Rebels' Guide

Rob, Courtney, and I hung out this week to dream big about their wedding and Courtney said something that really resonated with Britt and I. She wants their wedding to feel like Christmas. Don’t get confused now, she doesn’t want tinsel over the arbour and all the wedding presents under a green plastic tree. She wants the wedding to feel like Christmas. Remember the anticipation you would have for Christmas day? The expectation of something amazing, not just in a gift, but in the family gathering, in the sharing a meal, and maybe finishing a drink. The excitement you would have all December as the 25th loomed closer. The idea that there was a foundation of tradition, but we really live in this moment and celebrate the family and friends coming together. I don’t ever remember a Christmas going “right”, but they were always enjoyable. I loved travelling to family’s homes for Christmas day and just loving and being loved. I think that your wedding should...

The Daily Mail newspaper asked me to think back over the past year of weddings and name the top ten things that could go wrong at your wedding. The article is live here but I thought I’d share my answers in verbose here for my bloggies! Mum The bride’s natural predator is their mother. If you’re a mum reading this, particularly if you’re mine, please forgive us, but the numbers are heavily against you. Nine out of ten mothers (an unverified statistic) believe that they, and they only, know how their children should celebrate their marriage. They’ve planned the horse-drawn carriage and the perfect cake and their children absolutely hate it all. The truth is, mums, is that your children aren’t having “a wedding” or any old wedding or even your wedding. They are celebrating their marriage which is a once in a lifetime marriage and it’s celebration will be wholly unique. Now that we’ve said that, are you still cool to cover the bar tab? Rain You can’t stop the rain, but the rain won’...

Last week Steph and Drew were #marriedbyjosh at Sandgate, and I was lucky enough to be their celebrant! The man taking photos on the day calls himself Ben Clark , well at least that’s what he told the Daily Mail when they covered this story about this photo. Well he took elements of the photo, then he no doubt spent countless hours training sharks to fly so he could photoshop them into this pic. Love your work Ben! And ten points to Drew and Steph for having a ball on day one of marriage, here’s to many many many more! And if you want to find Ben to get him to photoshop sharks into all of your photos, go to benclarkphotography.com.au So It's not every day that I get asked to "Sharknado" a couple's wedding ! But seeing as Steph & Drew are fully into… Posted by Ben Clark Photography on  Tuesday, October 20, 2015 Come to think of it, my post-wedding selfie is strangely on-point. Drew & Steph #marriedbyjosh!! #brisbanecelebrant #brisban...

Heidi Thompson, host of one of my favourite business podcasts, the  Evolve Your Wedding Business podcast , invited me onto her show to talk about, well talk about a lot of things, here’s her rundown that she composed: How Josh has set himself apart as a celebrant. Why Josh thinks we need to focus more on the marriage itself. The importance of creating wedding ceremonies that reflect the couple and aren’t just copying existing ceremonies. What wedding professionals can do to avoid being sexist. How to let your personality shine through in your business (and why that matters). Why you should stop referring to your couples as “brides”. How taking a stance can help couples figure out if they want to work with you. How pop culture feeds into the idea of a wedding being the day you dreamed of and why we need to highlight the fact that this isn’t just a performance & a party. What to do if you want to refocus the wedding day on the marriage itself. How we have built popupwed.co in ...

You might have noticed the same thing I’ve noticed lately while scrolling around Facebook. Or maybe you haven’t because you’re not friends with as many wedding photographers or videographers as I am. Everyone in the wedding industry is pushing for unplugged weddings. Let me share a few samples Why? And here’s why all of us in the wedding industry keep on banging on about unplugged weddings. I saw it three times this weekend just gone, and I’ll see it again this weekend: guests, family members, mums, dads, friends, siblings, arrive to your wedding and they’re so focused on filming or Snapchatting or photographing your ceremony that they miss it. They miss the whole ceremony. The best part of the day. That magical moment where you exchange vows and become a married couple, your Dad misses it because he was trying to get the right shot. Not to mention that you’ve paid a photographer a...

I’m a very lucky boy, I’m the first marriage celebrant in Australia to be awarded a WIPA Three Diamond award! What’s WIPA ? It’s the “ Wedding Industry Professionals of Australia ” awards ran by the very excellent WEOA! What’s WEOA? WEOA stands for “ Weddings and Events of Australia ” and it’s an industry body that represents the professional end of the wedding industry. There are three diamond award levels, one diamond, two diamond, and three diamond. It’s a little bit like the chef hat awards . Three is the best! My favourite thing about the WIPA awards is that there is room for everyone at the top. If you’ve got a 1st, 2nd, 3rd, there’s no room for two number ones, but I firmly believe that the whole wedding industry should be at the three diamond level, plus there is room for all of us up there! I could ramble on for a few hours about what this all means to me but I’ll just copy and paste two ...

In Australia there’s always been the three stock standard options when it comes to changing your name after you’re married . Both parties could keep their birth surnames; one party could take the other’s surname, so that’s bride taking the groom’s last name, or the groom taking the bride’s last name; or you could both get some hyphen action going on. But there’s a fourth option that no-one really talks about. Anonymous in the New York Times was talking about how they took this option after their recent marriage ceremony, and the family was riotous. My friend Millyjane shot, and other friend, Penny, married, a couple that also took this route last year , paying homage to David Lee Roth’s vessel of rock, Van Halen . Get a new last name What is this crazy idea that I’m proposing? Both you and your partner could change your last name to something totally new! So instead of one of you taking the other’s last name, you can both mak...

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I often worry that the world would look to me as some kind of super-husband. It’s not that unfair to, you might expect that the guy that talks about it all week and is always encouraging others to get married, should be some kind of marriage expert. I’m not, I can post you towards some friends of mine like Anabel or Connie , they know what’s what. And although I’m not the alpha-husband, I do think I’m really good at this one thing, and it’s something I think every single human in a relationship should become good at: celebrating my marriage. If perfecting marriage was the end-goal we could follow all the rules, play the right games, and hey-presto, we’d do it. Then what? Instead, your marriage is a life-long adventure, a forward-facing adventure where you make one, and only one, simple commitment: to tackle life together with this other human for the rest of your days. That’s something worth celebrating every day. Not once a year on that ...

I was recently a guest on a new Wednesday night Queensland wedding talk show, hosted by Ellyse Sainty on Periscope. More info at wedvid.com.au . The good news for you is that you can watch some of the segments below! Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

You’re so lucky to be in the middle of such a personal and professional industry, the wedding industry. Whether you’re a bride or groom, an interested onlooker, or one of the hard working vendors I’m lucky to rub shoulders with each day, you know how personal, intimate, meaningful and real this is. Gone are the days of off-the-shelf weddings. Because today we don’t just have a “wedding”. Today, we’re celebrating marriages! And every single marriage is different, unique, special, and real. The truth is that because of the intimate nature of this industry that I’m not everyone’s celebrant and the same story applies to every other vendor in the wedding industry. Some people don’t mesh with me and some do. It’s not about being good or bad, it’s about a personal connection. So, on that note, I’ve got a favour to ask: would you review me? Celebrant reviews go such a long way to let someone else know if I’m the...

My friend Steve Molk makes a really fun podcast called ‘ Humans of Twitter ‘ where he interviews humans from the social network, where you can follow me @joshuawithers , him at @molkstvtalk and the podcast @humansofthis . Listen to me spill my guts on who I am, where I’m from and why I’m a celebrant at http://omnyapp.com/shows/humans-of-twitter/0-16-joshuawithers

Britt’s driving the car right now, I’m in the passenger seat, and we just tried to merge back onto the highway after a quick toilet stop. Normally a road trip wouldn’t make its way onto the blog, but this merge resulted in a small dosage of road rage and now I’m thinking about weddings. As we pulled out of the highway service centre and accelerated up to 100km/hr so we could merge onto the highway a lovely Hyundai driver realised she didn’t want to sit behind our Mitsubishi, so she angrily accelerated into our path, gave us the finger whilst yelling something, and sped onward. As we deliberated about what could have been going through her mind I just think she just doesn’t know the rules of merging. Most Queenslanders don’t, we’re pretty terrible drivers like that 😁 This is a problem I run into at weddings every week. The couple have decided that their marriage celebration is going to be loose, fun, non-traditional, and then a pare...