How to become a civil marriage celebrant

The Marriage Celebrants Program was established in 1973. It enables the appointment of suitably qualified people to perform marriages and provides couples with a meaningful alternative to Registry Office and mainstream church weddings.

An extensive four year review of the Marriage Celebrants Program was commenced in 1996. The review carefully considered the opinions and experiences of marriage celebrants, celebrant organisations and the marrying couples who use their services and identified a number of deficiencies in the program that required reform.

With the aim of raising the standard of services provided by marriage celebrants appointed under the program, a package of reforms was developed to broaden and enhance the role of celebrants by including the provision of information on pre-marriage and other relationship services. The aim is to ensure celebrants play an important role in developing longer-lasting family relationships and therefore stronger communities.

The reforms, by way of amendments to the Marriage Act 1961,commenced on 1 September 2003.

Before you embark on the training to become a marriage celebrant, please consider the following information:

The marriage rate is generally stable, although there has been a decline over the past twenty years. In 2006, 114,200 marriages were registered in Australia.

The number of Commonwealth-appointed marriage celebrants has increased from just under 3,500 in 2003 to just over 5,500 in 2007 (thousands more appointed in 2008).

There are approximately 20,000 ministers of religion, appointed by State and Territory registering authorities, working as marriage celebrants for mainstream religious denominations

To find out how many people live in your area, or how many registered marriage celebrants there are, you can search the Register of Marriage Celebrants.

45% of the marriages that take place each year are performed by ministers of religion and up to 10% by Registries of Births, Deaths and Marriages (this percentage varies widely between States and Territories).

Approximately 55% of the marriages that take place each year are performed by marriage celebrants registered under this Program.

Most marriage celebrants do a very limited number of weddings each year.

There are ongoing costs involved in meeting the requirements to maintain registration as a marriage celebrant.  These need to be considered.  Such costs include annual professional development obligations, maintaining a suitable wardrobe and storage and office facilities.

Remember that it may take some time to recoup the costs outlaid for the initial training, annual professional development training and start-up costs involved in setting up your business as a marriage celebrant.

Information supplied by Australian Government's Attorney-General's Department and by Andrew Sinclair, Brisbane Marriage Celebrant.