Celebrant (Australia) The program continued to progress and, at the end of 1995, was very close to becoming the mainstream procedure of contracting marriage. According to Messenger the period from 1995 to 2003 is recorded as being the most happily productive of the Civil Celebrant Movement in Australia. Funeral and Naming ceremonies, originally opposed by the majority of celebrants and the Attorney-General's Department, had gradually and imperceptibly become accepted. A group of celebrants under the leadership of Rick Barclay, a successful Funeral and Marriage Celebrant, had morphed the original Funeral Celebrants Association of Australia into an organisation which accepted all ceremonies and
Marriage in New Zealand religious body, a marriage celebrant of an approved organisation, or an independent marriage celebrant. Before 1976 there was growing dissatisfaction with the Marriage Act as it restricted people to choose between a Christian marriage that was usually performed in a church and solemnised by an Officiating Minister, or to a secular marriage in a Registry office where the number of guests was very restricted. From 1973 the Humanist Society of New Zealand lobbied the government for a change to the Marriage Act seeking the right of people to have marriage ceremonies of their choice with a celebrant of their choice