Funeral Celebrant Training

Well, we suspect you’ve all been to a funeral at some time in your life… it may have been in a church, or other place of worship, it may have been at the crematorium and have been led by a celebrant or, as is becoming more common, it may have taken place at a natural burial ground, community centre, pub or posh hotel. Whatever type of funeral it was, there will have, most likely, been someone presiding over proceedings and, you may have had that … “Wow, they’re really amazing, I would love to do that!” moment. Or, sadly, as we often hear it was more like a, “Wow, they were terrible… I could do so much better!” vibe.

If you were lucky enough to see a really great celebrant doing their thing, we would imagine they made it look easy. Totally in control of their surroundings, stage-managing the event, speaking clearly and confidently, with a well-written, bespoke script. Taking ownership, making everyone feel at ease and safe in their hands whilst also guiding them through an engaging, meaningful and, hopefully, uplifting, service.

What you haven’t seen is what goes on in the background – the researching, the writing, the constant updating of knowledge and skills and, also, the self-employed aspect of this job – the marketing, the promoting, the business building and the effort required to get those bookings …

With our funeral celebrant training course, we can give you the skills you need to manage both aspects of the job. Between us we have over thirty years of conducting ceremonies and we have always endeavoured to be exemplary in everything we do within our own celebrant practice as www.kateandkatecelebrants.co.uk

We have built our own award-winning celebrant business and, alongside that, created www.coffinclub.co.uk as we were so passionate about funeral education. Funeral celebrant training was naturally the next step for us – as we know how important funeral celebrants are in making funerals better.

Our funeral celebrant training is unique. We are the only funeral celebrant training organisation that champions celebrants in their own right, not as a side-kick to the funeral director. We believe celebrants are the beating heart of a funeral service and that they have the power to make funerals the best they can be. We encourage you to think long and hard about becoming a funeral celebrant – the weight of responsibility, the personal toll and the often-challenging nature of the job. But we also get you to consider the difference you can make, the support and confidence you can bring, and the reward of making a really difficult situation just a little bit better.

If being a funeral celebrant (plus!) is something you really really are called to … we’d love to help you realise your dream with our funeral celebrant training course

Our funeral celebrant training course will teach you the role of the celebrant, how to work alongside funeral directors as well as entirely independently, how to support your bereaved (or perhaps terminally ill) clients and how to create amazing, meaningful and memorable ceremonies. We are the only funeral celebrant 
training organisation that then also provides full training for funerals that take place outside of the usual settings, where the celebration of life is separated from the burial or cremation.

We fully recognise the value of celebrants in changing the face of funerals and encourage you to really think outside the box (pun intended!). Not only that but we will look at the business side of your career – how to market and grow and organise yourself as a self-
employed person. We realise that this is a long-term project and that we need to have your future success in mind, so our funeral celebrant training gives you the tools to build a sustainable business with firm foundations from which to grow.

Well, the short answer is … none!! The laws around funerals are very relaxed – both celebrants and funeral directors are not actually required to have any formal qualifications.

That said, we wouldn’t recommend you embark on either career without undertaking some proper training. There are loads of funeral celebrant training organisations out there now – many of which offer absolutely excellent courses – but we recommend you do your research before jumping on as some are better than others. We have had our funeral celebrant training courses CPD Accredited by the CPD Certification Service. We felt it was important that we held ourselves up to external scrutiny and had our funeral celebrant training courses rigorously assessed to ensure they really are as good as we think they are!

Our funeral celebrant training course is 13 video modules (seven are the foundation course and six are the celebrant-plus course), you have no time limit on starting or finishing and you have the videos for life, so you can refer back to them whenever you like. There are two supporting
handbooks – which we’re told are a really brilliantly supportive resource. Added to these are monthly live-via-Zoom tutorials that you can jump on as often as you like – there’s no limit to how many times you attend – so if you need a bit of human-being support, we’re there for you. Additionally, with our funeral celebrant training you get immediate access to our closed FB group – another place you can get support from us and also from your peers – it’s a really lovely space with lots of like-minded guys and gals all rooting for each other. The funeral celebrant training video modules are on a private YouTube channel so you don’t need to download anything – you just click on the link to play. The modules range from 45 mins to 1.5 hours so it’s around 13 hours-ish, plus, obviously, reading time, and time to complete exercises and assignments. Some people
binge watch and yomp their way through… others are slow and steady – either way is fine!

The funeral celebrant training has interactive exercises along with assignments that you need to submit for feedback and, our trainees tell us, you feel robustly supported every single step of the way.

Well, we used to provide our funeral celebrant training live in situ … but, it was restrictive for lots of attendees as it required them to be available at a certain time and in a certain place. You can access the course at times when you’re feeling alert and ready to learn and have the head-space to take it all in. By taking the funeral celebrant training course online, we’ve made it accessible to everyone whatever their time availability or geographic location. We have been able to create additional expert resources as, rather than having to ask other funeral experts to keep turning up, we’ve been able to produce video content that can be viewed again and again without them being there.

We feel we give you the best of both worlds as, whilst you may not be physically training with other people, we offer you a really supportive virtual community through our Facebook group and face-to-face tutorial with Kate and Kate.

We also have had feedback from our funeral celebrant training course attendees saying that they often had to wait a while to get their first funeral booking and when that came it was great to know they still had the course to hand to refresh their memories before talking to their first ever client.

We have also managed to keep the price of our funeral celebrant training course competitive as online training is more cost-effective for us than a residential course and more cost-effective for you as you don’t have any travel or accommodation costs.

Some of our students have told us that they weren’t huge fans of online training until they took our courses!

OK, now’s the time we get real with you. We look at other funeral celebrant training organisation’s websites and we see, in this bit of their spiel, they band about figures from £30,000 per year (potentially achievable) to £100k+ (absolute fiction). We’re going to start by saying that this is not a get-rich-quick scheme. Like setting up any business you aren’t going to hit the ground running income-wise, you will need to consistently market yourself, grow your community and your reputation and build over time – engagement is at the heart of what
you do. As a rule of thumb, most new businesses don’t become profitable until year three.

You will have times when you think you’re never going to get enough funerals to make a living and then you will have times when, like buses, they all come at once. And, over time, you will grow to a level of work that suits you and suits the way you work. We’re not going to make any false promises about vast wealth and early retirement! We’re going to be honest and say that what you put in you’ll get out and that we really believe that, through our funeral celebrant training, you will have the best chance of building a sustainable business that has a solid enough foundation to grow from and a realistic set of goals and expectations.

Most funeral celebrants working through the funeral-director-as-gatekeeper model have unsustainably low fees (£200-£250 per ceremony @2024). We don’t adhere to that model – as independent celebrants you are self-employed and we strongly encourage you to charge what you are worth – certainly no less than £350-£600 per ceremony (@2024). After your funeral celebrant training, we encourage you to value yourself both in terms of the job you do and financially and we support you to find the level of fee and the amount of work that works for you. No false promises of wealth beyond your wildest dreams – just honest expectations.

We have had our funeral celebrant training course CPD Accredited by the CPD Certification Service. We felt it was important that we held ourselves up to external scrutiny and had our courses rigorously assessed to ensure they really are as good as we think they are!

Some other trainers offer the  National Open College Network (NOCN) qualification – which provides an additional level of external accreditation. We have chosen not to offer this as part of our funeral celebrant training for now, as it’s more expense for you and, having done thorough research into it, we can’t see how it really adds any benefit to you. We have yet to come across a celebrant who has been asked to show this qualification.