That’s a good question. Marriage celebrants marry people.
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Ok, I won’t just stop there.😛
Marriage celebrants are appointed (not anointed although who doesn’t love a good dowsing with some pettuli oil!?!🌺) by the Attorney General’s Office to perform marriage ceremonies in Australia, there’s a whole bunch of stuff already written on this here: https://www.ag.gov.au/FamiliesAndMarri…/…/Pages/default.aspx
I’m not going to go into the history of it, because, quite frankly I have no interest in history and gave it up as soon as humanly possible in High School preferring to study Italian and media studies (I obviously desired to stay unemployed for my entire 20’s)
So we know what marriage celebrants do, how do they actually do it
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1. Paperwork – not too much of it, but there is some. I’ll go into this in my next blog (What’s that you say, a sequel???!!)
2. The Marriage Ceremony – that’s the purpose of this blog. To explain what legally has to be said during the marriage ceremony.
Marriage ceremonies, the legal parts, are actually super short. In fact, the least amount of time to get married would be around 2 minutes if you only did the parts you HAD to do.
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(So the next time you are at a wedding and 1 hour and 45 minutes in feel free to stand up, “Boo!” and chuck rotten tomatoes.🍅🍅🍅)
So what you do have to say:
1. Both the parties full names, including the embarrassing middle names that everyone avoids using. Yep – even those have to be said. Either by the celebrant or by you. Somewhere, sometime in the marriage ceremony before or part of the legal vows. You have to use the two peoples full name.
2. The celebrant has to explain marriage to the two people getting married. This is called the Monitum – this is the bit that used to say “man and woman” but now says “two people” because the government finally realised its 2018 and they were so far behind the majority of Australians and the rest of their world in their archaic thinking. 
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3. Legal vows. Not lovey-dovey 💕 ones but an actual legal statement that is laid out in the marriage act. Each person says the same line putting in their own name in the A.B. (or C.D) bit, and their partners name in the partner’s name bit. It goes like this I call upon the persons here present to witness that I, A.B. (or C.D.), take thee, C.D. (or A.B.), to be my lawful wedded wife (or husband, or spouse).
That’s it.✅ That’s all the words that have to be in a marriage ceremony. ✅
🛑 No “I do’s” not legally required,
🛑 No “Who objects” or “who gives this woman” and certainly
🛑 No mentions of God. He / She/ It does NOT have to appear at your wedding, in ANY way shape or form and if you are being told that by your celebrant, you are being told a lie!
🛑 No “love is patient, love is kind”
🛑 No readings of any kind,
🛑 No obey,
🛑 No bird throwing,
🛑 No Jennifer Lopez wedding movie BS.
That doesn’t mean you can’t have it if you want, but it means that you don’t have to feel the pressure to do ANYTHING other than what you are legally required to do.
Your wedding is yours to shape, own and expresses your love in a way that suits you. Tick the legal boxes and then have fun with the other stuff.
What a good celebrant will do is work alongside you to create a moment that represents your relationship, respect the way you want to have your wedding and make it as easy and stress-free as possible to get married.
Some more tips on picking a good celebrant are here.
