More women celebrants sign up after the same-sex vote
Trainee says she wants everyone ‘to feel the love’
FEMALE wedding celebrants have enjoyed a surge in demand for their services following the same-sex marriage referendum nearly two years ago.
More women are now signing up to meet the demand for celebrants with training courses heavily oversubscribed, according to the Irish Institute of Celebrants.
One fully-booked course this week has 20 female students, some of whom already have wedding bookings even though they won’t qualify until June.
The CSO recorded 91 samesex marriages last year and that number is expected to rise this year.
Those marriages included the wedding of 2FM DJ Jenny Greene to her partner Kelly Keogh at Wineport Lodge in Co. Westmeath last June.
Secular weddings have become popular with older couples and those who don’t want a church wedding.
One woman delighted to take advantage of the growing interest in humanist weddings is Dubliner Joan Farrell.
‘I have a deep faith, it has got me though many things,’ Ms Farrell said. ‘I was married in a church in Artane, it was very traditional – the complete Gone With The Wind meringue dress.
‘I just feel this is something very romantic, I’m an incurable romantic. I believe in true love and I love weddings.’
As an air-hostess with Aer Lingus for 38 years, Ms Farrell said she loved working with people so much that she was reluctant to give up that interaction after her retirement.
A friend suggested celebrant training, but when she inquired last year she was told there was a one-year waiting list.
Now taking the ten-week training course, she said: ‘It’s a lovely group, very open. Everyone has a different style of delivering the ceremonies.
‘Everyone is different, you cannot bring your own beliefs into this, the ceremony is about the couple.’
A wedding celebrant usually meets with a couple a number of times before a ceremony, however with a rise in couples flying in from outside Ireland, sometimes the meetings take place via online video. Ms Farrell said: ‘It’s important to be very organised. We’ve had training with a voice-coach too. There are so many things priests do in a church wedding that you don’t realise.
‘I’d have more respect and understanding for the work they do now. It’s a huge thing to bring the congregation with you so everyone feels the love in the room.’
Now divorced, she has two adult daughters, and joked: ‘I couldn’t do their weddings, I would not be able. It would be too emotional.’
The Irish Institute of Celebrants say they receive 1,500 applications annually for their 100 training places, according to Professor Lorraine Mancey O’Brien, head of the college and a lecturer at UCD.
She said: ‘It’s an industry that speaks to women, we would have about a 60:40 ratio in the class, so in a group of 20 you have 14 women or more.
‘It’s an industry that is empathetic, and we have wonderfully emphatic men taking the courses but women seem to gravitate towards it more.’
Celebrants typically charge a set fee for a wedding, which is usually about €450.
Dr Mancey O’Brien said that tolerance and having an open mind are very important in a celebrant, especially in regard to same-sex marriages.
She said: ‘The referendum has redefined what marriage means. We all had a chance to sit down and think about marriage.’
‘I just feel this is very romantic’ ‘This industry speaks to women’