Before the party starts, someone has to bring the love story to life. Enter the wedding celebrant – the voice behind the vows and the calm in the chaos. Join Western Australia Wedding & Bride’s Jessica Muller as she sits down with Ceremonies by Jess’ owner, Jess Carter, a hopeless romantic who has been hitching loved up legends since 2019.
“Becoming a marriage celebrant was actually my dad’s idea,” Jess recounts. While working in a demanding government job that brought her little joy, her dad completely out of the blue suggested she should start a side hustle as a marriage celebrant. “He said this would fill my love cup and he knew how happy it would make me,” she recalls. “It honestly sounded too good to be true, and I was a bit annoyed I hadn’t thought of it myself a decade earlier, but before I knew it my dad had signed me up to do the Cert IV in Celebrancy as my Christmas present and I was on my way to finding what would become my dream job.”
Now her full-time gig, Jess still pinches herself every day that she is lucky enough to do it for a living, witnessing love in all its forms from the best seat in the house. “Being able to celebrate love and help couples create magical little moments they can treasure for a lifetime is beyond rewarding,” she emphasises. “I never take it for granted that I get to bear witness to all that is good about what it means to be human.”
In Good Hands
“I’m a big believer that the main thing people remember from a wedding is the way they were made to feel and, in a nutshell, this is what being a celebrant is all about,” Jess says. Your celebrant sets the tone for the whole day with the energy they bring, the way they interact with your guests and your vendors, and the way they carry themselves when they are on the mic. “They will either leave your guests buzzing about how much they loved the ceremony, or leave them constantly looking at their watch, wondering when it will be over so they can get to the bar,” Jess explains. “I often have couples tell me that while they thought the reception would be the ‘fun bit’, their favourite part of the whole day was actually the ceremony.”
Jess is known for the calming presence that she brings to the big day – stemming from her being a relaxed, unflappable kind of person who doesn’t sweat the small stuff. “By the time the big day rolls around, I am not just the celebrant you hired to marry you, I’m like an old friend you’re excited to see because you know I’ve got your back and am so emotionally invested in you having the wedding of your dreams,” she says.
Behind The Scenes
“I think there is a bit of a misconception that a celebrant just turns up on the big day, does thirty minutes of work and that’s it. This couldn’t be further from the truth,” Jess shares. She spends ten to twenty hours on average working on each wedding to create the perfect ceremony and reception for her couples. “This includes a first date style meeting to see if I am the right fit for their big day, a long planning meeting over a coffee or hot choccy where we also go through all the legal paperwork, hours spent writing and crafting their dream ceremony from scratch, arriving an hour before the ceremony to set up and get the good vibes started early, delivering the ceremony and then submission of all the legal paperwork so it’s all official,” she details. “Definitely not just a rock up on the day king of thing, being a celebrant.”
“There’s a lot of work that goes into crafting all the big day goodness, but I love every minute of it,” Jess reassures. While the wedding season is always a crazy busy time, being a Type A girlie means that Jess loves to be organised so that her couples get the very best version of her and she’s able to provide the best possible support. “I often refer to myself as the duck in the famous analogy,” Jess says. “I always appear calm and composed on the surface, but underneath the water my legs are paddling furiously and I am so busy, all the time.”
Make It Yours
“The most important thing to me when crafting a ceremony is that the couple feels like it was a true reflection of them and it captured the vibe and tone they wanted to create,” Jess says. “No two relationships are the same, so no two ceremonies should be the same. I want to empower my couples to make decisions they will really love, not ones you only make because you think you’re supposed to.”
Jess likes to ask her couples if they have been to many weddings, and if they have seen something they absolutely loved or something they wouldn’t want for their own wedding day. “Sometimes we don’t know what we want, but we often know what we definitely don’t want, and that can be a fantastic place to start,” she explains. From there, she can get a sense of what kind of experience they want to create, and she can start making suggestions on the elements that can be personalised. “We want the finished ceremony to be all killer, no filler,” she attests. “A ceremony that has been crafted so intentionally to celebrate you and all that you hold dear, your love, your family and your community, will hit you right in the feels. It’s a kind of magic that’s almost too hard to articulate.”
The Perfect Fit
“Finding your perfect celebrant is kind of like finding the person you want to marry – there are lots of options out there and you need to go on a few dates to find ‘the one’,” Jess asserts. “Anyone can make themselves look a certain type of way online, so it’s important to organise a chat to see if the vibes are right before you take the plunge and make things official,” she advises. “Pay attention to the way you feel after you interact with them and go with your gut.” When looking for a celebrant, Jess encourages couples to find one that you love to be around and who will go above and beyond to ensure everything goes beautifully. “Please don’t settle for just anyone,” she says. “If you prioritise how you want you and your loved ones to feel, you’re setting yourself up for big day success!”
Another hot tip: book your celebrant early. “If you find your dream celebrant, book them in as soon as you have confirmed your date and venue as it would break your heart (and theirs) to hear that someone has beaten you to it and snapped them up,” Jess says.
“At the end of the day, the most important advice I give to all my couples is that your wedding day is not a performance,” Jess shares. “What feels good will look good (photographers will agree) and it’s my job to look after them so they can let it all soak in and be present in every moment of joy coming their way.”
Photography by Kitty Loves Love Photography.