It’s truly every celebrant’s nightmare: suddenly getting sick on the wedding day. I’m sure most couples have wondered what would happen to their wedding plans if this happened to their celebrant. I can’t speak for all celebrants, but I can share a real-life situation where this happened to me recently.
Throughout more than 4 years of celebrancy so far, I’ve happily been able to conduct every wedding that I’ve been booked for. But a recent horrible turn of events meant I just couldn’t perform a ceremony for a couple - with very little notice. Here’s what happened, and what I’ve learned from the experience.
Wedding Day Plans
I had a beautiful wedding planned with a wonderful couple. It was a Saturday morning ceremony booked for 10am in a large city park, and I was staying on for the reception to MC the picnic lunch, lawn games and introduce a couple of speeches. I was going to arrive at the venue at 9am and stay until everyone was leaving around 2.30pm. So it was a big juicy lovely event that I was really looking forward to.
No one plans to be sick on the wedding day
There had been some sickness in my household that week. I had a day in bed with a terrible headache on the Tuesday, and although I was feeling tired, I’d also had a very busy previous six weeks so thought it was just life catching up with me. I felt recovered and had even met with the couple on the Thursday as well as attending a wedding expo. I assumed I would be well enough to do the ceremony.
Then… in the early hours of Saturday morning, about 1am, I became feverish, was violently ill, and fainted. I knew right away that I probably wouldn’t be able to conduct the wedding, but it was the middle of the night and my husband convinced me that I should rest for now as I couldn’t contact anyone at that hour to organise anything anyway.
I went back to bed and tossed and turned for the next few hours, getting up at 5.30am to action the plan I’d come up with.
Emergency celebrant replacement callout
I’m super-grateful to be part of an amazing group of local celebrants called WA Hitchers. This group was started several years ago by a Perth celebrant who was worried about having cover for exactly these sorts of situations. All the celebrants in this group are exceptional celebrants, plus they are extremely supportive of everyone else in the group.
I wrote a plea for help which I posted in our Facebook Group, then immediately let the wedding planner and photographer know the situation. I didn’t want to contact my couple yet as it was only 6am and I really wanted to present them with a solution, not a problem.
Verbal handover to the new replacement celebrant
Within 10 minutes of posting on Facebook, I had been contacted by an amazing celebrant, Val, who was able to help me out. I actually cried with relief.
Val and I then had a comprehensive verbal handover. We spoke all about the couple, their vibe, their hopes and wishes for the day, and important details like how to pronounce everyone’s names correctly. We talked through logistics like the run sheet, the plans for the ceremony and the day.
Legal requirements when a celebrant hands over a ceremony
There is quite a bit of process that legally has to happen behind the scenes in these situations – I won’t go into it all here, but Val and I made sure everything was handed over legally and correctly.
We arranged who would be responsible for reprinting all the legal paperwork (me) and how we would hand over each of the necessary documents. I emailed the script, run sheet and some other documents to Val straightaway so she could get her head around all of that, and we arranged that on her way to the ceremony she would swing by my house and pick up (from my front porch) everything I’d had ready for the ceremony, including the new legal paperwork and the couple’s vow cards they’d had printed to match their wedding stationery.
Telling the couple that I couldn’t be the celebrant at their wedding
Once I had Val on board as a replacement, I contacted the couple straight away to let them know the situation. They were understandably disappointed – as with all of my couples, we had developed a lovely relationship in the months leading up to the wedding which made me not being able to do it so much harder! But they were very understanding too. I wanted to make things as easy as possible for them, which is why I didn’t wake them up in the early hours to tell them about a problem, but waited until a reasonable time of the morning and told them once I had a solution. I reassured them that I’d given Val a comprehensive handover and that they were in very good hands. I also let the wedding planner and photographer know the new plan and gave them the new celebrant’s details.
Emergency celebrant services fee
I didn’t want my couple to have to worry about transferring money from a refund from me across to Val, so Val and I sorted out payment between ourselves. If other celebrants are reading this wondering how much you should charge to be or pay a replacement celebrant, I can’t answer that for you – it’s something you’ll have to negotiate between the two of you. The amount will be influenced by at what point the ceremony is handed over, how much work each celebrant has already/will need to do, etc. I recommend an honest and open discussion between the two of you so you can come to an agreement that you both think is fair.
Lessons learnt as a celebrant who got sick on the day of a wedding
As soon as I think there is any chance I might not be well enough to conduct a wedding, I will ask for help! Even having another celebrant on standby would have made the morning a lot easier for me, the replacement celebrant, and the couple. If there was sickness in the house in the lead-up to a wedding, I would act early next time, just in case.
I was grateful I compulsively write everything down and keep very comprehensive, organised notes. To be able to have my notes and a very detailed run sheet, plus additional ‘stage directions’ and notes within the ceremony script, was extremely helpful when I was so depleted and doing the handover to Val. And Val said all my notes were really helpful for her to be able to get a grasp of everything quickly.
What do I tell my couples about getting sick on their wedding day?
In an info pack I send to all my couples, I state that “In the event that I am unable to marry you, I will do my absolute best to find an awesome replacement celebrant to conduct your ceremony, and pass all legal documentation and the ceremony on to them.”
While I’m obviously not happy that this had to be put to the test, I am proud that I did what I said I would do and was still able to facilitate my couple getting married on the day they had planned.
We are only human, after all, and sometimes humans get sick. Celebrants need to have a Plan B in case of situations like this, and I’m so grateful my Plan B worked when it needed to be put to the test.
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