My priorities for 2023:
2022 was my biggest celebrancy year to date, as I performed more ceremonies than ever before plus enrolled 29 new students in the Cert IV in Celebrancy. In 2023 I'm hoping for things to be a bit steadier (like one funeral a week would be lovely rather than four weeks of nothing then five in one week!), I'm hoping to enrol more students in the Cert IV and set them on course to being great celebrants, and I'm hoping to help out with finalising new Guidelines that are well overdue!

Reminder for everyone in 2023:
Recently, we've had a few questions from Celebrant Institute members about couples overseas struggling to get their NOIMs witnessed for various geographical reasons.

Here is your reminder that the email we all got from MLCS on 6 December 2022 when remote witnessing was extended included this useful sentence:

So if your couple lives 12 hours away from the closest Australian embassy, they should ring the embassy and ask to make an appointment to sign their NOIM remotely, just like we would do with couples who live here!

My priorities for 2023:
I've got two themes in my mind for 2023, one is about doing something old school and one is about something very new. I'm also working on a new service.

The first thing is that over the last five years, I've dropped the ball on the strategies that got me to where I am. Blogging, podcasting, videos, and writing for other websites like Yahoo7 and wedding magazines. I've dropped the ball on SEO and the traditional internet. Part of that was because I'd had success on Instagram and Facebook and good old word of mouth, and part was because I was tired. That's especially true for 2020, 2021, and 2022. So in 2023, I'm focusing on the 'bread and butter', the boring stuff, the hard work that has long-term positive effects. I'm using my indicator and telling the world who I am and what I stand for. I'll be writing about this more on the Celebrant Institute and in this email every month.

The second thing is that in our November 2022 meeting with the MLCS of the AGD in Canberra, I realised that I'd been brewing on something that I think is important and I hadn't really done anything about it.

I firmly believe that the Australian marriage law is one of the most progressive, liberal, and inclusive marriage laws in the world. And I also think that it's now over 60 years old and if it were an old rug we'd take it out the back with a high-pressure hose and give it a good clean.

In 2023 I'm pushing for a marriage law refresh. Get rid of the legislation that doesn't mean anything in a modern world, refresh legislation that is stale and old, and add legislation that creates a framework for meaningful and positive marriages in modern Australia. Got something to add to this, you know my email address.

Over the past few months, there has been rampant conversation about a social network/website that many of you probably don't even use: Twitter.

The main takeaway for me from this entire conversation is that we - the internet using public - has put too much of our personal property in other people's homes. Let me explain.

Your thoughts, your ideas, your photos, words and stories are your personal property. Not only are they your property that you don't want to be stolen or taken, they're also your greatest asset for selling yourself. We spend all this effort creating these assets then we go and put them in Mark Zuckerberg's house, or in Elon Musk's house, or in Google's house.

Put them in your house. Learn how to blog on your own website, learn how to create so you can be protected from the whims of billionaires and sustainably tell your story in your terms, in your way, in a way that benefits you and your family.

Monique Judge writes about this on The Verge where they've actually almost left all social media and they all write on theverge.com.

Where do you want to be personally, and professionally, at the end of 2023? And the same question but for 2033? What can you do in the next 5 minutes to contribute to that outcome? What can you do this week to contribute to that? There's the saying 'death by a thousand cuts', but let me coin a new phrase, 'life by a thousand small acts'.

Security - online and offline - is a complex idea and requires lots of thought. It's like protecting your own house or car, there are a number of simple things you can do to thwart common thieves but then if someone really wants to break into your house or car they can just smash a window.

Computer security isn't dissimilar, but the smashing of the window often comes in the form of weak passwords. And by weak we don't mean Password123. We mean guessable passwords, like family names and dates, or passwords that have been given to a service or website, and that service or website has been hacked. Like if you called me and told me your password, I write it down on a piece of paper in my office and then someone breaks into my office - they've got your password.

The quickest and easiest way to solve that problem is to use unique and complex passwords for each service and the easiest way to manage that operation is to use a password manager.

The simple idea is that for your email you use a password like FpjcnW7n.MGkHDx*RhRej3 but then for your internet banking you use 8R!T7VNeXQd4c77XcFnhAZ and for the Celebrant Institute you use a password like BL7@VhDLEDJVBaWAWJPwob. That way, if your bank gets hacked, and they probably will, the only thing the hackers can access is your bank. They can't then access your Facebook account because it uses a completely different and un-guessable password.

So step one is to get a password manager, then step two is to assemble a list of your most important websites, like banking, email etc and to change the password for each one and save that password in your password manager.

Which password manager should you use? Wired magazine has a good guide, but if you'd rather my personal opinion, use 1Password. Normally I'd also recommend LastPass but they got hacked themselves recently. Julien Voisin has written a great post reviewing all the different password managers which is well worth a read as well.

You should also maintain an off-site backup of all of your data, I use and highly recommend BackBlaze for this. They're $7 USD a month and the app just automatically backs everything up securely. So if your computer is compromised, at least there's a good backup of it in a different location than your house.

Every day I see a business in the news disclosing that they've had a data breach and every day I hope and pray it's not you or me.

Bonus point: if you're curious if your personal information is available for hackers to try and hack you with, enter your email address into https://haveibeenpwned.com/

I know that Barnes and Noble isn't an Australian brand, but I thought this article was really interesting - firstly because Ted Gioia is a magical writer - but secondly, because it's a story of a business reinventing itself when everyone thought it would die.

Isn't that a refreshing attitude in 2023? To not discount and undercut on pricing.

Another refreshing attitude, to value something you want other people to value.

If you're a sucker for introspective thought like I am, you'll like Stephan Argo's 40 questions to ask yourself every year. I think I even linked to this a year ago.

Earlier in on this email I noted that I was going back to my SEO and writing roots. Well that has married itself to an idea that I've been sitting on for a while: a new celebrant directory.

I don't think that there's ever going to be the perfect celebrant directory, lord knows I've been thinking about it for a decade, but I wanted to create something that held value, but didn't cost so much that you'd leave if it didn't perform. Something that you could link to if you weren't available, something you could be proud to be in, and something that didn't require extra staff or extra costs.

So with those goals in mind, I've been working on celebrant.xyz. The celebrants on there get to tell their own story, and ultimately point people back to their website. There's a room for comments so you can direct your couples to comment on your profile, and to click the little up-arrow which adds algorithmic love to your listing.

To be a part of it you simply need to be a Celebrant Institute paid member.

Check out https://celebrant.xyz/ and let me know what you think.

Rounding out this month's email is a topic that I've been meaning to bring up for a while but one of your colleagues brought it up for me recently, asking why they should even be a member if all they get is the blog.

What do you get if you're a paid member?

Firstly, you get to know that you are pre-paying, investing if you like, in a service that will support you when you need support. That might be today or tomorrow, but when you need help and support, when you're knee-deep in crap, we're here and we're supporting you. If you're expecting that kind of support from a free Facebook group, you shouldn't because you haven't transferred any of your own value (read: money) to that Facebook group.

Secondly, yes you do get the blog. 444 of the best celebrancy-related blog posts on the internet if I do say so myself. And we're adding new posts all the time, usually directly in response to your questions or issues. You can read the blog from oldest first like the bible or latest first like a newspaper.

Thirdly, you get unbridled access to two of Australia's leading celebrants - Sarah Aird and her mate, me, Josh Withers. If you don't think we hold any value, that's cool, but we know we do and we exercise it every day when we're in email conversations with you, phone calls with you, and advocating for you to the Commonwealth and state governments.

Fourth, you now get to be listed on Australia's best celebrant directory of 2025, celebrant.xyz. It might be the best directory earlier but I don't like making promises I can't deliver on.

Finally, you get access to the world's best celebrancy professional development. Not that kind that you have to do because the government said, but the kind that exists to actually help you develop and grow as a celebrant. Access it all here: celebrant.institute/professionaldevelopment

The Celebrant Institute is not a traditional kind of celebrant association, in that we're not even an association. We believe that you're smart enough to get your own insurance - we recommend Duck for Cover (and we don't benefit from that recommendation) - and we think that you're smart enough to form your own "celebuddies" community. Instead, Sarah and I focus on what we believe we do best. Speaking encouragement and support into your professional lives.

Want to be a member? celebrant.memberful.com/join - and if you don't want to be a paying member or can't afford it, I hope that these monthly emails to all of the celebrants in Australia are a welcome addition to your inbox.