Celebrant (Australia) Celebrant (Australia) In Australia, celebrants are people who conduct formal ceremonies in the community, particularly weddings, which are the main ceremony of legal import conducted by celebrants. They may also conduct extra-legal ceremonies such as naming of babies, renewal of wedding vows and funerals. Officiating at a marriage requires that the celebrant be an authorised marriage celebrant under Australian law, but officiating at extra-legal ceremonies does not. Many Western nations permit celebrants who are not clergy to carry out basic, legal, marriage ceremonies. However Australia was the first nation whose government appointed non-clergy celebrants with the specific intention that they
Celebrant (Australia) registry office officials and those conducted by independent marriage celebrants. Similarly, statistics of religious marriages only give separate figures for the two largest denominations, Roman Catholics and Anglicans. Until 1994, Celebrant Training was mainly achieved by informal but effective mentoring of new celebrants by the more experienced. This was augmented by seminars and conferences organised by the main celebrant organisations. Significant progress in understanding of the celebrant role was achieved at the annual "Pallotti" live-in conferences which took place at Warburton in Victoria from 1994 to 1999. International lecturers included Mary Hancock from New Zealand and David Oldfield from Washington