Profesores

As noted, couples in New Zealand are relatively free to choose whether or not they legally marry, and it is their choice whether an independent celebrant, an

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organisational celebrant, or a registrar at a registry office best suits their needs. Although the role, influence, and significance of an independent celebrant in creating and performing the wedding ceremony may be relatively small in the context of the occasion as a whole, such a person is essential in order to officiate at a legal

marriage. This requirement, along with the wish to secure the services of a friendly person whose fee is reasonable, may be enough to motivate a couple to choose an independent celebrant. For some people, the choice is as simple as agreeing to contract the first celebrant they happen to come across who is available on the day they require, indicating that people regard the choice of celebrants as a low-risk one: they trust that whichever celebrant they select will competently fulfil the required role. Often clients are unsure of their own criteria for selecting a celebrant, although they interview several before making their choice. As noted, clients‟ uncertainty about their selection criteria and about what different celebrants offer indicates that the work of celebrants is not widely known about in contemporary society, and is not well understood by people prior to engaging personally with a celebrant for the purposes of their wedding ceremony.

The very diversity currently found among celebrants may be one reason for clients‟ unfamiliarity with what celebrants do. If there were less diversity, people would be more used to a „norm‟. Another reason is that unless people have seen celebrants at a wedding or a funeral (the life transition ceremonies where celebrants are most likely to be involved), they will have had little experience of how they work. Even clients who have seen independent celebrants officiating probably would not know what was involved in creating the ceremony prior to its performance. On the other hand, most do seem to have quite strong ideas about what they want to include in their ceremony.

In Chapter Six I discussed how celebrants and clients work together in these circumstances, with the role of celebrants being to both advise clients about what form ceremonies need to take whilst taking into account clients‟ ideas and

preferences. Clients in urban areas are likely to have a choice of celebrant for their wedding if they give several months notice. As we saw above, many independent

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marriage celebrants have websites advertising their services.45 A list of registered marriage celebrants is published in the New Zealand Gazette 46 and available from the registrar‟s office and on the website 47

where couples intending to marry apply for their marriage licence. This is where some people find out the names and contact information of potential marriage celebrants. Other places people obtain celebrants‟ names from include: directories of the professional celebrant associations, promotion and advertising in wedding magazines, through wedding planners and wedding planning websites, wedding venue operators, at wedding expos, and from social networks.48 People typically interview two or three celebrants, then select the one they believe they will be comfortable working with and who will provide the style of ceremony they are after. Celebrants are mainly open to suggestions from their clients and tolerant towards delivering wedding ceremonies focused on clients‟ preferences in terms of tone, style, length, and formality. Celebrants who become aware that the expectations or beliefs of their clients are outside what they feel capable of delivering will decline to work for such clients; however, they will often assist them to find someone who is more appropriate. Also, sometimes, as discussed in Chapter Six, situations arise where a celebrant chooses not to officiate at a particular ceremony because the people involved are seeking expressions of religious belief that celebrant does not offer.

Celebrants describe wedding ceremonies as „belonging‟ to their clients because the ceremony is openly acknowledged as reflecting the clients‟ wishes. Clients take a strong role in creating the service and selecting readings, poems, and other

personalised components of their wedding, even more so than they do for other rites of passage such as funerals. In practice, ceremonies are openly co-created by couples

45 _{Some participants in this study have their own websites. For example, www.ruthpink.com,} www.bl.co.nz, www.lifecelebrations.co.nz, www.vitalpeace.co.nz, www.pinkyagnew.com. 46 _{The New Zealand Gazette is the formal legal process for publicly notifying the registration or} removal of people from the list of registered independent marriage celebrants.

47 _{Registrar of Marriages at the Births, Deaths, and Marriages Office of the Department of Internal} Affairs, www.bdm.govt.nz

48 _{An example of a directory of the professional celebrant associations is www.celebranz.org.nz,} Celebrants Association of New Zealand. An example of promotional material includes

www.nzweddingplanner.co.nz, New Zealand Wedding and Wedding Services website. An example of a wedding exposition is bridalshows.co.nz

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and their celebrants. Celebrants pull all the elements into a coherent form. They build upon the ideas and requests of their clients, sometimes searching written and on-line resources and making suggestions that might fit in with the particular couple‟s desires.

An example of a wedding from my own experience was held in summer at a remote east coast beach community in Northland, in the North Island of New Zealand. The bride and groom chose the venue because it was a place that fitted with how they liked to spend their leisure time, fishing and scuba diving. The wedding ceremony took place on a public reserve in the late afternoon under hot sun, under the shade of an enormous, flowering Pohutukawa tree. Behind the grassed area where everyone gathered was the beach, and the quiet sound of waves and sea birds could be heard during the service. The bride wore a long white dress, the groom was in semi-formal attire, and the guests were in a range of clothing from smart casual through to formal. The bride‟s father (who had emigrated from Scotland in the 1960s) and some male family and friends wore formal Scottish outfits in Clan tartans (kilts). Scottish cultural traditions had been part of this bride‟s upbringing. The bridal procession moved from the holiday baches across the quiet country road and on to the small reserve, to an accompanying Piper. The song the piper played was a favourite tune of the bride, and was not a traditional wedding song. The celebrant and couple stood facing the guests whilst the twenty minute ceremony took place.

The ceremony commenced with the celebrant reading Winesong by New Zealand poet Keri Hulme. This was chosen for its love themes and its evocative references to the New Zealand coast. The story of the couple‟s meeting and decision to marry was told in a light and humorous style. Early on, a special welcome was made to the primary-school aged child of the groom who was participating in his father‟s marriage to the woman who was to become his stepmother (a parenting situation which had already been in place for several years prior to the couple marrying). A second short poem with themes of love and friendship was read by the celebrant,

Today. The father was asked to „give away‟ his daughter to the groom, then the

couple said their vows. An adaptation of a Scottish tradition of drinking from the same glass was enacted. The groom then poured a glass of wine which the couple both drank from, and the celebrant explained that the cup was a symbol of their

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shared future together. A friend of the couple came forward and read a Celtic blessing. The celebrant pronounced the couple to be married and the marriage certificates were signed by the couple, with the bride‟s mother and the groom‟s mother as the two witnesses. Then the celebrant said some closing words for the completion of the ceremony. An informal barbecue style wedding breakfast was held in a marquee in the evening. The flowers which decorated the marquee were

gathered by a friend of the bride from wild-growing native flowers and grasses gathered from around the bay where the wedding was taking place.

As introduced in Chapter three, the dramatic and performative aspects of ritual have received considerable attention, particularly from Victor Turner (1982) and Richard Schechner (2003), and contemporary wedding ceremonies are rich examples from which to understand the ritual process as performance. The ritual performance that the celebrant and clients co-create centres on the communicative, dramatic enactment of a scripted ritual which tells and shows the transformation taking place. The people present are aware that the ceremony has been constructed to be both recognisable as a marriage ceremony and personalised to the couple, thus blending the „traditional‟ with the uniquely creative. However, this format, whilst not hidden, is not

emphasised either. The ceremony is performed and presented as a seamless whole which moves people‟s understanding of the relationship of the couple to the new, permanent, legally formalised relationship. The celebrant as ritual-maker is accepted as having expertise in understanding ritual form, in leading a process of constructing personalised ceremonies, and in delivering a seamless dramatic performance of it.

Couples, more so than their parents or others in their families, decide in conjunction with their chosen celebrant what the ceremony of marriage will comprise. Expression of the personal meanings of the union for particular couples, their stories about their relationship, their decision to marry at that time, the significance of the place of gathering for the wedding, and their aspirations for the future typically form part of the ceremony. Other important components include: values they hold and ways they would like to relate to one another in their marriage (e.g. equality in partnership, respecting individual dreams), remembering ancestors and significant family members not present, thanking parents, couple‟s desired relationships with their families and communities as they enter marriage, acknowledgment of continuing

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relationships and commitments as families blend (e.g. relationships to step-children), asking support and intervention from people close if this is needed in the future, cultural and spiritual dimensions of their identities and what these mean in the context of marriage. Celebrants set up the ritual ceremony so that the people

attending are familiar with the format of the ritual which will follow. They recite the agreed script, and guide participants through the actions, movements, exchanges, and speaking parts.

Clients taking an active role in stipulating what they wish the ritual to comprise to their ritual-makers is different from the passive role of ritual participants described by van Gennep, which involved societies taking participants metaphorically by the hand and moving them through to the new status. Today‟s couples are very active in the process of inducting themselves into their new status, compared with the classic model where the neophyte participating in the rite of passage was conceptualised as passive and being guided by the ritual-maker and affirmed by the attendance of the broader community. Celebrants in this study believed that an important function of a wedding is that it brings people together, fulfilling their need for personal contact and belonging. It also gives them the experience of spending time in close proximity with a couple important to them, whose union they are celebrating. Part of the

celebrant‟s role is to express these experiences in words and to build the participation of guests into the wedding ceremony. Celebrants in this study also had a strong sense that they, and the couples they work with, view these rituals as important family and community gatherings, and they want the ritual to affirm, perform, celebrate, and perhaps strengthen these bonds. Examples of couples participating in saying and enacting their ceremonies, along with affirmations of support for their pledge of marriage from the wider group (parents, bridal party, or everyone gathered) were commonly mentioned. It is also common for significant family members and friends to participate in the wedding ceremony, for example by writing and/or reciting poetry, giving readings, saying blessings, signing marriage certificates as witnesses, and lighting candles or gifting something during the ceremony.

The physical placement of the wedding party and their guests is also important in conveying the inclusion of the wider group and signifying their relationship to the couple. My interviewee Barbara, a marriage celebrant, described a small difference

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between weddings at which she officiated and how she understood church weddings to be. This difference was the symbolic importance of seating guests in a way which includes them in the ceremony (curved rows of seating), having the „bridal party facing and curved, so that they can see their friends and their friends can see them‟, and encouraging couples to have their parents with them „so it‟s a real family function‟.Since interviewing Barbara, I discovered a recent Australian publication, Sally Cant‟s (2009) The Heart and Soul of Celebrancy: A Guide to Creating Memorable Ceremonies in which she discusses choreography of movement and connection of components of wedding ceremonies. Cant considers choreography to be vital to the smooth running of the elements of the ceremony and to make it look professional. Barbara‟s point was about smooth running and the overall look, but it was also about something more important and symbolic: showing and creating a sense of inclusiveness in the ceremony whereby guests participate closely through their proximity and positioning to the marrying couple (Cant, 2009: 62-63). Each family has, of course, its own particular circumstances and celebrants adapt rituals to reflect and affirm the diverse situations within which couples today marry. In

ceremonies I have put together, for example, I have created roles for biological parents and step-parents, and for new spouses and partners of parents, so that these people can be appropriately included in the wedding ceremony. If the couple marrying has children, these children would typically be mentioned and often

participate in a symbolic or physical enactment that expresses their importance in the lives of the newly married couple. In such ways, celebrants and their clients „own‟ the ritual in the sense that it expresses their lives and beliefs and aspirations. This type of ritual-making is in contrast with rituals embedded in traditional religious doctrine, which may not be flexible enough to reflect and affirm people‟s diverse personal situations. The active construction of rituals by celebrants and couples together also reflects the democratisation of ritual: anyone who chooses to can make ritual work for them.

Another difference between this type of ritual and those based on religious doctrine is that couples can choose the level of formality and the tone of the performance – for example, a degree of informality, fun and playfulness is an option. Celebrants take their cue from couples and tailor the language of the ceremony accordingly. Mary talked about how „people want there to be a direct connection between the

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expressions of meanings they have in their ceremonies and what works for them‟. Some celebrants also described the ceremonies they create as fulfilling clients‟ desires for something sacred, in the sense of the occasion being intentionally special and extraordinary, set apart from everyday life. Such rituals are not necessarily sacred in the sense of being sanctified by a deity or drawing on a supernatural power, but can be thought of as „stepping out of our usual roles and the honouring of some human need or an honouring of some sacred human interaction‟, for example (Ruth, 17/10/06). Celebrants are aware of the social and legal significance of the

commitment being made, and the transformation is emphasised in terms of its permanence. And so whilst wedding rituals involve dramatic performance, there is no element of pretence, superficiality, or impermanence. Another celebrant viewed weddings as fulfilling people‟s desire for authentic social occasions where people „slow down‟ and gather together with those close to them. This view related to situations where families and communities were dispersed nationally and internationally, and where opportunities for expressing and celebrating the connections between them were rare and therefore precious. Weddings are such important occasions that the people invited try very hard to attend them. People‟s intimate, shared experiences in wedding ritual is somewhat like Turner‟s (1969) notion of communitas, where he referred to people‟s intense awareness of being bound together as a community through the experience of sharing liminal moments of rituals. In the case of a wedding ceremony, the couple‟s „liminal‟ experience is different from the experience of the guests attending, however.

Historically, motives for marrying across different societies have included creating alliances between families, continuing lineages from which progeny are born,

exchanging or redistributing community wealth, and performance of duty to families, nations, or traditions. However, many North Americans eschew these as conscious aims of their contemporary western weddings, instead emphasising the celebration of romantic love as the intended meaning, and regard all other reasons – „security, friendship, economic solidarity, family making‟ as having lesser importance (Grimes, 2000: 162). Grimes describes how, when he asks young North Americans of marrying age what they consider the heart of contemporary western wedding, they often point to the vows (Grimes, 2000: 156). New Zealand celebrants, too,

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the vows as a serious, fundamental element of the ceremony. Under the New Zealand Marriage Act there is no prescribed form to the marriage ceremony or particular words which comprise the vows, as long as the celebrant and two witnesses are satisfied that the words exchanged clearly indicate the parties‟ intentions to take each other to be legal husband and wife. Celebrants wanted to ensure that the integrity and seriousness of the promises being made in the exchange of wedding vows are

maintained. One celebrant remarked: „I never let them mess with the vows. What you‟re doing is promising to spend the rest of your life with this human being‟ (Heather, 2/11/05). This seems to make celebrants more like traditional ritualists in that they see it as their responsibility to ensure the serious ritual elements are done to bestow the new status on the ritual participants.