Ceremonies are my very favourite things. Smile-filled, unique and hand-crafted weddings and namings.
11/07/2025
I've finally got myself into gear and launched my new wedding website! Link below.
I'm still planning to add more testimonials, and probably a FAQ-type page (but with Qs that genuinely have been FA. I've had a lot over the years).
But I'd appreciate your suggestions. What else would be useful? If you were perusing for someone to conduct your wedding or renewal, what would you want to know from their website?
Or, indeed, if I have conducted *yours* in the past, what information was the most helpful?
13/06/2025
Some great tips here - everything you need to plan a perfect ceremony!
But I'll add a 9th to this list: *do not worry* if almost everything in that article (handfasting, readings, symbols, writing vows) fills you with fear and embarrassment. I've worked with plenty of utterly lovely couples who want to keep things much simpler. That's totally fine too!
Planning your wedding day should be an exciting journey of creating a celebration that truly reflects you as a couple. If you’re looking to have a non-religious wedding ceremony that’s deeply personal and unforgettable, a humanist wedding led by a Humanist Ceremonies celebrant offers endless pos...
25/05/2025
One year ago today - the lovely Ben and Megan’s wedding at .
Swords, guard of honour, bagpiper playing the Top Gun theme - what’s not to like?
Anyway - happy first anniversary folks!
Photo:
23/05/2025
Shameless moment of self-promotion: my lovely couples, your assistance is required!
I've finally given in and decided to try being listed on hitched.co.uk for a while. But despite having been a celebrant for 13 years, I've only just joined that and have no reviews on it, so it looks like I've never done anything.
You know what's coming. If I conducted your wedding and you fancy doing me a lovely thing and can spare a moment...
I never get tired of remembering this moment, from a wedding in - catching the wedding rings delivered by drone in the middle of the ceremony. One chance to surprise the guests, no opportunity to practice… and it worked perfectly. Highlight of my year!
Photo:
24/04/2025
21 years ago today, I got married. And 21 years later I still love this photo entirely.
(oh go on then. And my wife, I suppose)
11/04/2025
Aw - lovely to see this again! I still stand by every word :-) Thank you, Humanist Ceremonies!
There are real life wedding stories and thoughts about wedding ceremonies from some of our Humanist Ceremonies celebrants in the Little Book of Humanist Weddings, like this one about having a wedding in front of your community of guests by humanist celebrant Ewan Main: humanist wedding and naming ceremonies.
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The book reads: 'A legal arrangement can be changed by means of another legal arrangement. But an agreement in front of, and involving, the community around you - that makes you accountable.
Guests at a wedding - if they're valued, trusted guests - really do care about what's happening at the front, because it's a little bit about them too.
I like to comment in weddings, sometimes, on the fact that everyone sitting in this room together now has one thing in common that they didn't before. A marriage grows from and reflects connections, and it makes new ones too.
Humanist celebrant Ewan Main'
06/04/2025
York is bursting with blossoms at the moment!
It brings back strong memories - this time last year I was just about to live and work in Japan for a month. It changed my life entirely.
To all those who are on the verge of an exciting new stage of life - かんぱい！
27/03/2025
Spotted on a pavement in Soho yesterday. I like it.
24/03/2025
I get asked quite often about the best, daftest or most unexpected things that have happened in weddings.
This one was right up there on all three counts. A chicken appeared at the end of the aisle and slowly, nonchalantly, processed all the way along and met us at the front. All we could do was stop and let it finish.
(I wondered if it was planning a show-stopping declaration that the groom was in love with someone else. I’m happy to report it wasn’t.)
But this picture went down in history… and a little while later the photographers, the excellent , contacted me to conduct their wedding too 🥰
So, I’m grateful to that chicken. 🐓🥂
19/03/2025
Probably my favourite thank you card from all the years. You might see it on the wall behind me if we meet on Zoom or something.
This was from a couple who invited me to conduct their vow renewal. Apparently they had got the idea from Gavin and Stacey!
(At the time, I’d never seen it. I have now - and good grief, it’s a bold move to base your life choices on Dawn and Pete’s relationship…)
17/03/2025
‘Tis the season for daffodils all over lovely .
For a few years, you could sponsor the planting of a patch of daffodils on the city walls in someone’s memory. Near the station there are 1,000 of them in honour of my late brother ♥️
(I had hoped to get a picture from the walls, but alas the rain appeared and my camera isn’t waterproof. These are in front of the Elm Bank Hotel.)
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About me
I've been writing and conducting ceremonies since 2012. The grainy photo above is of my first ever wedding - that's me on the right, with the always-entertaining Lea and Andrew. We had such a great time planning a ceremony filled with laughs and personal touches. And the fact that I'm still friends with them, and indeed various members of their family, says a lot. I'm very proud of that!
Since then, I've worked with hundreds of people: mainly for their weddings but with a fair number of namings, a few vow renewals and a few funerals too. Every time it's a similar process: we get to know each other in person, by Skype, phone and FaceTime; we exchange lots of emails; I bring my enormous iPad and we play with a huge diagram of how the whole thing is going to go; I go away and write it and, on the day, everything goes perfectly. Usually.
So, mainly the same process. But a completely different experience each time. Since that photo from 2012, for example, I've spoken English, Welsh, German and Polish in ceremonies. (And no, since you ask: I don't speak Welsh, German or Polish.) I've heard readings from all sorts of traditions, mainly non-religious but also Jewish, Buddhist and Christian; and from writers from Shakespeare to Dr. Seuss to the groom's mother. I've seen wedding rings brought by humans, dogs and a remote-controlled quadcopter, and guests in everything from kilts to cowboy outfits. (No Star Wars costumes, though. It's a classic stereotype but I've never genuinely known it to happen.)
We've had music from singers, guitarists, an entire brass band, a whole orchestra, a harpist, a bagpiper and, twice, a venue full of wedding guests with kazoos. (The first time, it was the couple's idea. The second time, it was mine.) I've conducted ceremonies in England, Scotland, Turkey and Poland, held in hotels, pubs, restaurants, gardens, castles, stately homes, a clifftop, a village hall and a living room. I discussed a wedding in a helicopter with a TV company once, but it didn't pan out. I've never yet had one on a cruise ship but I really, really want to.
The humanist side is an important part of it: I do this because this life is the only one we have, so spending it well and helping others to make theirs meaningful seems a good thing to do. But as for the actual ceremony content: some people do like to focus on their beliefs about the world, and the fact that I share those beliefs means a lot to them. Others, though, really just want to focus on what we can all agree on: life, love, community, friends, family and all the things that the people in the room have in common. Another thing that makes me particularly proud is how many people of widely different religious beliefs have told me, afterwards, that it was the best ceremony they had been to. (How often have you sat through a wedding or funeral, say, and felt completely unable to identify with most of what’s been said? That never happens here.)
I expect my hundredth wedding to be in the next year or so. I don't know whose it will be, as bookings sometimes come in at surprisingly short notice - but I'm working on a plan to mark it when it happens.
In the meantime, it continues to be a great pleasure. There's nothing I like more than getting to know new people and helping them to do justice to these great moments in their lives.
