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Carly (at that time an experienced celebrant) created Just Married Weddings in Sydney around 8 years ago to look after couples who wanted to get married in their own unique way – with an anti-traditional small intimate ceremony.
Please introduce yourself to our readers. They love to know about you, your passion, and how you came to find and follow your passion for weddings.
I have always been a romantic, and loved weddings – so I became a celebrant when I was abut 30 (at that time to average age of celebrants was over 60)! It was a lawyer at the time so weddings were a lovely positive way to spend weekends after doing pretty dry and heavy going work through the week.
For you, what’s one part of the wedding guests should never miss?
The vows. This is the true essence of what makes a party a wedding – the promises the two people make to one another. Whether they are simply the traditional or legal vows these are the words that make all the difference in the world. I also love the speeches!!
As the expert, what is your number 1 tip you can share with our audience about wedding planning?
Do what you want to do. There are very few rules – and everyone’s been to a bunch of traditional weddings – do yours your way.
All your really need to do to get married is say one legal sentence to each other and your celebrant needs to say about 3 lines. The rest of what people think is required is in fact just tradition. If you don’t live your lives exactly as your parents and grandparents lived theirs you don’t have to do that with a wedding.
You can still live happily ever after if you don’t toss the bouquet, or you have a pink dress, or you only invite 20 guests!
What you the best piece of advice you can give on how couples can make sure their wedding feels true to who they are?
Take every ‘tradition’ or expectation and ask yourselves ‘is this important to us? Does it reflect our values?’ If not, don’t do it.
Really talk about each element of the day and think about what feels right to you.
The weddings you have been to before or seen on insta are just suggestions – create your day from scratch, don’t feel you have to do it the way everyone else does.
Share one of your secret tips with our readers on how they can ensure their wedding goes… Just as Planned.
Accept that just like every other day in your life, you can never 100% control how it will go.
Plan to ‘let it all go’ about 24 hours before you ceremony and just go with it – you will be far more in the moment if you stop trying to be the director and just be the star of your own show.
Any ideas you can share for what to do the day after the wedding?
Spend as much time as you can with just the two of you. Do this on the day of the wedding as well if you can, but the day after it will be much easier. Doesn’t really matter what you do – just make it something that you both enjoy.
You can connect with
Carly from Just Married Weddings here:
https://www.facebook.com/JustMarriedWeddingsAustralia/