According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, civil celebrants direct a whopping 74.9% of all marriage ceremonies! That’s right Fairies, almost three quarters of all weddings are officiated by a celebrant!
Since the groovy 70s, couples have increasingly turned from the traditional religious wedding ceremony to civil ceremonies conducted by celebrants. And majority of all wedding ceremonies since the 90s, have been officiated by a celebrant. But why?
“More of you are leaving the church, you tell me it’s because it’s too stuffy or not personal and so on,” explains Melbourne’s effervescent Sharon the Celebrant. And she’s right. The number of marriages performed by a religious celebrant (either a Priest, Sheikh, Rabbi or Minister) has almost halved from 40% to 25% in the past 10 years.
“I think it’s what couples are looking for these days – it’s about having fun and injecting your personalities into not just your reception, but also your ceremony”. And we couldn’t agree more.
Marriage ceremonies have become more and more popular because they give a couple the freedom to choose a variety of different elements: the celebrant, the phrasing of the ceremony, and the location of the ceremony, since a celebrant can oversee a marriage anywhere (well…almost anywhere).
“I had a priest come up to me after one of my ceremonies recently, where I may have said: ‘Our bride is so excited she almost peed her pants!’ He told me he had conducted over 600 weddings in his time, and never once would he have been allowed to say the words ‘peed in her pants’,” says Sharon!
So, what do you Fairies think of these crazy statistics?
Title Image: A Boho Wedding in Hawaii
Photographer: Rebecca Arthurs @rebeccaarthurs
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