I'm Nell.
I'm a celebrant in Lewes. I spent fourteen years teaching English to teenagers, which is excellent training for standing in front of a room that would rather be somewhere else. Then I wrote and read my mother's funeral, because nobody else was going to get her right, and a year later I retrained and never went back.
How I got here
Nobody sets out to be a celebrant. Everyone arrives sideways.
Teaching English
Secondary English in Sussex. Thousands of hours of reading other people's words out loud to an audience who will tell you immediately if you are boring them.
My mother's funeral
I wrote it and read it myself, because the alternative was a stranger getting her wrong in eleven minutes. Afterwards three separate people asked me to do theirs.
Training
A full celebrant training course, then shadowing experienced celebrants at funerals and weddings before I took my own.
Full time
Weddings, funerals, memorials, namings and the ones with no name, across Sussex and occasionally a good deal further when somebody asks nicely.
How I work
The writing is the job
Anyone can stand up and speak. The part that takes the time is listening properly and then finding the five sentences that are actually true. I take longhand notes, I read them back the next morning, and I throw away the first draft roughly half the time.
Where
Sussex, mostly
Lewes, Brighton and Hove, Eastbourne, Haywards Heath, Uckfield, Horsham, Hastings and everywhere between. Travel inside Sussex is in the fee. Beyond it, ask me, because I have driven to Shropshire for a ceremony and would do it again.
Honestly
Things I will not do
Two ceremonies in a day. A funeral I have not had time to write properly. A wedding where one of you is clearly being talked into it. Reading out a eulogy somebody emailed me the night before without speaking to the family first. If I cannot do it well I will give you the name of someone who can.
Come and talk to me
The first conversation is free, has no obligation attached, and is genuinely the part I enjoy most.