One of your colleagues wrote to me recently about the quandary that presents itself when you happen to be a parent and a marriage celebrant.

I spoke to her issue— and shared my embarrassing story— on the Celebrant Institute blog, which then led to another question in reply to that blog post, which I thought I'd answer in this month's newsletter: What AI am I using to make my celebrancy life easier?

And I'm going to guess that there aren’t many other celebrants in the country as qualified to talk to this issue today, if only because I'm typing this (well, I'm dictating this... trying to type and dictate this) whilst holding a three-day-old son in my hands.

Last month I asked for your feedback, so this month it's a massive thanks to each of you that wrote in with a big thanks and "all is well". A few of you posed some bigger questions, however, so here are some replies.

Our inbox is always open at hello@celebrant.institute and members get real professional help ASAP at celebrant.institute/ask

Britt and I are expecting our third child this month, so if I'm a little bit less available, that's why.

– Josh

For eight years this month(!?!?), Sarah and I (hi, Josh here) have been

• writing you email updates,
• recording podcasts for you,
• answering your questions,
• delivering you professional development courses,
• and training aspiring celebrants,

and honestly, it's all been a blast.

But on the last day of August, as I went to write this email, I didn't have a lot to say to you all, and honestly, it was probably more to do with the fact that I didn't know what you wanted to hear, I didn't know how we could help you.

Taking my four- and six-year-old daughters to ballet on the weekend, I realised that you and I, and everyone, we're all just grown-up babies figuring out how to do everything.

It was when Luna, who's done ballet classes before, was trying to copy the kids in her class who clearly had zero idea what to do but were pretty confident in their lack of ability.

Here Luna was, trying to copy another six-year-old with zero idea on how to learn ballet instead of:

1. listening to the very capable teacher leading the class
2. listening to her father who knows about as much as the other kids but at least I know how much I don't know

Started in Malta airport and finished in Napoli airport, this is your monthly Celebrant Institute email, and although it’s an all new email I’m re-hashing five things every celebrant in Australia needs to know about this month.

I've just spent a few days on the island nation of Malta with a close and old friend and he's reminded me, as good friends wont, a significant flaw in me is that I can be too direct, too blunt, and lack empathy in those situations I deem to be trivial. It's a side effect of my homeless years as a young man. I had no time for being polite or proper, only for survival. But my past is no excuse, I need to be better.

Old habits die hard.

I’m writing this from a café table in Rome and I’ve just finished a cappuccino that would make my local barista cry if she knew how good she was doing on a global scale, and I’m watching locals do life like it’s performance art. Because it is. Because everything is.

And I’ve been thinking about how much of what we do as celebrants is actually art. Not “artsy”. Not poetic fluff. But actual, capital-A Art. Being a celebrant isn't – as someone artfully described on Threads this week – just Schrödinger's unemployment; it's the dance of putting your skills, worldviews, beliefs, and your art into the public arena and hoping it resonates with couples getting married.

Pulitzer-winning art critic Jerry Saltz once said, “art is simply embedding your thought in your material.” That’s what you do every time you write a ceremony. Every time you step up to the front of a wedding, trembling slightly, and invite two people to breathe their marriage into life. It’s performance. It’s craft. It’s storytelling. It’s theatre. It’s ritual. It’s legal documentation masquerading as magic.

You’re not just a service provider ticking off legal boxes.

The deal with this email is that it goes out on the first day of the month, every month.

And we only email you in-between if it's important.

And sitting here at my laptop trying to plough through my email inbox I realised I forgot to tell you something important in the May 1 email:

There's a new survey for all marriage celebrants to complete about the changes to the marriage laws that we're advocating for.

I'm writing this month's email from a hotel room in Sydney, staring out over Darling Harbour as I gear up for my annual European summer wedding tour for 16 weddings across a bunch of awesome European wedding destinations. But this year's a bit special—Britt and the girls are coming with me. We're swapping the Huon Valley for the Amalfi Coast, Florence, and the Greek Islands, making marriages and memories together as a family.

This morning I was in the barber's chair, explaining what I do for a living, that I somehow turned love, words, and legal paperwork into a full-time job—and a life we love.

The barber asked how I got started. I gave her the short version: sixteen years ago I decided to do things differently.

Welcome to the first day of the month, this is your April 1st monthly Celebrant Institute letter.

No fools here!

Caretaker mode at the AGD and MLCS means we're most likely not getting OPD just yet, but while we wait for that, and for our upcoming survey of all celebrants and your appetite to update/change the marriage act, I wanted to share some things I've been learning recently.

One of my favourite things about having moved to Tasmania just over a year ago is how I can just gaze outside at night and see our solar system, or even better, Aurora Australis.

Gazing at the stars around midnight is a humbling experience.

Another aspect of Tasmanian life is how everyone on the island is one of three people.

1. A visitor or tourist. We love them here.
2. A local who knows how good it is.
3. A mainlander (like me) trying to optimise for joy in life, and now they're here.

As a lifelong Queenslander, I was unfamiliar with the idea of seasons until last year.

We don't really have any in Queensland, just versions of Summer. Like lunches and breaks in school, we'd have big summer, little summer, pre-summer, after-summer.

I'd make fun of my Melbourne colleagues for banging on about "wedding season" and I'd plant my tomatoes whenever I damn well wanted to.

All of that changed a year ago today as I became a Tasmanian.

A lot has changed in the last year, for example a year ago I lived in a high-rise apartment block on Palm Beach and now we're on two acres in Tasmania's Huon Valley with six chickens and two rabbits. Life comes at you fast. So fast that sometimes you write the "first day of the month" email on the fifth day of the month - Josh Withers

📈 2024 Stats

To the 46 people who listen to our podcast on Spotify but don’t listen to any other podcast, on top of the hundreds of others that listen to the podcast amongst others; the 149 of you who got in touch via the contact form; 235 who asked for professional help and mentoring; 301 who filled out surveys; 445 of you who value our content enough to pay for it; and the 10,086 of your colleagues in Australia and around the world in over 12 countries that read this email every month: thank you.

Welcome to the silly season edition of the Celebrant Institute mailout read by you and 10,134 of your colleagues in celebrancy around Australia and the world. Happy, December 1st!

I started writing this at home in Tasmania's Huon Valley serenaded by my children, and finished writing it in Queensland's Fortitude Valley being serenaded by local singer Kimberley Bowden at the Osbourne Hotel. There's never a boring day in celebrancy is there.

I started writing this email in the Hobart Qantas lounge and finished in a Doncaster hotel lobby two days later, so I hope this jam-packed November edition of the Celebrant Institute monthly letter brings you immense value.

Sarah and I (Josh) are really proud of what we create at the Celebrant Institute. We've long believed that ideas kept to oneself help no one; success follows generosity.

So, please accept this contribution to your celebrancy practice. If it brings you joy, help, or improvement, I’d encourage you to become a member for $12 a month.

There are only a few people in the world who can confide in 10,000 celebrants reading an email that they’re spending a bit too much time with a long plastic device and expect no one to raise an eyebrow – and I’m happy to be that person.

My name is Josh Withers. I am obsessed with audio at weddings, and in the absence of a normal wedding industry, I’ve sunk my teeth into that this month. Welcome to your monthly Celebrant Institute email, written from an Airbnb in Melbourne before a Wednesday wedding. I hope this month’s articles are helpful to you.

Remember, if you're a paid member, you can ask any and all questions about celebrancy at celebrant.institute/ask anytime about anything.

• I have a new favourite microphone, and wedding videographers will like it as well. It records everything it hears in the highest quality audio!
• Are you comfortable talking about your price when blogs and couples ask?
• Is your website doing your sales for you like it should? Here are the five laws a wedding celebrant's website should obey.
• The best marketing meets people where they’re at. As we navigate this quiet and weird year for the wedding industry, consider where your couples are at when they enquire.
• The Wed.co podcast boys interviewed me about my celebrancy practice, PA systems, and letting videographers tap into them. It’s a good listen or watch.
• Anka asked about how Australian celebrants do international weddings.
• Libby asked about how to do a non-legal commitment ceremony.
• Did I mention how excited I was about a microphone? Want to hear how it sounds? Here’s what it sounds like in a wedding ceremony.

Across my career as a wedding celebrant, I've upset many a vendor and vendor category. Honesty is both my best and worst personality trait, and anyone who knows me personally knows I ought to shut up more. But I haven't this month, and I've upset the videographers.

What Happened Between Josh and a Videographer

I had just finished setting up for a wedding ceremony at a really nice venue—awesome couple, everything is great—and the videographer starts walking my way.

I called our wise friend and oracle, Sarah Aird, yesterday, moaning about how I was all out of encouragement for this month's letter to the celebrant community because I'm tired and burned out from trying so hard, and yet the inquiries and the bookings are still thin on the ground.

So she encouraged me to write about it so you might know that you are not alone. We're all doing it tough at the moment.

Years ago, I sat in a meeting with Dally Messenger III, and he said something that really pissed me off, that there was no way a marriage celebrant could make a full-time wage.

There seems to be a long-held tradition of me (hi, it's Josh) writing this monthly letter from weird and wonderful places around the world, and June's edition is no exception. I started writing it on the Isle of Procida, finishing it at the Port of Naples, while waiting for my boat to Positano. I’m spending a few weeks in Europe helping people breathe their marriages to life. It's a hard job, but someone had to escape the Tasmanian winter, and unfortunately, it was me.

One of the little joys I experience every European summer is waking up in Italy around 4 pm Eastern Australia time and catching a day's worth of emails all at once. Then I get on Zoom calls with celebrants, wedding creators, my couples, and my family before sinking into a pool or the sea to cool down before going to work here.

The beautiful part of that is that I'm forced to digest my thoughts and relationships into smaller and more pointed channels of communication. I'm compelled to consider my writing and calls carefully, and when given a few moments in my early morning or very late night, I get on a call with my kids or a client.

Considerate Social Media and Marketing

TL;DR: As of now, today, 12th of June 2024, remote witnessing of the Notice of Intended Marriage (NOIM) is made permanent by Commonwealth law.

Remote witnessing of the NOIM is law

It's finally happened! After many months and a LOT of work, remote witnessing has been made permanent by the Royal Assent of the Attorney-General's Portfolio Miscellaneous Measures Bill 2023. As of today, right now, all Commonwealth Marriage Celebrants can once again witness signatures on the Notice of Intended Marriage via Zoom or other video conferencing platforms like FaceTime, Google Meet, Skype, WebEx, and others.

Welcome to another episode of everyone's favourite Australian marriage celebrant newsletter, the Celebrant Institute Monthly, written today poolside in Legian while I wait for that dreadful red-eye flight home tonight.

I had a Bali wedding yesterday, which was lovely, but spending 48 hours in Bali has me thinking about lightning.

As the electricity traverses from the sky towards the earth, it looks for the path of least resistance. All energy does. At my hotel in Bali today, the path of least resistance today is in staff. They have plenty of them, and rather than invest in quality service, they invest in lots of average service. The path of least resistance.

Artificial intelligence, large-language models, generative AI, and computers in general will very quickly soon become the path of least resistance for many activities – and I find this so encouraging because it will liberate you and me to provide real and true value in the places that really matter. While AI does the boring work, you and I can do the real work.