Me.

Who am I? Why did I choose to become a Celebrant?

This is me, I am a friendly person who likes to smile and laugh. I like to add humour to the ceremonies I write, where it is appropriate.

I enjoy the outdoors, the arts (including photography), crafts and a good theatre visit. I am an understanding person and try to look at situations from other angles not just how I would see something.

When I see people doing things differently I take my hat off to them, we should all be breaking the mould, and being our own person.

I am based in West Yorkshire very close to the boarder of South Yorkshire. Originally from Penistone, some may of heard of Penistone show, held on the 2nd Saturday of September. When I was young I lived within a matter of minutes walk away, and it was easy enough to come and go as I wanted. My dad worked on farms from before I was born, and he had a small holding with his own animals, chickens, ducks, sheep, goats, pigs, we had a little shetland pony at one point, and possibly a calf when I was a baby. He grew his own vegetables, and I count my self so very lucky to have been able to eat home grown produce.

As I grew up I also spent an incredible amount of time with my Grandma and Grandad (maternal), they had a village shop and newsagents. From being able to walk I was in the shop helping, dust a shelf or filling it up. Over the years I learnt the trade from them and when my grandad had a heart attack I ran the business for him. 9 months later he retired, and I went to work for the newsagents that my grandad had sold his paper rounds to.

Over the years I met many different people, some stick in my mind from the conversations I had with them, find out about them, learning they played rugby when they were younger, had a shop themselves before retiring, or that they had lived in the village all their life and the shop which was now a newsagents, was once a different type of shop.

Over the years I have tried my hand at a variety of different jobs, and found I enjoy talking to people, and finding out about them and the history of their life. I didn't enjoy the side of retail that comes with the job where people get cross and angry and don't listen or accept reason.

In April 2013 my grandma on my dad's side died, my dad and myself went to the funeral which was in a church, then in September 2013 my grandma on my mum's side died, this was the first time I had lost anyone who I was close to. The funeral was at the crematorium, and was more about my grandma.

January 2018 and my grandad on my mum's side died, he had taught me everything I knew about the industry I worked in, and again his funeral was at the crematorium. I felt being at the crematorium was more family friendly than being in a church, it felt more about the person and less about anything else.

In February 2021 my dad died suddenly and unexpectedly, he didn't believe one bit in god or church, and wouldn't of wanted a minister to take his funeral it would of gone against everything he believed. The funeral director arranged for a humanist celebrant to take the service, as it happened I knew the celebrant, a fellow school mum. The service she put together was all about my dad, the person he was, the things he did, from school to work, our stories of him. About 3 months after she also lead a wedding celebration for another school mum and dad, it was a really nice celebration, were they made their own vows and promises, the type you see in films, and the sort of thing I would of loved to of had.

The seed had been planted. "Could I do this? Could I tell peoples stories of life and love?" I then went to another funeral in November 2022, it wasn't what you expect from a funeral. The funeral service was held in a village hall. Where the coffin was brought in, the service was lead by a celebrant, and the service was all about the person who had died, the person they were, their life, their accomplishments, their relationships with her family. It was this funeral that really made me think that being a celebrant was something I would like to do, to tell all the amazing stories of lives lived, and love stories of couples.

I looked around at the different training courses, and after 6 months of looking and thinking about it, I took the plunge and applied for a training course with Civil Ceremonies Ltd. I was then made redundant from the newsagents I was working at in December 2023 just before I started my Funeral Celebrant course, I wasn't worried as I knew it would mean I had the time to do the distance learning, I went on the residential part of the course in March and have been delivering funeral services since the start of April.

I knew I also wanted do the training for couples and naming ceremonies, I have been working on the distance learning part of this course since the summer and at the start of November I went for the residential part of the training, were I learnt about symbolic actions or elements you include in the ceremony for different reasons (I will cover this in another blog).

I am so happy I can now offer the "full works" or "full bag of mashings", which ever way you like to look at it, my grandma would have called it "hatchings, matchings and dispatchings". And I am looking forward to meeting you in the future, to chat about what I can offer.