Planning your ceremony
Initial chat
Confirm the booking
Confirm the booking
We’ll arrange a time to chat, ideally in person if you’re local to Bristol or on Zoom or similar, so we can discuss your thoughts and ideas. I can get a bit of background on your plans, and you’ll have time to ask me all the questions you more than likely have about wedding planning . In some ways it’s a little like a blind date or a job interview, for you to see if we’re on the same wavelength and decide if I could be the right wedding celebrant for you
Confirm the booking
Confirm the booking
Confirm the booking
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If you’d like to go ahead I’ll send you a contract and ask for a £275 booking fee in order to secure the wedding date. Rest assured I will only be booking one wedding a day. I'll send you a brief summary of any thoughts and ideas from our first wedding planning meeting, which might help shape the potential format of the ceremony. Quite often at this stage I'll set us up with a WhatsApp group if that works for you, as it's a great way to keep in touch and bounce around ideas.
Plan
Create
Create
About three months before the big day, we will get into the really good stuff and start to plan the ceremony in more detail. We’ll meet again to compare notes and ideas, talk about family members or friends you might like to play an active part in the wedding ceremony. If you're local to Bristol we can meet in person, or online via WhatsApp or similar. We will talk about elements you’d like to include, and I can offer advice and guidance on readings, poems, vows and any traditional rituals such as hand-fasting or ring blessing ceremonies you might like to include. I’ll leave you with a list of topics for you both to consider, to help me understand more about you as a couple, flesh things out and enable me to tell your story.
Create
Create
Create
Ideally we'll meet again individually to chat through the topics , which really helps provide me with a richer picture of you and your life together. This is when I really get to know you both better, and the part every wedding celebrant loves. Then, pooling your thoughts and my experience I will start to write your wedding ceremony. I’ll plan a running order, combining all the elements you will have decided upon. If you’d like to write your own vows I can offer guidance and suggestions, to help them complement one another and the ceremony. You will receive the initial draft at least six weeks before your big day, and we can fine tune things from there. It’s very easy to change or rearrange things and we can make as many revisions as you like until you have your ideal ceremony.
A ceremony that was perfect for us...
Review from Ruth and James, St George's, Bristol
At first, we were a bit disappointed when we realized our wedding venue couldn’t accommodate the legal part of the ceremony—but it turned out to be a complete blessing in disguise, because it led us to find John.
Over the past year, John met with us countless times to help craft a ceremony that was perfect for us. It felt so personal and intentional. We began with a ring-warming led by my 10-year-old sisters, and it culminated in a beautiful handfasting. Many of our guests commented on how wonderful and unique the ceremony was, full of little quirks that made it feel unmistakably us.
Beyond leading a beautiful ceremony, John helped take so much of the stress out of wedding planning. He guided us through decisions along the way, and even took care of thoughtful details—like liaising directly with both our mums about how the handfasting would work, since we’d asked them to be involved.
You can really tell that John is in this work for the pure love of bringing people together. We’re so grateful to him and couldn’t recommend him highly enough.