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) of "marriage celebrant". In this same month a series of legal and administrative changes to the civil celebrant program were put into effect by the Australian Government. Attorney-General Daryl Williams, who left the Australian Parliament in mid-term had, just before he resigned, approved a number of radical changes to the Marriage Act and the Regulations under the Act (Section 39 as it was, and after 2003). The most important of these was the legal transfer of powers over the program from the Attorney-General to an appointed public servant titled "The Registrar".). The program, from its beginnings in 1973 had always