Funeral celebrant some words spoken at the graveside by members of the Communist party. In general, funerals were considered to be the province of the clergy - even for unbelievers. For example, many funerals for non-believers were performed by the Salvation army. Dally Messenger III records that this first celebrant funeral was for Helen Francis (née Grieves) on 2 July 1975 at the Le Pine Funeral Parlour in Ferntree Gully, a suburb of Melbourne in the state of Victoria. Helen Francis was a young woman who had engaged Messenger as a celebrant for her wedding to Roy Francis some four weeks previously.
Celebrant (Australia) given what they saw as the excessively legal cultural context they had inherited, they encouraged each couple to see more creative possibilities in the ceremony than the two of them might originally have envisaged. In this context the celebrant, as a resource person, needed to educate himself/herself in the artistic treasures of western culture appropriate for ceremony creation i.e. in poetry, prose, music, choreography, storytelling and symbolism i.e. the components of ceremony. Since the Federal Government introduced celebrants in 1973, the appointment has been valid at any time, in any place anywhere in Australia. Up to 2013, the Marriage Celebrant