Welcome to the leap year February 2024 Celebrant Institute mail out, the month where you get one extra day (and happy second wedding anniversary to Dilhari of Kiss Me You Fool who I married in 2016 on the 29th of February).
This month is an important month, with updates on the updating of the marriage legislation, how email deliverability is going to sink this month, a new email you can subscribe to from me/Josh, and of course the results of the 2024 celebrant price survey. I remember hearing Dally Messenger years ago say that "you can't make a living as a celebrant" but the good news is that today, you can.
Before we get to that though, I'll mention it again at the end of the letter but on March 1 we're increasing our membership fee for the first time in five years.
I've always charged for my services according to what I believe I can be held accountable for, so when we launched the Celebrant Institute five years ago Sarah and I adopted the same principle. Did we think we can offer at a bare minimum $10 a month value to each of you? Yes we did. Now we think we can offer at least $12 a month value.
– Josh and Sarah
💰How much is everyone charging?
Last month I asked you to complete a survey about how much you charged so we could get a good idea of how much celebrants in Australia were charging. I'll make the whole dataset and a deep analysis available to paid members on the Celebrant Institute website, but here's the summary:
The survey of Australian marriage celebrants, with a 2.87% response rate from 10,339 authorised celebrants, reveals key insights:
- 47% of celebrants plan to raise their fees due to increasing living costs and inflation, even though most celebrants see themselves as having slightly above average prices compared to the market average.
- 12% of the population rely on celebrancy as their main income.
- The average national price for a legals-only ceremony is $552.
- For a regular celebrant fee our prices range from $280 to $2,500, with a new national average celebrant fee of $1,029.
- The most expensive celebrant in Australia is $5,000.
- Celebrants that have a goal to perform more weddings each year correlate with those celebrants having higher fees.
- Almost all celebrants believe they provide a high self-rated level of service quality, but that quality is not strongly linked to their pricing.
Read the whole analysis on the Celebrant Institute website now.
🐇 Create a rabbit hole for your future clients to fall down
We've all heard of the internet or Youtube rabbit hole that you can fall down, but why not create one of your own, and on your own website? This month I wrote an article about creating a content funnel for your future clients to fall down and fall in love with you by and they'll just book you regardless of the fact you've just increased your price.
⚖️ Our ongoing efforts to update and refresh the marriage act
There seems to be three schools of camp on the efforts and campaign to refresh and modernise the Australian Marriage Act of 1961. One camp which is probably you consider you read this letter, and you'd like to see it modernised to some extent, another camp doesn't care or know about it, and the third camp is boldly and actively protecting the existing law.
So if you're in camp one, read our submission to the senate inquiry, and the AGD response (click the PDF icon), and finally know that our further suggestion on updating the marriage act is currently rather firmly rejected by eight of the 18 celebrant associations and networks, so I feel like that's a signal that we're poking in the right holes.
At time of publishing the inquiry is due to report any minute today, probably 15 seconds after I click send on this.
As there is news you'll hear it from us first.
🎤 A new daily email for celebrants
If you've read this far in the monthly Celebrant Institute Mailout then you might be the kind of person who would like to receive a daily drop of celebrant encouragement from me, if so, check out and subscribe to Aisle Authority, it launches today and I'm really proud of it!
📧 This month everything changes with email
This month's changes to email systems have been on the cards for months, but as of today it's a reality: from today, Feb 1, it's harder for an email you send to be received by your clients.
Why?
DNS, SPF, DMARC, and DKIM.
As Ange noticed this last month the email spammers and scammers were working double time, firstly to try and make a dollar before February, and secondly to "warm up" scam and spam email addresses before February. Hopefully those will reduce as the year goes on. The most important thing you can do as an email receiver however is to mark spam and spam (or junk) so the email system knows what is junk, then also to check your junk mail folder and mark email in there that is not junk, as not junk. You've got to tell the computers what to do.
Why do these matter?
If you send me an email and you don't have a proper SPF, DKIM, and DMARC record in your DNS settings then my mail provider, Fastmail, will just reject your email or at best, put it in the spam folder.
How should you respond?
There's never been a better time to get your own domain name - like iamareallycoolcelebrant.com.au - if you don't already I recommend Aussie company, VentraIP, then to use a really good email host like Melbourne's Fastmail to host your actual email - and follow all their setup guides - and then if you do bulk emailing like we do, call it email marketing or email letters to all clients, I recommend Buttondown.
And if that's too much, get professional help, because this is going to be costing you money in enquiry replies not being received etc.
📝 New interpreters form
There's a new form for you to use when you have an interpreter. The old form is dead, long live the new form!
📻 The Celebrant Talk Show
There are four new episodes of the Celebrant Talk Show for you to enjoy this month, find your links to listen in your favourite podcast app at celebrant.fm.
📆 Next month's letter: Advertising and directories
Which wedding directories are worth advertising in, what kind of return do you get for the investment made? If you have data or anecdote you'd like to submit to this article, tap that reply button and let us know.
🏷️ Thank you + Price increase
Thank you for being a subscriber, we sincerely hope our monthly mail out is a blessing to you. We write this email and deliver it for free to all celebrants Australia wide, financial members of the Celebrant Institute support this monthly letter, our free podcast, plus they get full website access to all articles behind the paywall, and they get 24/7 support via celebrant.institute/ask.
The price is going up $2 a month
Since we launched five years ago our monthly memberships have been $10 a month or $110 a year. From March 1 those fees increase to $12 a month and $130 a year. That's one month for you to join or convert to an annual membership and save $20 this year.
You are enjoying another Celebrant Institute production and you're receiving this email because you're a celebrant. If you aren't a celebrant then I don't know how you ended up here. If you've been forwarded this update and you'd like to subscribe for free, you can do that here.