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hope you are all keeping well through this time of crisis, this unreal time when we are apart but together. I myself am planning to blog on through. This is partly because writing has always been my way to keep myself sane. But it’s also because there are people out there who are getting married later in 2020 or next year and they deserve their chance to dream about their big day.

And when this is all over, which it will be, people will be mad to plan the weddings, baby namings and vow renewals that they had to postpone. Boy am I looking forward to getting stuck into that feast of ceremonies, and I bet you are too. But first, I’ve a bit of good news to share with you.

Before the world went haywire, I qualified as a funeral celebrant. This was a really important step forward in my celebrant quest. It means I can now deliver ceremonies for every stage of life, from the cradle to the grave. The Irish Institute of Celebrants (IIOC), who I trained with, gave me not one but two fancy diplomas. One was a diploma in family and funeral celebrancy and the other was a certificate in funeral celebrancy.

I’m now offering funeral ceremonies, and you can check out my Funerals page to find out more about them.

The Funeral Celebrant Examination

The process of being examined was pretty interesting. On a Tuesday night, I found myself in a room in a central Dublin hotel, lit only by a lamp. I sat beside two of my classmates, and across from me was an actress very convincingly playing a bereaved person, a person who was in shock after the sudden death of her father. We had to gently draw out information from her that we would use for our ceremony.

Then we had to go home and write up a ceremony within twenty-four hours, based on the information she gave us. I made the deadline and got my approval email. The next two days were spent learning off the ceremony I’d written. On the following Saturday, 29 February, leap year, I stood in a room in front of the actress/client and an examiner to deliver the ceremony. It was surreal, delivering to rows of empty chairs, but I survived, and I passed.

But the two people who evaluated me decided that I could deliver the goods as a funeral celebrant, and I came out with two pieces of paper, some helpful suggestions and some glowing praise. When all this is over, I’ll be in touch with funeral directors to let them know I exist, and I hope I can help people who lost loved ones during this difficult time by creating beautiful memorial services for them.

In the meantime, stay safe and well all of you, and hope the blog posts I create for you over the next little while will keep you dreaming.

If you’d like to find out more about my funeral celetrant services, which you can arrange without needing to go through a funeral director, you can give me a call or WhatsApp on 0876959799.