Rebels' Guide

On a warm Spring day in Brisbane, Brenton and Jessica celebrated the mystery of love, in particular their’s, at the Broadway Chapel in Woolloongabba. The stand out from the ceremony was that look that you see in some couple’s eyes, it’s almost a spiritual moment when you see it. The ceremony was an unplugged ceremony because Brenton and Jess wanted everyone to engage in the ceremony, not to document it! Brenton just emailed me today, prompting me to write this blog post, and giving me some lovely feedback. We wanted to say thank you very much for delivering a fantastic ceremony. You provided the direction and assistance when we needed it and followed through with a wonderful celebration of our love. Brenton and Jess chose a few readings that spoke to their relationship and reflected their personalities The Apache Wedding Prayer Now you will feel no rain, for each of you will be shelter to the other. Now you will feel no cold, for each of you...

A bride and groom sat down with me recently with a major problem. The last wedding they went to was really embarrassing for the grandfather of that wedding’s bride as he fell asleep in the middle of the ceremony. They wanted to desperately make sure that no-one fell asleep in the ceremony we were creating. Below is what I told them, and hopefully, it can help you. How to stop people falling asleep mid-wedding Do meaningful, valuable, things in your wedding ceremony. People lose interest in TV shows, books, ceremonies, staff meetings, when they do not value the contribution being made in front of them. A practical example of this is a sand ceremony. Totes sorry if you love sand ceremonies but I just don’t know what they mean, if you find meaning in them then let’s do one! Here’s some other ceremony ideas. Involve the people witnessing the ceremony in a greater way than purely witnessing the ceremony. If your sole job is to stand still and watch something, you...

It’s such an awesome honour to be involved in weddings that are just a little bit different, but in a strange twist of fate, often turn out more appropriate than any other wedding event you could imagine. That’s what happened on the 14th day of the fourth month in 2014, when Carolyn and John eloped with a few friends to Surfers Paradise. Well, we did have a plan to celebrate on Miami Beach, however weather moved us into the Crowne Plaza’s wedding chapel. The amazingly talented photographer Sandra Moffatt was also on hand to capture the event, and Sandra and I were lucky wnough to receive this warm and fuzzy from the couple afterward: I just wanted to send you both a huge thankyou! We are both so grateful and happy to have had the most awesome celebrant ever & the most talented photographer ever at our ceremony. Being the quiet nervous introverts that we are (we realised later that we were so nervous about the public speaking that we had our rings on the ...

I’m a massive believer in making business as easy as possible. Especially wedding business. After all, you’ve already fallen in love, that’s the hardest thing to do in your whole life, then you’ve decided to commit to that for life, far be it from me to inhibit the way you hire me to be your awesome celebrant. So on that note, and it’s far too long coming, I’m now accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment for my services as a celebrant! I did a little bit of research and could only find a Melbourne based wedding photographer, and an online jeweler accepting Bitcoin as payment, so if you hear of more, please contact me or comment on this article and I’ll add them to the list! Australian wedding suppliers accepting Bitcoin Me! Josh Withers, Celebrant: marriedbyjosh.com Do Amore, an ethical ring online store: www.doamore.com Simon Woodcock, a Melbourne wedding photographer: www.weddingsnapper.com.au

Is social media a blessing or a curse at a wedding? The need to connect and share online is increasingly encroaching on intimate and private wedding days. Guest blogger, Kristi Charter, writes for marriedbyjosh.com: As we become more inclined to connect online, our tendency to share and document details from our lives online has inevitably increased. So too we find ourselves too busy trying to capture the perfect shot that we lose touch with being present in the moment, or so is the fear of many brides. While some brides are embracing social media encouraging their guests to snap their experiences of their big day, others are asking their guests politely to switch off. The new trend for holding ‘unplugged weddings’ is certainly rising and while you might think this is a ‘bridezilla’ over-controlling type request the arguments these brides and their photographers present are quite compelling. Firstly let’s look at it this from the bride’s point of view. Instead of seeing smiling faces a...

Britt, my wife, is a staunch advocate for uncorny everything. She checks everything I post on social media and on this blog just to make sure something corny doesn’t slip through. So it’s in her uncorny fashion that she emailed me this list of awesome quotes about love that she felt were really uncorny. And she said I should blog them for everyone else. So here they are. Love you baby![hr] “And think not that you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.” -Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” -Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows(and yes, Matthew 6:21, too) “I love your feet because they have wandered over the earth and through the wind and water until they brought you to me.” -Pablo Neruda “I love you. You annoy me more than I ever thought possible, but… I want to spend every irritating minute with you.” -Scrubs “We need a w...

On a stunning Summer afternoon in Brisbane, Nick and Jen’s closest gathered together at the Reserve Restaurant in Milton and we celebrated in a most special and unique way. Nick and Ken’s vows, the ceremony we planned, the readings, heck, the location looking over the Brisbane River, and the degustation menu that followed, all made for the most memorable afternoon and it was such a profound honour to oversee the event. Below are a few thoughts from Nick and Jen, plus a few literary highlights from the wedding. The pictures below were snapped by the talented Kieran from Poison Apple Studios. We are just coming back to reality after a wonderful honeymoon in Tasmania. I saw your post on Facebook asking what people would change about their wedding – I can honestly say that my answer to that question would be, not a single thing. It was a perfect, relaxed, fun, beautiful day from start to finish. We were so lucky to have great, genuine people like you helping us...

For the record, I think the word celebrancy is weird, odd, and not quite descriptive of what I do. Even in my word processor it comes up with a red dashed line beneath it signalling that something is wrong with it. However, celebrancy is the word someone decided to use to describe the act of being a celebrant. And I think celebrancy is an art, though behind the art there is some science. In this article I wanted to describe the science of celebrancy, what it actually is that a celebrant does. It’s important because a lot of people pay a lot of money for some guy or gal to come and stand in front of them at a wedding, and when you pay money for things it’s worth knowing what you’re paying for. A celebrant at a wedding is like a conductor for an orchestra. He’s not the greatest person there, nor the most prominent, or the most talented, yet he holds everything together. He decides when to start and when to finish. When the ceremony will go upbeat or down. If it’s a happy or a not-so...

I love me some good number crunching, it appeals to my inner-nerd. So when Zoe Burker from hitched.com.au sent over the results of their latest wedding survey, I peeled over the numbers like a kid in a candy store. Check out the infographic and press release below and comment with your thoughts, in the comments section of course! The latest survey findings from Australia’s fastest growing wedding planning website – hitched.com.au – have revealed that the average cost of a wedding has risen by more than a quarter in the past year. The survey, which focused on Australian newlyweds who’d got hitched in 2013, found that the average spend on a wedding has increased from $23,124 in the previous year to $29,645 in 2013. Couples marrying in 2013 added an extra $6520 to their budget, a rise of 28%. An average of $22,182.48 was spent on the big day itself, with $7,462.68 being spent on the honeymoon, working out as a 75/25 split. This is a contrast to the previous year, when couples spent $18,9...

A bunch of likeminded wedding industry people have gotten together on the idea of pop-up weddings, and our second event is a Star Wars Day themed pop-up wedding. This idea sparked a conversation with some of the producers at Seven Sunrise and it all ended up with me talking to Kochie and Mel live on Sunrise on Thursday, April 3, at 8:20am Sydney time. Behind me is Josh Kelly from Jessie Dains photography as Chewbacca, my stunning wife as Darth Vader, Yoda and R2-D2 in toy form, Luke Skywalker being played by Michael Parante and Shannon Riley dressing up as our Princess Leia as we did the cross from Lightspace . Massive thanks to Sunrise for promoting the Pop-Up Wedding . You can find out more about the upcoming pop-up weddings around the country at popupwed.co . Here’s the Youtube clip of me staring nervously down a camera barrell. Post by The Pop-Up Wedding . And in case you missed last year’s Channel Nine Today show appearance: