celebrant kathryn

What do you offer?

I craft joyful, inclusive civil partnership and wedding ceremonies for modern, warm-hearted, and conscience-driven couples. Couples who want to enjoy a ceremony that's fun, heartfelt, and meaningful, that challenges, re-imagines, or bins-off outdated traditions or ‘should-haves’. A ceremony that’s filled with laughter, personality, and celebration. A ceremony that’s less of ‘the usual’, and a whole lot more YOU!

Why do you want to work with the LGBTQ+ community?

My priority as a celebrant is creating space for couples to centre and celebrate their whole, authentic selves. I have proactively built my business to be a place where LGBTQ+ couples can feel celebrated, advocated with/for, and safe to express their love and commitment in a way that honours them and without feeling the need to ‘edit’ or mask.

Joy is radical and revolutionary when it’s unapologetically celebrated by anyone in the LGBTQ+ communities (as well as those of us who are D/disabled, or at intersections).

There has never been a more urgent time to actively celebrate, stand with, and be led by LGBTQ+ couples, to create a space that stands up to exclusion and violence. I will continue to use my privilege and small corner of the world to create a space where LGBTQ+ couples can be revolutionary in their joy and love!

Allyship

I actively create spaces where LGBTQ+ suppliers and couples are centred and celebrated. I have proactively used my privilege to highlight where the industry must be more inclusive and diverse, such as only taking part in photo shoots that are proactively centring suppliers and couples who are LGBTQ+, (as well as D/disabled, and/or Black or from ethnically diverse communities). I challenge colleagues (with kindness & respect) to re-examine who they are including and excluding. I am a direct active ally to my LGBTQ+ couples.

Most often my role is to create a space for their love and joy and to find all the ways they can celebrate it. However, as we are all too aware, not everyone has a family and community that celebrates them as they deserve. Sometimes my role is to create a literal safe space, supporting couples as we create their ceremony together so they feel able to have an authentic ceremony, and sometimes - infrequently, where a couple has asked me to, and where safe to do so - challenging damaging, non-inclusive behaviour on the day itself. My couples’ safety and happiness are my priority and I am active in ensuring they experience that.

I actively seek to learn how I can be a better ally, without expecting LGBTQ+ community members to teach me - through reading, building networks with colleagues from the LGBTQ+ communities and seeking out content from LGBTQ+ creators and creatives.