cave or wherever their imaginations take them. Many of the places people would like to get married - on beaches and in other open air locations - aren’t licensed for marriage, so the only way to do it is to actually get married on a different day, and then do the more public bit in style, whatever that may look like for the couple in question. Crucially, the public ceremony will still feel like the real thing, but you’ll be doing it your way.

If this is something you’re considering, I’ll be there to work with you on every little thing you want to include to make sure it’s absolutely perfect for you. I will need to know where it’s taking place, how long and simple/complicated you’d like it to be and whether you’d like me to provide the music too, so give me a shout using any of the contact forms you find on this site and let’s get talking. This is going to be fun!

TC

Thank you again to Olly & Meg for letting me be part of such a magical day.