Designing your wedding ceremony / Handfasting

Your personalized ceremony

Your handfasting ceremony will celebrate the unique bond between you and the one you love. It's all about you, your way of showing the world what you mean to each other and the direction your lives will take together.

Drawing on over two decades of experience celebrating handfastings Cara will work with you to craft a ceremony that reflects your needs. She asks all the right questions to prompt you to consider every aspect that will make your ceremony meaningful and memorable. It's just the way to start married life!

Giving notice

One of the first steps in getting married is completing a Notice of Intention to Marry and selecting a celebrant. It is important to settle on a celebrant as soon as possible to allow maximum time for development of the ceremony and preparation of documents and to secure the celebrant of your choice. If time is short however, Cara has experience with tight deadlines rapid ceremony development. Either way Cara will assist you to complete and lodge your NOIM and manage the process of gathering required documents.

Choosing a venue

Your choice of venue depends on the feel you and your partner are after. Do you want your handfasting to be something intimate, a large gathering of family and friends, a 'registry office' or elopement experience, a circle of your closest friends or something in between. Venues used in the past include: high on an extinct volcano overlooking the sea, an historic property, a surf beach, a back paddock. Also requested - state forests and national parks, an art gallery, a scenic lookout, the manicured lawn of a botanic garden, a grotto on the grounds of a university, a country hall, the bride's parents back yard and a yacht moored in the bay. In some cases you will need a backup plan in case of bad weather and in the fire season, in case of fire.

Designing your ceremony

With Cara you'll be given unlimited consultation, either personally or via Zoom. Most correspondence is by email and you'll have access to a range of digital resources shared via email or google drive. You'll be guided to select from a variety of traditional practices and encouraged to create new traditions of your own. Along with a little (or a lot) of hand holding, you'll be given the materials you need to make good choices. Perhaps you already know precisely what you want? Be confident that from the first to the final draft, crafting and polishing the ceremony, a meaningful, memorable and heartfelt event will be achieved. Cara will rehearse your ceremony with you to fine tune the script until everything is perfect.

Conducting the ceremony

On the day of the ceremony Cara will be there around an hour before the ceremony to make sure the ceremony space is set up correctly and all is ready to go. She will gently lead you through the ceremony with cue cards ready should they prove necessary. She seamlessly integrates your personal requests and the legal requirements into a beautiful and moving ceremony. After the ceremony you will receive a civil or religious ceremonial Marriage Certificate, depending on the type of handfasting ceremony you choose.

Registering the marriage

After the ceremony Cara will lodge all the necessary documents with the state Births, Deaths and marriages Registrar. Within 4-6 weeks you will be sent a legal marriage certificate if you have selected Cara to apply for a certificate on your behalf. Please note that in recent months there have been uncontrollable delays within the office of Births, Deaths and Marriages.