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.
Your 70,920 clicks on our website, hours of podcast listening, and days of email reading solidify in our wee little hearts that what we – Josh and Sarah – do matters.
Happy New Year! We sincerely wish that your 2025 is better than your 2024, even if your 2024 was awesome!
As always, if we can help in that regard, that’s part of your membership and you can ask away at celebrant.institute/ask.
🔒 New for members: Enclosed
If you’re a Celebrant Institute member, then you get access to a new security protocol called Enclosed.
Enclosed allows you to share paperwork and documents, like a NOIM or OCM, with a couple securely using the highest encryption available.
We’re paying for Enclosed so members can access it for free.
You might remember from the blog post about keeping data secure on your own computer that the less data you have means there is less data available to be stolen and hacked. Enclosed covers that for emailing documents.
Read all about Enclosed, and watch the video tutorial on the institute blog now.
🎉 Preparing for a new year
There are three good blog posts on the website from the last month to help send you into 2025 in good stead:
- Make sure you are listed on Apple Business Connect
- Marketing efforts you should be aware of and doing for how the world does business in 2025
- If you haven’t nailed down the process yet, here’s how you can be witnessing NOIMs remotely.
🦾 AI Mastermind Zoom Calls
We’re planning free-to-members monthly Zoom calls to help us all get our heads around AI in 2025. Not seminars or workshops, but general campfire chats around the subject. We believe that AI is going to fundamentally change how celebrants do business and we want our members to be at the forefront of this revolution.
🥸 New thing for you to learn: SSG and GEO
Expect me to talk a lot about SEO, GEO, and SSGs in 2025. I’ve spent the last few months learning all about it and that has resulted in me completely abandoning WordPress and Squarespace in search of a static-site-generator-made website because SEO and GEO (generative engine optimisation, like ChatGPT). I’ve made a new website for myself and I’d either like to teach you how to do it, or to encourage you to pay someone else to do it for you because I believe it’s important.
🙌 Best of 2024
Here are the blog posts that were most active, most viewed, most commented, and most shared on the Celebrant Institute website:
- So, you want your friend to be your celebrant, and then people want to know how to complete the Cert IV in Celebrancy quickly lol. Bless their cotton socks.
- What is every other celebrant charging in 2024? and prices are set to increase in 2024, so you should charge more.
- Sarah’s annual review of the marriage statistics from the ABS is always popular.
- The history of one month’s notice for marriage in Australia was an interesting read, as was that story sent in by a member about the photographer, the dress, and the celebrant.
- Where I/Josh and Sarah stand during a marriage ceremony got heated feedback.
- Card Buddy’s review garnered lots of email feedback.
- Only two of my 2024 predictions came true.
- New ‘stuff’ to include in your ceremonies and my new favourite microphone got the clicks.
- Lots of you studied how to become a funeral celebrant in 2024 and even more people were interested in what happens when a celebrant falls sick mid-ceremony.
- Famously I blew too much money on advertising at the start of the year and wrote about my return from a $20k advertising spend. Spoiler: it was not good.
- Remote witnessing became law, there are new meeting requirements, and I still think the notice period should be reduced to one week.
- And despite all that good content, the most popular blog posts are still about which PA system to buy and my six-year-old blog post on what I would do if I was starting today.
😘 Thank you
Thank you for another year of your membership, whether through this free email subscription, the free podcast, as a student studying the Certificate IV in Celebrancy with us, or as a paid member. We value you and are grateful that you are here.
Membership of the institute is $12 a month and you can manage your membership, or join, at members.celebrant.institute
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