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.

We've called him Jack, and he's pretty damn cute. I've got some photos on my Instagram.

What AI am I using to make my celebrancy life easier?

Three years and three days ago, ChatGPT launched, and the world blew up over "AI". I am reluctant to call it artificial intelligence. At best, it's artificial smartness; at worst, it's just how modern computers work.

Truth be told, I view ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and friends as software robots. And I've been using robots in my life for years.

So when I talk about AI today, I'm all-encompassing on just how computers work today and how robots work today.

Here are the robots I use in my business today to stay afloat whilst trying to be a present dad and a good celebrant.

Lawn mowing robot

I live on two beautiful acres of land on the Huon River, but when my mower broke down a few months back, I wasn't even considering a robot mower, but today I could not live without it. I did the research and bought a Husqvarna Automower. It's the best purchase I've made in my life; it just mows the lawn 24/7, and now I never have to think about it. That's four hours back to me each week.

My 8,000 square metres needs a 450X NERA but you probably have a smaller lawn than me, so you can get away with something smaller.

Husqvarna has me a coupon code for you to get a $400 cash back code in case you feel like taking the leap. You need to claim it. here. Josh13565

Vacuum cleaning robot

I like to live in a clean house, and I also like to spend my free time with my wife and kids, so to round that off, I bought our family an Ecovac Deebot and it mops and vacuums and I don't.

ChatGPT

For three solid years, I have used ChatGPT every day for research, business and product search, to help me finish sentences or thoughts when I can't get my head there, and to proofread things I've written so that they sound less stupid. The benefit of using it so much is that it knows me really well. For example, I'm going to take this paragraph, paste it into ChatGPT, and hopefully, ChatGPT can prove to you how well it knows me without actually embarrassing me too much... maybe just a little.

Marbilism

Marbilism gives you a row of employees that specialise in different functions in your business. I'm still fresh into using it, but I really vibe with it. The executive assistant actually rearranges my emails into folders in my inbox, and I reallllllly like how it does that, and the social media manager and blog writer help take my content ideas somewhere new and different. I don't like getting it to do the writing, but the stretching of my ideas when I'm overwhelmed is helpful.

Get a free month of Marbilism using the code R8FDBALW.

Willow

Voice dictation isn't new; I remember seeing Dragon Dictate as a teenager, but modern voice dictation is still pretty bad. Willow works kind of how autocomplete does in that it takes what you've entered, then makes some large-language-model-assisted guesses as to what you were actually trying to say. I'm writing this newsletter with it on my Mac.

Use the Willow referral code ZEJNDT to get a free month of Willow.

Claude

I like Claude, sometimes more than ChatGPT, but ChatGPT is where my personal knowledge base is. Claude, however, is really good at coding. I can imagine a future where we don't have Squarespace, WordPress, Studio Ninja, or Tave, because with AI coding, we can make the exact tool we want.

I've done this with Claude recently where I got it to make an Obsidian plugin that makes a free customer relationship management tool out of my favourite knowledge base.

And just before I wrote this email, I used Claude Code to make a wedding budget estimator based on priorities and wedding date on my website. It's still rough and minutes old. I just had the idea in the car, held onto the idea long enough to get in front of a computer, and then used Claude Code to make it. You can test it out at https://marriedbyjosh.com/wedding-budget/ - the idea is to drag and drop vendors into a list of priorities and get an idea based on your priorities, location, and when you want to marry, as to how much your wedding might cost.

Grok

An added bonus, if you haven't had a voice conversation with Grok's unhinged mode then you haven't lived. I paid for a month membership just to hear Grok explain the Marriage Act to me with swear words.

I couldn't do this gig and be a dad without computers. I hope you've been encouraged to do the same.

Sarah wanted to remind you to do your OPD. For the love of God, please do your OPD in the marriage celebrants portal on the AGD website now.

You've no doubt seen a few emails about law changes this month from the AGD. There's nothing to stressful going on though. We're meeting with the Attorney-General's department on Thursday and after that meeting we'll release a few more details on the Celebrant Institute website.

And if you're a Celebrant Institute member for $12 a month, you get to ask us questions about it.

– Josh