Advice on a Celebrant for spiritual ceremony

Lbhs2310play

Hi all,

Myself and Fiance want a civil ceremony. Both parents aren't too happy and we feel now that the pressure is really on to get the right celebrant so that we can show that we have made the right decision.
Looking for any help or advice and recommendations of celebrants.
Thanks in advance.

lazygal

Spiritualist ceremonies are religious,not civil. Only HSE celebrants perform civil ceremonies. Humanists do secular ceremonies. You'd probably need to figure out which type you want then contact the relevant bodies as they book up very quickly, especially as you can't have HSE ceremony on weekends.

Faith

Civil = HSE registrar, Monday to Friday only, completely secular, don't think you get a choice of registrars.

Humanist = secular, any day of the week, no religion at all, based on Humanist principles.

Spiritualist = religious - although not Christian, embracing the supernatural and open to including various 'psychic' type things in the ceremony.

You need to be clear what type of ceremony you actually want before we can advise.

Lbhs2310play

Faith wrote: »

Civil = HSE registrar, Monday to Friday only, completely secular, don't think you get a choice of registrars.

Humanist = secular, any day of the week, no religion at all, based on Humanist principles.

Spiritualist = religious - although not Christian, embracing the supernatural and open to including various 'psychic' type things in the ceremony.

You need to be clear what type of ceremony you actually want before we can advise.

Sorry didn't realise there was so many terms. We want a celebrant who can legally marry us but has some religious content. This is so much more complicated than I realised. Sorry

lazygal

Spiritualist might suit.
We had a humanist wedding, we didn't have any religious bits as we're not religious. However I found our celebrant flexible and if we'd chosen a religious reading or music there'd have been no issue whatsoever.

Faith

If you want religious content, but not the Spiritualist-type stuff, then an Interfaith Minister is likely to be your best bet. http://interfaithministers.ie/weddings/

pooch90

Spiritualists did our ceremony, no real religious content but they allowed us to remember our dead family members.
It was Thomas Patrick Colton, Tom Colton's dad that did it. Absolute gent and we actually had a great laugh during the ceremony too.

taco.cat

pooch90 wrote: »

Spiritualists did our ceremony, no real religious content but they allowed us to remember our dead family members.
It was Thomas Patrick Colton, Tom Colton's dad that did it. Absolute gent and we actually had a great laugh during the ceremony too.

This Tom Colton?

I feel like people should be aware of the above when considering a Spiritualist wedding.

GingerLily

taco.cat wrote: »

pooch90 wrote: »

Spiritualists did our ceremony, no real religious content but they allowed us to remember our dead family members.
It was Thomas Patrick Colton, Tom Colton's dad that did it. Absolute gent and we actually had a great laugh during the ceremony too.

This Tom Colton?

I feel like people should be aware of the above when considering a Spiritualist wedding.

Oh god, that's really awful

lazygal

Yeah, that Colton fella is a piece of work. I can't believe how he gets away with doing weddings. 'Bishop' Pat Buckley is another one to be wary of, he conducted a sham wedding a while back.

GingerLily

Its not something I ever even thought to look into, really worrying.

Going to do some googling now......

Lbhs2310play

GingerLily wrote: »

Oh god, that's really awful

That is awful. This is a lot more complicated that I thought it would be.

Lbhs2310play

Thanks everyone. It has given me a lot to think about and made us really think about what we want. Think a spiritual ceremony would really meet our needs.

Does anyone know anything about Gerry Byrne?

irishgirl19

If u want to know more about Gerry ,tune into dublin talks 98fm at half 10 tomorrow! Not good news.
There was also a judgement awarded against him too a while back!

We are getting married by an interfaith minister. Have u looked into them? You can have it as religious or non religious as u like

Edit to add: my comment is based on if u are talking about gerry from getmarried site.

marialouise

I've been to about six ceremonies done by the Grace Christian Church. To anyone who's not familiar with all the ceremony types, it's very similar to civil/humanist/spiritualist in that you can have it in the hotel or venue, and you can add in as much or as little personal touches as you'd like, and leave in or out as much religion as you like. The ceremonies are short, like 30 mins and can include hand fasting or a sand ceremony, or just short and sweet like a HSE.
http://www.graceireland.com/

I've also been to spiritualist weddings that were not done by Tom Colton, some lovely lady whose name I can't remember
Humanist weddings are very nice, there's not really any religion in them but you can still make them lovely and personal.
HSE are the least personalised and must absolutely have no reference to any religion anywhere in the readings, vows or music.
What you can also look into is getting married in the registry office on one date (the legal part) and then having a symbolic ceremony later that day or another day where you invite everyone, and use someone like A Beautiful Ceremony or Marry Me Ireland to just kind of officiate. Obviously it'd be ideal to do everything in one day, so I highly recommend the Grace Christian Church, followed by Spiritualist/Humanist.

Please don't feel overwhelmed, there are plenty of great options out there and loads of knowledgable people on this forum!

Faith

^ That's not true, marialouise. A Humanist ceremony is secular, and that option (civil/secular) should be ticked when registering with the HSE.

marialouise

Faith wrote: »

^ That's not true, marialouise. A Humanist ceremony is secular, and that option (civil/secular) should be ticked when registering with the HSE.

Whoops okay I edited my post now to avoid confusion. I thought if you ticked civil, they'd start the ball rolling on a HSE registrar but I am mistaken, thanks!