Are solemnisers really hippies?

Dubdub2012

Hi all,

My BH and I are getting married next November, 2013. We want to have a civil ceremony, although neither is us have attended one in the past, we have been to several church weddings.

One of the (many) questions we have is regarding the solemniser. We don't want to go with the HSE as we've been told that day only work Monday to Friday, and their ceremonies tend to be short, with little creativity allowed on the part of the couple.

From the remaining options, well to put it bluntly, we've been told that the "spiritual" solemnisers are quite hippyish. And we are really not into the psychic, spiritual healer, alternative medicine, I see dead people, I was at Woodstock, type of thing.

Would anyone have any experience with solemnisers and be able to give us a feel for how they actually come across on the day? Am I wildly off the mark here?

Thanks all

holding

You have a lot of creative input into a civil ceremony. Just speaking from my own experience here, having had the 3 months' notice interview just the other week. We were told we can bring whatever floral arrangements we like into the registry office room. We can play any music we like, and as much of it as we like. We can have readings in at particular parts if we want to. Or we can add our own vows etc. The only stipulation is that none of it is religious in content/ nature.

John Mason

LOL - way of the mark:D

our solemniser wore a suit and there was no hippy dippy, i see dead people stuff.

we completely designed our own service, music, readings etc. we told him what we wanted :D

Dubdub2012

Thanks irishbird, would you be able to PM us the details of who you used?

Gatica

Hi Dubdub2012, I understand your concern as that was ours too. We really wanted to have an outdoor ceremony but it cannot be done with the HSE (having said that many posters have previously mentioned being able to have any music or reading to embellish their ceremony, bar any religious mentions, and to stretch it out to a half hour or more, so don't limit yourself entirely).
We looked into and booked Tom Colton from the Spiritualist Union of Ireland. I had done a lot of reading on posts and reports of his ceremonies and was certain that there would be no such thing as "I see dead people" or mentions of spirit beings. The link is http://spiritualceremonies.ie/

The upside is that you can have the ceremony virtually anywhere, anytime and with any content (plus the legal I do bits). He wrote up the ceremony we'd requested and read through it. It had some mentions of "the great spirit" and of the "other world", which I kindly requested him to remove and he obliged. There was no other funny business and no one of our wedding guests even suspected he may have belonged to any organisation, which may have any kind of other-worldly beliefs.