Celebrants are public officials who work with family, friends, and communities to organize, supervise, and run all types of ceremonies. Celebrants offer ceremonies for babies, adoptions, marriages, commitments, coming of age, funerals, and memorials.
They connect the family to the community and are trained to do so. Training to be a celebrant does not require a college degree, but it does require a love of the arts, a friendly disposition, good public speaking skills and writing abilities, and great organization skills. Although they are not needed, foreign language skills and computer skills do make celebrant work easier and will make you a more desirable celebrant for clients.
You may also want to become familiar with different types of wedding themes, wedding ceremony ideas and religious and non-religious traditions. You may also want to consider becoming more comfortable using different types of computer software like Microsoft Word, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop, and Microsoft Publisher. You can use these programs to design flyers, create themes and organize weddings, design invitations, etc.
Marriage celebrant training can be found in your state or online. Some organizations will allow people to become a marriage celebrant through an online marriage celebrant course. Others offer various training sessions over a period of a few days around the country. For example, Insight Books, Inc., offers several training sessions in various cities in the U.S. They offer them once a month. This year they are hosting training sessions in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Des Moines, Iowa, Memphis, Tennessee, Indianapolis, Indiana, and Westchester County, New York. Another organization, the Celebrant USA Foundation & Institute, allows students to take an online wedding celebrant course or do their wedding celebrant training in a classroom.
Not all classes offered are necessary to become a celebrant. What classes you take depends on the type of celebrant you want to be. If you only want to work on weddings and commitment ceremonies, you would take a class that is a marriage celebrant course and focuses on marriage celebrant training.
Some celebrant training certifications vary by state. Before signing up for a class, you should make sure that you are going to receive the certification and training needed to be a celebrant in your state or the state in which you plan on working as a celebrant.
The types of classes offered range from independent study, certificate courses, and courses on the fundamentals. You may need to complete one of all three depending on where you get your training and certification from. Some training can take a few months to a year. It all depends on where and from who you are training. Some courses only last a few days, while others last an entire semester.
To become a wedding celebrant, you must be willing to do the work. Not everyone can automatically become a celebrant because they want to. You should put in the effort and take the time to make your training worthwhile. Pick up other skills to make yourself more desirable to various types of clients, receive the proper state certification, and start offering your celebrant services.
