Offbeat Ceremonies offers you a range of celebrations from weddings and hand fastings, vow renewals, GLBTI and queer commitment ceremonies, naming days for children and adults, Wheel of the Year celebrations, pet ceremonies, and funerals.
"It was a dark and stormy night" as we all hurried into the warmth and light of The Carrington's Library where the fire was burning bright. The room was warm and the tables covered with clever and creative beanies waiting to be judged in the 2011 Queer Beanie competition.
The Queer Beanie competition is run in conjunction with the Blue Mountains PinkFest and the long standing Winter Magic festival.
The entries and winners in this years Queer Beanie 2011 competition were once again, fabulous, creative, innovative and outright queer! Images and a video of the evening can be found below.
We had knitted, felted, quilted, macrame and crocheted entries from beginners through to skilled and long term crafters and all of them are amazing!
We also had a prize winning hat on display, made by milliner Christine Yarker. The hat to the right was a winner of bentArt 2011.
We had an unexpected celebrity, Simon Marnie of ABC Radio 702. Simon got right into the spirit of things and invited me for an interview next morning in his live coverage of the Winter Magic Festival.
and the winners are ....
Queer ~ Intermediate ~ Tracey C ~ Valfreyja
Reduce Reuse Recycle ~ Advanced ~ Angela Z-D ~ Bruce
Winter Magic is the Blue Mountains winter solstice celebration, we celebrate the middle of winter with a festival of dress-up, drumming, food, parade, bands and many more events. Its wonderfully Pagan and a delightful way to celebrate the turning of the Wheel of the Year.
The 2011 celebration was no exception, the weather was perfect, winter sunshine poured down, the wind was minimal and the enthusiasm was high, here are my some of my photos from the day.
I’ve been with my partner for 15 years, we can’t be legally married because we’re not heterosexual.
To be an Authorised Civil Marriage Celebrant in Australia, I must prove that I am an upstanding member of my community by a rigorous process of referee checks, yet I can’t marry.
My wedding clients hate these words “Marriage, according to law in Australia, is the union of a man and a woman”, but by law I must say them.
I believe we should change these words to ‘Marriage, according to law in Australia, is the union of a consenting adult couple’ and I urge the Federal government to make it legal for me to marry.
On Saturday 19th March 2011, I celebrated a civil wedding ceremony as it should be celebrated, a ceremony where a same-sex couple can also be married. I did this as part of the Rally for Equal Marriage Rites that were held all over Australia, here's the video....
You can find the transcript of the ceremony on the Offbeat Ceremonies website.
Our wonderful sponsors were there to hand out prizes and to judge the competition, Angela Lougheed of Spirit of Health and Wellbeing, Angela Zadro-Jones of Jasper Cat Designs, Lorna McKenzie of Offbeat Ceremonies and The Tailor's Apprentice and Mark Jarvis of The Carrington, who provided our warm and comfortable venue.
