Why I'm a marriage celebrant

Once upon a time....

I was a NSW public servant, working in eBusiness, project managing the development of such things as websites, applications, and at the end, the move to social networking through Twitter, FaceBook, blogs, etc. I commuted from our Blue Mountain's cottage to the Sydney CBD, a three hour return journey for 9 years!

This commute, plus my growing unhappiness and lack of fulfillment in my work sent me searching for another career that would free me from both commute and 'working for the man'.  I wanted something away from technology, I love using it, but was so tired of trying to convince managers that social networking wasn't 'risky'! A friend had become a marriage celebrant a few years earlier and so I investigated the idea and loved it, it suited me to a 'T'. So last year I returned to study and qualified as a registered Civil  Marriage Celebrant and started the journey to my new business of Offbeat Ceremonies.

I see a Celebrant as holding a complex and important role in our secular society. I strongly believe that birth, coming of age, death, menarche,  menopause, marriage and commitment ceremonies are rites of passage that  need to be thoughtfully and appropriately marked for us to fully transition into the next phase of our lives. Being a Celebrant means that I work with people so they can transition between one phase of their lives to the next. As a Celebrant I mark these important stages, I'm a gatekeeper and shaman and ritual maker. Perfect for a woman who has reached her third age.

You can find out more about my passion for marking the important stages of our lives with ceremony from the following videos:

• Why Offbeat
• Rites of Passage

I adore my new career, instead of office politics, I get to be with people who want to reconnect to  community, who take time to mark and celebrate each new season of  life, its a role where I can celebrate important and significant parts of people's lives.

Since I've been working from home, my life is enriched with so many wonderful community ventures, I've started to learn belly dancing and ukulele, get more into my yoga practice, create more in my studio, currently an 1880's 'saloon girl' outfit with a lovely bustle!  I am volunteering with various organisations and loving giving back to my community.

Best of all, I spend time on my business, networking, reaching out, marketing.

I am loving the freedom of my new life, I love my clients who are people in love with each other, with life and the world. I love that I have more time for the things that are important to me, my beloved partner, my friends and my business.

Celtic new year, Samhain - celebrate the autumn harvest with medieval mulled wine

Its Samhain tonight, which goes under many names: all hallows eve, Halloween, 'all saint's eve', 'the night of the dead', autumn festival and many others.


Samhain is the Pagan Celtic New Year's Eve,  a time to reflect and to remember our ancestors and with the old year ending it is timely to think of new ventures and new beginnings.

The moon is full and her silver light is gracing our celebrations with her light.

Commercial ventures in Australia have us celebrating Samhain, or Halloween, at the same time as the northern hemisphere, on the 31st October, but this is Beltane in the southern hemisphere, a time for lovers and weddings, not a time for remembering our ancestors.

Celebrate the Celtic new year, Samhain, with mulled wine, good food and great friends. Carve out a pumpkin lantern for your entry hall and surrounded it with locally grown apples, nuts and pomegranates, all the bounty of the autumn harvest.

We're having our celebratory Samhain feast tomorrow night with friends,  the feast will be filled with traditional Samhain foods of the autumn harvest; beetroot, turnips, squash, apples, corn, nuts, gingerbread, cider, pomegranates, pumpkin dishes and lots of mulled wine!

Here's an ancient medieval mulled wine recipe, Ypocras, that we make to celebrate Samhain and Yule, make it to salute the autumn harvest and to warm your insides around the fire. We adapt the Gode Cookery website recipe and as they say "Ypocras was a very popular medieval beverage, and many different directions for preparation still exist. Also called Hippocras, the drink is named after the famous physician Hippocrates."

Ypocras or Hippocras

• 1 bottle (750 mll) of good Australian red or white wine
• 1 - 2 cups organic honey
• Two inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and sliced
• Two cinnamon sticks 
• Six bruised cardamom pods, 
• Six pepper cloves, lightly crushed
• 4 whole nutmeg cloves
• Good grateing of a fresh nutmeg, use powdered if you don't have whole nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon caraway seeds
• cheesecloth or fine strainer

Bring the wine and honey to a boil; skim off any scum as it rises.

Taste for sweetness; add more honey as necessary.

Remove from heat, add spices and allow the mix to sit covered for 24 hours.

Using a ladle, pass the wine into another container through a strainer lined with 2 or 3 layers of cheesecloth to remove the spices, being careful to leave as much of the spice residue in the pot as possible. Make at least 1 month before serving. The older it is, the better.


Merry met all!