If you’re looking for certified celebrant training, you’re in the right place!

At Match & Dispatch, our celebrant training courses have been independently assessed and certified by the CPD Certification Service.

We’re rather proud of that.

Why did we have our celebrant training externally certified?

Because anyone can tell you their own course is brilliant.

It’s a bit like your mum telling you you’re handsome.

Lovely to hear, but perhaps not entirely impartial.

When we created Match & Dispatch, we brought a lot of experience to the table. We’ve both worked in weddings and funerals for more than 20 years, first as registrars and now as independent celebrants. We’ve trained hundreds of celebrants and we still actually do the job we’re teaching.

But we didn’t think you should simply have to take our word for it.

So we put our training through external scrutiny.

The CPD Certification Service independently assesses professional training and learning activities against its standards before certification.

For us, that mattered.

It meant somebody outside Match & Dispatch had looked at what we’d created rather than us simply sticking a badge on it ourselves.

Does a celebrant have to have certified celebrant training?

Currently, there is no single mandatory qualification that everybody must hold in order to work as an independent celebrant in England and Wales.

That’s important to understand when you’re comparing celebrant training courses.

A training provider may use words such as ‘certified’ or ‘accredited’, but it’s worth asking exactly what they mean.

Who has certified it?

Is there an external organisation involved?

Has the course actually been independently assessed?

And, perhaps most importantly, what will you actually be able to do when you’ve completed it?

Because a certificate is lovely.

Being competent is better.

Certification matters – but so does the training behind it

External certification was important to us, but we don’t think it should ever be the only reason you choose a celebrant training course.

You also need to look at the substance.

Who is teaching you?

Do they have substantial, current experience of actually working as celebrants?

Will you learn how to meet couples and families, structure ceremonies, write scripts and deliver them?

Will somebody properly assess your work?

Will you receive detailed feedback that helps you improve?

Is there ongoing support?

Does the training cover the realities of being self-employed and actually building a celebrant business?

Those are the questions we’d be asking.

Our aim isn’t simply to get students to the point where we can hand them a certificate.

It’s to get them to the point where we’d be happy to recommend them to a family ourselves.

That’s quite a different benchmark.

What about wedding law reform?

This is where things could get interesting.

The Government has now closed its consultation on wedding law reform in England and Wales, which included proposals that could eventually allow independent celebrants to conduct legally binding weddings.

If that happens, it is highly likely that the profession will become more regulated than it is today.

Exactly what that will look like, we don’t yet know.

And neither does anyone else – and if they tell you they do, they’re very likely fibbing!

What we do know is that Match & Dispatch is primed for change.

We’ve spent our careers working within both the registration service and independent celebrancy, and we follow wedding law reform extremely closely.

As soon as the Government confirms what independent celebrants will need to know and do under any new system, we’ll update our wedding celebrant training accordingly.

Choosing certified celebrant training

So, if you’ve landed here because you searched for certified celebrant training, our advice is not to get too hung up on a single word.

Do your homework.

Find out what any certification or accreditation actually means.

Find out who sits behind it.

And then look beyond the badge at the training itself.

At Match & Dispatch, we’re proud that our courses are externally assessed and certified by the CPD Certification Service.

But we’re equally proud of what sits behind that certification: decades of experience, detailed training, proper feedback, ongoing support and a commitment to keeping our courses current as the profession evolves.

Because ultimately, you don’t just want to finish your training with a certificate.

You want to finish it knowing how to be a celebrant.

Find out more about our certified celebrant training courses HERE.

Or come along to one of our Monday Meet-ups and ask us about the training, certification, wedding law reform – or anything else that’s currently making your head hurt.

Kate & Kate