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Married at First Sight Australia has an air date!

by Joshua Withers | May 7, 2015 | News

Monday, May 18 on Channel Nine. Bring on this crazy social experiment. So glad I’m in it!

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A whole lotta heart in being your celebrant
What a traumatic year
Lean on me, I’ve been here longer than you
A note on affordable and reasonably priced wedding vendors
Melbourne city elopement with Sara and Mike!

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Celebrants - I've just published Acknowledgement of Country in our weddings on the celebrant.institute ... celebrant.institute/ceremony/…

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@NickEvershed Look, if you’re expecting us to read past the headlines, you’re preaching to the wrong choir :)

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Celebrants - I've just published How to get couples to book you as their celebrant on the celebrant.institute ... celebrant.institute/business/…

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Happy Australians-arguing-about-a-public-holiday-whilst-not-doing-anything-actually-good-for-the-country week! It’s a real invasion on my senses.

From Josh Withers's Twitter via Micro.blog

One year ago today twitter.com/scottmorrisonm…

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@elopementcollective, making all the non Europe th

@elopementcollective, making all the non Europe things look and feel as good as plan A. Jemmah & Jack eloped in Tasmania after our Europe plans fell through. What an absolute pleasure it was // made with @joeyandjase + @theromantics__ + @hubertanddan at @thaliahaven ✨

This week I'm joining some of the smartest people

This week I'm joining some of the smartest people in the global wedding industry speaking at the Wedding Business CEO Summit. It's free to register through my direct link http://josh.show/summit and if you want access to the sessions after the day they are live, there's an all access pass for $67.

I'm talking about my little business passion: automating the business processes you can and should automate, and doing the deep work our clients really value in our practice.

It's going to be a really good little shot of business education to get in your mind as we start 2021.

http://josh.show/summit for a free ticket and/or to get an all access pass for forever access.

The wedding dress. Are you ready to hear a straig

The wedding dress.

Are you ready to hear a straight middle-aged white guy’s opinion on wedding dresses? Keep reading!

The wedding dress is not a uniform. It’s not supposed to be a certain length, colour, material, or style.

If your wedding is an event where you make the statement of “people like us, get married like this,” then your wedding dress is you saying “this is what I wear when I want to feel like a million dollars!”

As for for any wedding attire, at your own wedding you need not meet a dress standard implied by some wedding blogger or Pinterest user you’ve never met.

Your wedding dress or suit or onesie or whatever, is a statement of peak “You!”

It’s a material expression - in colour, fabric, and style - of who you are.

I hope when I see your attire I can get a sense of who you are when you feel like a superstar.

This is Milly & Dale in Queenstown, at their peak, before flying to Cecil’s Peak for photos with @laurencampbell for the @elopementcollective. The celebrant is me, if you were wondering. Florals by the lovely Tracey at @crimsonweddingflowers.

I just believe that your ceremony can be, and shou

I just believe that your ceremony can be, and should be, the best part of your wedding.

N&E photographed by @tessashannonphoto with the @elopementcollective and @thefrenchpetal

Fuck perfect weddings. Swear word up top to get y

Fuck perfect weddings.

Swear word up top to get your attention, but come with me. At almost every wedding - and even some elopements - there are good-natured, lovely, generous, and kind people ruining it.

They have the best of intentions, they love you. They want the best for you, they want it to be perfect - for you - but I want to hold these people, and give them a little shake, and firmly say "please stop."

I'm talking about the "it must be perfect for her" people. The people obsessed with making the wedding happen instead of letting it happen to them.

See, the art of making something perfect is the art of suffocating it until it doesn't move anymore, until it's still and a finished work.

Like children in beauty pageants, they were already beautiful and special and precious well before the first brush of makeup was applied, and arguably, that's when things start going pear-shaped for the child.

A wedding isn't a finished work. It's a living and breathing animal.

Adding extra moving parts, complex processes, slowly suffocates it. This is my protest against wedding rehearsals - nothing that happens in a rehearsal actually matters. It's all arbitrary. The simple act of practising walking down the aisle to a song starts sucking the oxygen out of that beautiful walk.

The art of making a wedding perfect is the art of taking all of the oxygen out of the room.

An actually perfect wedding is one where you're present, aware, calm, filled with joy and awe. Where you're comfortable in the silent moments knowing that you are loved.

That, is actually perfect.

A perfect wedding is one where you get married and you feel it with every inch of your skin, with every beat of your heart, with every a neutron of your brain.

That even the photos and your film - as lovely as they are - wouldn't accurately capture how good you felt because you were so "there."

We need not perfect weddings. We need to be present, finding comfort in the awkward pauses in between the moments. Enjoying the pure beauty of being alive and being loved.

Because being married is so much better than getting married.

Taylor + Carl #marriedbyjosh with @joeyandjase + @elopementcollective

Isn't life on earth a funny, odd, thing. Battling

Isn't life on earth a funny, odd, thing.

Battling through the 1 in 4 quadrillion chance of ever existing you are hurtled into life under the care of parents still reeling from their own hurtling into life a few years earlier.

We start to build a life, filled with values, tastes, emotions, relationships, expectations, family, and traditions.

We eventually recognise that there's something inside us that needs to connect on a deeper level with people, and in particular, one person.

A hop, skip, and a jump later and you're standing in front of a marriage celebrant and some wedding photographers under the Manhattan Bridge in New York exchanging vows and becoming a married couple.

It's honestly beautiful, and the beauty I see - in marriage - is two-fold.

The first being truth. Truth being the establishment of a solid and firm foundation for the two of you to pivot from. That you would know without a seed of doubt that you are seen, you are heard, you are loved: truth.

The second is hope.

Amanda Gorman said it so succinctly in her poem read at Joe Biden's inauguration when she said "we've weathered and witnessed a nation that isn't broken, but simply unfinished."

Hope is acknowledging that we as individuals, as a family, as a community, that we are unfinished. We are not done yet. Our best is yet to come: hope.

And I believe that the greatest vessel for that kind of hope, is being together.

Ana and Scott #marriedbyjosh in #NewYorkCity with the @elopementcollective and @bulb.creative

What’s my least favourite part of the job? @jak

What’s my least favourite part of the job?

@jakehoganphotography slipped into my DMs and asked what my least favourite part of being a celebrant is.

The short answer is guests.

The long answer is more complicated.

There’s a reason any sports team loves to play a home game. There’s a reason sports teams have struggled to play in front of empty stadiums this last year.

Being surrounded by a posse of your biggest fans really brings an element to a wedding that I don’t think many guests understand.

I honestly believe that if most guests knew that them enjoying the ceremony, physically leaning in, cheering, clapping, laughing, awwwing, adds so much to a ceremony.

When you are all standing around empty chairs, or if you’re spread so far across the park where the wedding is, or worse, everyone is seated at the back of the ceremony, it creates really weird vibe. It looks like you don’t give a shit.

Here’s a simple and solid tip to wedding guests: look like you give a shit.

Sit in the front row because you’re excited and want to be as close to the action as possible, then graciously move to the second row when the parents need somewhere to sit.

When you hang at the back, arms folded, hoping to stand as far away from the ceremony as possible, you’re signalling to us that this isn’t important.

That sucks.

That’s why wrangling guests is my lest favourite part of being a celebrant.

What is a celebrant? Almost every American I run

What is a celebrant?

Almost every American I run into asks me the question, and it's happening a lot more as I blow up on Clubhouse, so I thought I'd write it out for @amarisphoto and anyone else interested.

The short answer is that a celebrant is the person who marries the two people hoping to be married. A celebrant is the person who conducts a ceremony.

But let's narrow down on the Australian marriage celebrant.

Appointed by the Commonwealth (federal government) Attorney-General after graduating from a 12 month Certificate IV course, the hopeful celebrant can apply with personal references, police check, and a $600 application fee, and wait a number of months to find out if they reached the bar. It generally costs over $2000 to begin.

Once appointed they have the legal authority to marry people in Australia, according to Aussie law. This is called solemnising, the act or duty of performing a ceremony.

People from any country and of any citizenship can marry in Australia if they're 18 or over, not already married, not related, consenting and willing to marriage and can give one month's notice to the celebrant. There are a few edge cases but that's generally the criteria for marriage. The notice is given via a form the celebrant helps you with. People hoping to marry don't need to seek permission (license) from the government, they just need to meet the standard needed to get married, and a celebrant can marry them.

Celebrants are appointed by the gov but are not employed by or under contract to them (though they do have an obligation to do annual training and be not-terrible). We generally have no religious or church affiliation, but of course we may do personally.

Celebrants are personalities with legal authority to marry.

There's about 9000 celebrants in Australia so you're bound to find one whose personality, vibe, worldview, and business suits your tastes.

Celebrants bring the vibe to your wedding. We're given the remote control to how your wedding feels. We control the metaphorical temperature in the room.

If I might say so myself, I'm in charge of how awesome your wedding is.

📷 @lukefletcherphoto + @elopementcollective of @chardaeandmitch

Hi! I’m Josh and there’s probably at least one

Hi! I’m Josh and there’s probably at least one of you who doesn’t know who I am or what I stand for.

A good mate messaged me recently and commented on my new website design, saying “I think you’re so much more than a fun celebrant.”

So what am I? What do I value?

- I value truth. I have no time for BS, and can only do so much polite talk in each day. Let’s get real, especially when it comes to the fireworks that begin your marriage.

- I am a nerd. I just saw an Instagram post of a celebrant using a wired microphone, and I’m that kind of guy who wants your ceremony to sound amazing. I’ll record in your ceremony in 4K video blah blah blah, basically I love my tech and want your wedding to shine because of it.

- I detest divorce. I’m not denying that there is a real place for divorce in our society and people in bad and unhealthy relationships need an option. But I come from a long line of divorce, so many broken families, and messed up kids, it’s hard to think of someone up the family tree from me who isn’t divorced. So cut to 2021 Josh and I strongly value healthy and enjoyable marriages. I hope you have one and I get to breathe it into life.

- I am unscripted. Imagine you’re watching a new Marvel movie and Robert Downey Junior is there in full Ironman get-up, reading from the script. This is on screen in the cinema! I believe that your marriage ceremony deserves something epic and meaningful, something more than me flicking through pages in a folder.

- I can’t leave a pun unattended. I might not be a comedian, and I don’t want to pretend to be one in your wedding ceremony, but I can’t leave a hood joke unturned. Be warned :)

- Finally, I love photograohy. Like this photo of me by @tessashannonphoto. I love the power of storytelling through photo and film.

When your job is marrying people, you'd be surpris

When your job is marrying people, you'd be surprised how often the people you marry drop into your mind.

I'm always finding myself wondering about my couples, usually accompanied by a little social media stalk, sometimes a DM, just to see how they're doing.

Caitlyn and Brendan, you just won the "Sunday night and Josh is thinking of you" award. Congrats!

Which reminded me of these super sweet words they wrote about me after their wedding at @malenymanor.

"By the time we found Josh we were so over the breathy, calming voices of every celebrant we'd met, we were super relieved that there existed a person who we could relax around and just talk about our marriage like we would to a mate. During our first meeting, Josh opened our eyes to the idea that our wedding ceremony doesn't have to be some awkward part of the day that we just wanted to get over and done with, and it helped us change all our preconceived ideas for what we 'had' to do. The end result was a ceremony with all the filthy innuendos & swearing we desired, that still managed to be meaningful & a total tear jerker - exactly what we wanted. Cheers Josh."

Thanks to my mate @murray_redpath_photography for making the photo as well!

Pro wedding planning tip: All wedding vendors, ve

Pro wedding planning tip:

All wedding vendors, venues, creatives, artists, charge reasonably. They are all affordable. There's no such thing as cheap or expensive.

What differentiates them is what you expect from them, what they can create for you, and if they have the capacity to create it for you.

Stop searching for cheap, affordable, reasonably priced wedding vendors, and start searching for wedding vendors that can do what you expect them to do, in a fashion that suits your tastes, within their own capacity.

And if that invoiced amount is too high, then your expectations and your wallet have an imbalance. Not the wedding industry.

In the fifth book of the Jewish Torah, the Book of

In the fifth book of the Jewish Torah, the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses tells the Israelites “If a man has recently married, he must not be sent to war or have any other duty laid on him. For one year he is to be free to stay at home and bring happiness to the wife he has married.”

So considering today is your first wedding anniversary @lauraszcz, how much happiness has @timewithalex.co brought you considering a pandemic forced him to not be sent to war or have any duty laid on him? #pandemichumour

Seriously though, happy anniversary to the both of you, and thanks to @mikehemusphoto for making the art!

About this time (late at night) nine years ago tod

About this time (late at night) nine years ago today, Britt and I changed gears from boyfriend/girlfriend to fiancé/fiancée.

I’ve been thinking about this all day. How simply beautifully nice it was to be affirmed by her, to be seen and heard and known.

But here’s the truth: being married is so much better than getting married.

Couples whose weddings have been turned upside down by COVID probably need to hear this. Don’t let the want of a big glorious marriage celebration hold you back from the utter joy of actually just being married.

Getting married is just the opening act. Being married is the headliner.

Getting married is good, but being married is better.

The people who say that they don’t think marriage changes their relationship are wrong. Marriage says you are loved. Without question, without condition, you are.

Photo of me and my love by @tessashannonphoto

Quick tip on choosing a photographer: Anyone who c

Quick tip on choosing a photographer: Anyone who calls themselves a photographer should be able to make a super hot portrait photo of a newly married couple in perfect sunset light in conditions they control.

If you really want to figure out if a photographer is worthy of your selection, look for their ceremony photos, either on social media (you'll find barely any shared) or in their full galleries on their websites.

In a wedding ceremony the photographer loses control of the positioning, light, framing, and composition. There are people in the way. Aunt May is in competition with them for the best photo of the day, the videographer has a tripod in the middle of the aisle, and it's three, four, maybe five hours before sunset - or worse, it's inside and the only lighting is artificial.

Ceremony photographs are the best judge of a wedding photographer. When dealt the worst light, with limited movement, and often not being able to get close enough - or far enough away - for the framing they hoped for, what can they create?

Please come to rescue me when the photographers storm our family home for my head.

This is @michaelbriggsphotography with the @elopementcollective and he always bangs out an A+ ceremony shoot.

We always joke that we don't want any repeat busin

We always joke that we don't want any repeat business in this line of work but we will happily make an exception when 50% of one of your favourite couples not only recommends The @elopementcollective, but comes along as chief babysitter/2nd witness. Photo made for The EC by @jasoncorrotophoto

2020. What a traumatic year. It’s a miracle tha

2020. What a traumatic year.

It’s a miracle that Britt and I are here standing together, holding each other, smiling, at the end of this year. Someone acutely described our situation like this: this year all of us need more than any one of us can give. That’s literally how I feel. That our clients needed more from us than we could give, our business partners and industry friends needed more than we could give, and within the four walls of our home the three - almost four - of us needed more than we could give.

I’ve just run our numbers for the year and that’s the story I can read in the spreadsheet.

Only 59% of my weddings went ahead as planned, but only 28% of our elopements went ahead as planned. More than 20% of our couples are still without a new wedding or elopement date. Our inboxes were about 20% busier this year than 2019 and normally our client relationships have become about 60% longer.

The simplified story is that we’re doing a lot more for less with less to give. That’s the entire wedding industry’s story, and I’d argue it’s the world’s story. It’s highly likely that the asshole on the street, or the rude person at the shops, is just as empty and as tired as we are. We all need a lot more grace, to be given, and received, before the world gets any better.

2021, God knows whose year it is, but I hope it’s yours, and even maybe ours.

Walking into 2021 like Luna

Walking into 2021 like Luna

Hi from Tassie, we ‘laxin

Hi from Tassie, we ‘laxin

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, is it 2023 yet?

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, is it 2023 yet?

Britt, Luna, and I are going on a break until January 9. It’s possible that Tara will reply to your emails in between the beach and opening presents, but please reduce your expectations of us from December 24 until we’re back to work on January 9. It’s a been a hell of a year.

If you’d like to lock me in for your wedding, talk about your wedding, or ask me my opinions on which country’s whisky is the best, you’ve got until Wednesday afternoon to do it.

Thanks to @tessashannonphoto for our family photos 🙏🏻

Hi, my name is Josh, and I’m a storyteller.

I’m passionate about telling stories vocally, loquaciously, visually, photographically, journalistically, truthfully, and beautifully.

I’m not too worried about how weddings are “supposed to be” or worse, how they used to be.

I just think that your wedding should have as little to do with me, my theatrical dreams, your family’s hopes, or society’s expectations, as possible.

Instead, that your wedding would be real, honest, beautiful, and true.

If you’d like a celebrant who is likely to make some photos after your ceremony, dance with your grandma at the reception, fly a drone at sunset, make a little film, record a podcast with your friends, encourage your guests to laugh and cry and clap and feel something in the ceremony, then I’m your guy.

If 2020 has proven anything to me, it’s that I really love doing this, and other people like it as well.

Photo of me trying to make a photo of a lightning strike by my boy, @zainkruyerweddings

Space. The art of celebrancy is the art of gather

Space.

The art of celebrancy is the art of gathering. I think a lot about the time I visited Uluru and read about the significance of the space to the First Australians. Uluru is a space where those people gather for ceremony.

The art of celebrancy is the art of creating space.. Creating a space where the two people getting married can enter, exchange vows, and leave married.

The art of celebrancy is the art of acknowledging the long and wide story arc whilst also being present in this very minute where you change from from "not validly married" to "married" and we explore what that means.

I'm so dedicated to the art of celebrancy.

This is Cara and Pete #marriedbyjosh with the @elopementcollective @joeyandjase at @deuxbelettes

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Tugun Qld 4224
Australia

0411 849 404
hello@joshwithers.com.au

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