Providing a wedding experience catering for all tastes

A Carrick-on-Shannon woman has been forging her own way in marriage celebrations, providing unique and intimate marriages for a large spectrum of couples, ranging from those “marginalised in society” to those in an end-of-life situation.

Since her qualification two years ago, Loraine Greaney has been practicing as a professional marriage celebrant, operating under Entheos Ireland with full HSE recognition.

She was runner-up last year in the ‘Let’s Talk Weddings’ celebrant category.

The initial inspiration for Loraine to become a marriage celebrant came during her own wedding planning.

“I got married myself 10 years ago and we didn’t want a big wedding and we felt that a church setting, even though both of us are people of faith, might be a little bit lonesome because we only wanted a few people at our wedding,” said Loraine.

After finding an alternative venue, Loraine found out that she now had to source someone to conduct the marriage, and found a “fabulous lady” from the HSE Solemniser registrar.

After attending more celebrant led weddings, she sought to become a qualified celebrant herself.

“When I found Entheos, I just felt like right that’s definitely the one for me. So I travelled up and down to Dublin for six months and I trained with a woman called Karen Dempsey and after the six months then I was placed on the register of solemnisers, the same register that all the priests in the country are on.” Loraine hasn’t looked back since her qualification, as she put it: “Since then it’s just gone from strength to strength. I think it’s actually the best decision I’ve ever made in life to do it and I love it, I absolutely love it.” The range Loraine’s practice offers opens the possibilities for soon to-be married couples to customise their wedding experience. Various wedding cultures and traditions can be incorporated and blended into a couple’s special day, including Celtic hand fastenings and 50 different readings from old Irish poetry to famous film script.

A wide variety of couples from around the globe come to Loraine to be married, and the nature of her practice opens her up to marry interfaith couples, giving the example of a couple from Longford and Senegal.

The symbolism of the candle flame is also very important to Loraine during the wedding.

Loraine describes the process: “I always put candles of remembrance into the ceremonies that you’d often see in a church ceremony. With celebrant led ceremonies you’re creating a space for the people who would have been there had they still been with us.” She added: “Then with that flame, we carry it forward into their unity candles and we explain to the guests the importance of using that same flame because they’re taking the wisdom, the love and the knowledge of all that has gone before them and bringing it together into their one candle.” Loraine’s practice provides more than standard weddings, delivering end-of-life marriages and children’s funerals under the Lara’s Legacy branch of Entheos at no cost.

“For every couple that we marry, we take a bit of the fee and we pop it into a pot and we make sure that we can do all of those ceremonies for free.” From March onwards Loraine said she is busy “almost every weekend”, and that the positive feedback she receives from her ceremonies encourages engaged couples to have their marriage celebrated by her.

She offered her advice to couples who may not want a traditional church wedding, “I tell couples not to be afraid of having a celebrant led ceremony. I think a lot of people think that it’s either the HSE registrar or it’s the humanists.

“I don’t think people are familiar with the fact that there are interfaith celebrants out there who can celebrate people of none and all faiths,” said Loraine. Loraine can be contacted on her Instagram @celebrantloraine or by phone: 086 865 6268.