In a social culture which shares ‘everything’ it can seem, for a celebrant, like their hands are tied if they can’t post about every single ceremony. Let us be mindful, though, that celebrancy is not a sport. We’re not in competition with each other about who has the most ceremonies, or who has the most high-profile clients, and so on.
Although there are celebrants who won’t take on couples if they can’t share photos of their ceremony, I’m not one of them. How about you? Maybe it’s because I’ve been a celebrant since the mid 1990s, long before social media ruled our lives, but I’m not motivated by bragging rights. Rather, my guiding light is to create ceremonies of meaning and purpose for my clients. If no one ever sees images or posts about them, that’s ok. At no level should it detract from my work. Or yours.
In celebrant life, it’s such a joy to share photos from our ceremonies whether it’s of wedding couples, the venue, décor, cake, floristry, landscape/seascape or with other ceremonies, such as words of reflection about a moving funeral.
What isn’t talked about so much, or shared, in modern celebrancy is the role of confidentiality. This goes way beyond any GDPR requirements, which are hopefully a given and a crucial part of your contract and celebrant practice, but about respecting that not every person we work with is comfortable about being used to document our working life.
All my ceremony contracts have an opt-in section for those couples who are happy for me to share photos of their ceremony.
More often than not, though, there are couples who, for whatever reason, do not want any aspect/mention of their day broadcast: their names, images, venue and so on. Whether this request is because of their professional or celebrity status or they’re private, introverted people who don’t want their images on the internet, this is their right: it’s their ceremony, their identity, their life. It shouldn’t be a dent to our ego when this has been requested.
As a funeral celebrant, although I readily share snippets from my working life about which venue I’ve worked at or the life someone lived, names and other identifying features are kept out of my social media posts. I also don’t share cover photos of the Order of Service, either. I feel strongly about not sharing information about child funerals (with or without names/images). The last thing any grieving parent needs is a celebrant going on about ‘how hard it was to do their funeral’. How hard it was? Of course it was hard. Compare that to your child dying though?
I absolutely LOVE it when couples generously share their wedding album with me and give me free rein to use any of the pics on my website or socials, and am grateful for this. Of course I am. It is a joy to share these. I know celebrants who never post pics of their ceremonies. How refreshing in our show all/tell all culture!
Cumbria Celebrant Veronika Robinson officiating Nicky and Karen’s elopement ceremony. Image by Kathryn White.
I’ve never been the sort of celebrant who insists on taking a selfie with each couple to post on social media. I’m not saying a celebrant shouldn’t ask for one but like anything else it pays to be mindful of the people we are working with and not assume that they’re ok with it. Maybe they don’t know how to say ‘no’ to your selfie request. Perhaps they feel they ‘owe’ you something since you just officiated their ceremony?
Are you a confidential celebrant? Can you officiate ceremonies without mentioning any aspect of it on your social media?
When celebrants say “Your day your way” that should mean iron-clad confidentiality, too.
Veronika Robinson is a confidential Heart-led Celebrant in Cumbria. Veronika and her husband Paul are co-tutors at Heart-led Celebrants Celebrant Training in Cumbria. Back issues of The Celebrant magazine are available here.
