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
Celebrant (Australia) DC in the US. After the changes of 2003, the Australian Government encouraged Registered Training Organisations to teach celebrancy, a system which was open to exploitation by unethical operators and which for civil celebrants, and for many other vocational training courses, proved disastrous. Registration provides the legal authority to practice as a marriage celebrant and a four-digit or five-digit alpha-numeric registration number. Once registered (or authorised as it is also known), the marriage celebrant can marry couples in virtually any location (e.g. reception centre "chapels", other de-consecrated chapels and churches, historic buildings, galleries, private homes, parks and gardens, beaches, headlands,