I'm Nell Harding, an independent celebrant in Lewes. I write and lead weddings, funerals and naming ceremonies across Sussex. You choose the words and you choose the place. We talk first, I write it, and you read every word before anyone else hears it.
A wedding in your own words
Marry in a barn, a garden, a field or your own front room, on the day you want, in the words you want. You will still need a short appointment at the register office to make it legal, and I will show you exactly how that part works.
A funeral that sounds like the person
Time to say what was actually true about them, in a crematorium, a woodland burial ground, a village hall or a garden. I work with funeral directors across Sussex and I can usually see a family within a day of the first call.
Namings, vow renewals and the rest
A naming for a new baby, a child joining a family, thirty years of marriage marked properly, or a goodbye to a house. It can be as religious or as irreverent as you like.
Six facts that save you an email.
Lewes, Brighton, Eastbourne, Haywards Heath, Horsham and the villages between. Further afield by arrangement.
I only take one booking per day, so nobody is ever being rushed to the next one.
Weddings from £895, namings and vow renewals from £395, funerals £295. Travel inside Sussex is included, and the figure I give you is the figure you pay.
Professionally trained, fully insured, and DBS checked for ceremonies involving children.
You approve every word of the final script before anyone else hears it.
Call or WhatsApp 07700 900236 and you get me, not an enquiry form that goes somewhere else.
Four steps, and the first one costs nothing.
A phone call, or a coffee somewhere near you. You tell me what you have in mind and what you would hate. I tell you what is possible and what it costs. Nobody signs anything.
A full draft, sent to you to read in private. We go round as many times as it takes until it sounds like you rather than like me.
A rehearsal if you want one. I confirm the timings with your venue, brief anyone who is reading, and send you the final script to keep.
I arrive an hour ahead, find the people who are nervous, and hold the whole thing together so that you can be in your ceremony instead of running it.
Every ceremony is different, so these are in their own words rather than mine.
She asked us things nobody else had thought to ask, then handed back a ceremony that sounded exactly like us. Two of my aunts cried. One of them doesn't cry.
Priya and Tom
Married near Lewes, June 2026
Dad would've hated anything solemn. Nell sat with us for an hour, took eleven pages of notes, and gave us a service with three jokes in it that were actually his.
Ellen
Funeral, Brighton, March 2026
Nineteen people in a field and we had no idea what we were doing. She made it feel like the most organised thing we've ever managed.
Jonah and Rae
Married near Firle, August 2026
I write and lead the ceremony. For a wedding that means the words you say to each other and everything around them. For a funeral it means telling the story of a life properly. I am not a registrar and I am not clergy, so nothing has to follow a set form.
Not in England and Wales. The legal part is a separate appointment at the register office with two witnesses, and it takes about ten minutes. Most couples do it quietly in the week before. The ceremony I lead is the one your family comes to, and I will walk you through the legal side at our first conversation.
Anywhere that will have us. A garden, a barn, a beach, a village hall, a field with a gate in it. No licence is needed, because nothing legal is happening in the room.
For a wedding, as soon as you have a date, because I take one ceremony a day. For a funeral, ring me whenever, including the same week. I keep time free for exactly that.
Please do. I will help you draft them, keep each of you from seeing what the other wrote, and have a printed copy in my folder in case your hands are shaking.
Send me the date and a line or two about what you are planning. If I'm free I'll say so, and if I'm not I'll tell you who else is good.