Shock horror, despite my ability to stay in my home office for days, frightened of the very idea of going out and introducing myself to professional types. I am currently writing my first wedding script as a celebrant, and I’m struck by a quite pleasant feeling of deja vu.
Earlier this year I conducted my first funeral, for a lovely lady I’d had the privilege of meeting many years beforehand, and although I was nervous going to speak to the family, (because I just really really didn’t want to get it wrong for them), when I actually sat down to write the script, there was a wonderful moment of calm.
In that moment, I felt I was exactly where I was supposed to be. I was telling the story of someone’s life, arranging little details into something people could take in easily. Allowing them to relax into it, to ride the emotional rollercoaster of remembering how wonderful she was, and how funny, and sometimes ridiculous, and how much they would miss her, and how she was really actually gone.
Now I’m putting together someone’s love story. Finding the narrative that led them from first contact, to first date, to saying ‘I do’, and where they hope to go together from here. I’m sharing their warmth, and hopefully giving everyone in the room the opportunity to share it too, to show them how loved they are, to root for them and their future together.
And once again, I feel as though I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be.
You know, I think there’s something slightly magical about celebrancy. And beyond all expectation I might have accidentally trained myself in it’s gentle form of magic.
There’s the reporting skills I’m bringing in from a decade as a journalist, sitting down with people and gathering all the facts, but also asking the curious questions, getting the story straight in my head.
Then there’s the dramatic skills, the sense of a room being drawn into a story, warmed by a story, holding their breath and exhaling in relief when it takes them where they’d hoped it might.
I know I’m just starting out. I know I still have a lot to learn, and I know every grieving family, every couple, will want and need something different, something unique to them, and their loved ones and their important day, but I think, just maybe, I might actually have the skills they need. I might be one less thing for them to worry about.
That’s not a bad start.
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