A celebrant and officiant walkthrough

This walkthrough shows a celebrant or officiant using 1pm end to end: the lead, the first meeting, the booking agreement and fee, the couple's paperwork and story, the ceremony run of show, the day itself, and getting paid. If you marry couples, name babies, renew vows or lead memorial services, and you run your bookings across an inbox, a calendar, a folder of scanned documents and a ceremony script in a word processor, this is how those pieces fit into one record per ceremony.

What shapes a celebrant's work is that you are hired for a short part of the day that everything else waits on. You arrive at someone else's venue, you usually hold the legal side of a wedding, and the ceremony you write depends on what the couple tells you about themselves. So the workflow below is built around three things: collecting the right information and documents from the couple in good time, writing the ceremony, and running a tight ceremony with the musician, the photographer and the venue coordinator all working to the same times.

The example throughout is a garden wedding ceremony for 90 guests, booked ten months out, with a meet-and-greet over video, a rehearsal the day before, and a string duo for the music. The same workflow runs an elopement, a naming ceremony or a vow renewal.

If you are new to 1pm, this article assumes you have signed up and you are looking at the Leads inbox you land on.

1pm does not lodge, check or advise on legal marriage paperwork. It holds the documents and the dates. The legal requirements are set by the place the ceremony happens, and they stay your responsibility.

The phases

1. Capture the lead.
2. Reply and book the meet-and-greet.
3. Send the quote, sign the agreement, take the booking fee.
4. Set up the ceremony.
5. Collect the paperwork and the couple's story.
6. Keep the legal deadlines in front of you.
7. Build the ceremony run of show.
8. Share it with the musician, photographer and venue.
9. Run the ceremony.
10. Invoice the balance and close out.

Capture the lead

Put a lead form on your website (capturing leads with a form) and every new lead lands in the Leads inbox with the couple's names, the date and their message. Add fields for the things you need before you can say yes: the ceremony location, the guest count, and whether it is a legal wedding or a commitment ceremony.

Run one lead type per kind of ceremony, for example Wedding, Naming ceremony and Vow renewal. Each lead type can add its own request pack and trigger its own automations, so a wedding lead gets the legal paperwork asks and a naming ceremony lead does not.

A lead that arrives by phone or at a wedding expo goes in with Add lead, and it lands in the same inbox. Leads you add by hand have no lead type, so add their request pack yourself once they book.

The first thing to check on any wedding lead is the date. A celebrant can only be at one ceremony at a time, and the calendar shows your whole year at a glance.

Reply and book the meet-and-greet

Open the lead and reply from inside 1pm (replying to leads). The couple's answers come back into the same thread. Save your "thanks for getting in touch, here's how I work" message as a reply template so answering a new lead takes two clicks.

Most couples want to meet their celebrant before they book. Send them your booking page (appointments and the booking page) and let them pick a time for a video call or a coffee. The appointment goes on your calendar, the couple gets a confirmation with a calendar file, and their email carries Reschedule and Cancel appointment buttons so a clash does not turn into a second booking. An appointment never blocks a ceremony date, so a Tuesday meeting cannot stop you confirming a Saturday wedding.

Log the call on the lead afterwards (logging calls, texts and meetings) so the pipeline knows you have spoken.

Send the quote, sign the agreement, take the booking fee

Build your packages once in the items catalog: a full wedding ceremony, an elopement, a rehearsal, travel beyond a set distance, a PA system for an outdoor ceremony. Then raise a quote, and give it a proposal if you want a designed online page around it with your story and photos.

When the couple accepts, 1pm raises the confirmation, which carries your booking agreement from your terms library. The couple types their names to agree, and the signed confirmation is your contract. Put your cancellation and date-change rules in those terms, since a couple who postpone is the most common dispute a celebrant has.

Attach a booking fee as a deposit (deposits and balances), as a fixed amount or a percentage. The couple pays it online by card if you have connected Stripe (getting paid), or by bank transfer. The leads pipeline shows every couple's position, from Quote sent through Awaiting signature to Awaiting payment, so the ones going quiet stand out. Following up on leads covers chasing them.

Set up the ceremony

Converting the lead creates the booking and fills in the names and date you already have (turning a lead into an event). On the booking, fill in:

• Client. The couple. If the couple is one contact, keep the second partner's name in a custom contact field.
• Organizer. The wedding planner or venue coordinator, if there is one. Their details show on the header of every shared link, so the musician knows who to call.
• Date, start and end. The ceremony time, not the whole wedding. Allow for your arrival and the signing.
• Location. The ceremony venue's name, address and access instructions ("park behind the stables, the arbour is past the rose garden"). The Location sits on the booking itself, so you don't need to save every garden you ever marry a couple in.
• Status. Lead, then Tentative while you hold the date, then Confirmed once the agreement is signed and the fee is paid.

If you run an agency with several celebrants, set each celebrant up as a Space (what a Space is). Put the celebrant on the booking and 1pm stops you giving one celebrant two ceremonies at the same time (preventing a double-booked Space). Each celebrant can then have their own booking page.

Book the rehearsal as an appointment on the day before, linked to the couple, with the venue in its notes.

Collect the paperwork and the couple's story

This is where most of a celebrant's admin sits, and it is what request packs are for. Build a Wedding ceremony pack once, then point your Wedding lead type at it, so every wedding booking asks the couple for the same things as soon as it is created.

A typical wedding pack:

Tick Only the client sees this on every ask. Anyone else you give a link to, such as the musician, would otherwise see the couple's questions, and identity documents are the last thing you want on a supplier's phone.

Then open the couple's event portal and send them the link (your booking portal and your event portal). They answer in their own time, and the booking's Requests panel shows what is in and what is outstanding. Reminder emails chase what is missing, so you don't have to. The Tell us about the two of you answer appears as the Client's brief on the booking (the event brief), which is the raw material for the ceremony you write. Client questionnaires and surveys goes further into building the questions.

Identity documents are sensitive. Once you have checked a document and approved it, Document retention under Account, then Profile, can delete the file after a set number of days while keeping the record that you checked it (deleting documents after you approve them).

Keep the legal deadlines in front of you

Legal weddings run on deadlines that count back from the ceremony date. In Australia, for example, the Notice of Intended Marriage has to be lodged at least one month before the wedding. Missing a deadline like that is the one mistake a celebrant cannot fix on the day, so put the legal steps on every wedding as a checklist.

Save your legal steps as a workflow in tasks and workflows, for example:

1. Notice received and lodged.
2. Documents sighted.
3. Declarations signed.
4. Marriage certificates prepared.
5. Paperwork registered after the ceremony.

Then create an automation with the trigger X days before the event and the action Create planner tasks, limited to the Wedding lead type. Set the days well ahead of your earliest deadline, for example 60. Every confirmed wedding then gets the checklist as a task on its booking 60 days before the ceremony, with one step for each item.

The task is created without a due date. Open it and add one if you want it to turn red and read "overdue" when the date passes.

Build the ceremony run of show

Open the booking to reach the run of show. For a celebrant it is the order of ceremony, with the times everyone else works to. Type it in with + Insert row, or paste it from your template (pasting in a run of show).

A typical order for a 3:00pm ceremony:

• 2:15pm Celebrant arrives, checks the PA and the signing table.
• 2:30pm Guests arrive, string duo plays.
• 2:50pm Partner and attendants in place.
• 3:00pm Processional music, bride enters.
• 3:05pm Welcome and acknowledgement.
• 3:10pm Your story.
• 3:15pm Reading, Aunt Clare.
• 3:20pm Legal words and vows.
• 3:25pm Rings, declaration, first kiss.
• 3:27pm Signing, string duo plays.
• 3:35pm Presentation of the couple.
• 3:36pm Recessional music.
• 3:40pm Group photo, then celebrant leaves.

Put the cues in each item's Details (formatting item details). "Recessional music: start on the kiss, not on the presentation" is the line that saves a ceremony. Put the readers' names and the ring bearer on the items they belong to.

Keep the full ceremony script out of Event Notes. Everyone with a link sees that box first, so it is for the few lines they all need: "Ceremony moves to the barn if it rains. Call the coordinator on 0400 000 000."

When you have a run of show you like, save the booking as a template. The next wedding starts from your standard order of ceremony rather than a blank page.

Share it with the musician, photographer and venue

Add the string duo and anyone else working to your timing as crew on the booking (assigning crew to ROS items), and set the Responsible person on the items that are theirs. Their link highlights their cues, with the rest of the ceremony as context. Send each one their live link (sharing the live link).

For suppliers you don't need to add as crew, such as the photographer the couple hired, send the public read-only link instead (the public shareable runsheet). The couple can see the same order of ceremony from their event portal (sharing the run of show with your client).

Run the ceremony

On the day, keep the live link open on your phone. Tap Start and Mark finished as you go (how crew mark items on the run of show). If the bride is ten minutes late, push the remaining items back (pushing the timeline when an item runs over) and the musician's and photographer's screens update within seconds. The run of show is saved on your phone, so it still reads in a garden with no signal (working offline at the venue).

Invoice the balance and close out

Invoice the balance from the booking's Billing page before the ceremony, on the date your terms set (deposit and balance invoices). Add extras such as a second rehearsal or extra travel as their own lines. An automation with the Invoice due soon trigger reminds the couple before it falls due (chasing overdue invoices).

After the ceremony:

• Finish the legal steps on the booking's task, including registering the marriage.
• Set the status to Completed. The booking leaves your active list and stays on the couple's record.
• Ask for a review. An automation with the trigger X days after the event and the action Send client email sends your thank-you and review link. Client emails wait in a 24-hour review queue, so you can check each one before it goes.
• Check the year. Reports shows your bookings, revenue and lead conversion, and exports to CSV.

Set up automations

The legal checklist, the balance reminder and the thank-you above are all automations. An automation is a rule you set once: a trigger (when it runs) and one or more actions (what it does). Build them under Automations in the sidebar. They start switched off, so nothing sends until you turn one on, and Show upcoming lists the bookings a rule will run for before you do.

A few more that suit a celebrant:

• Welcome a new lead. Trigger Lead received, limited to your Wedding lead type. Email the couple your ceremony packages and a link to book a meet-and-greet, wait three days, then send a sample ceremony.
• Remind them about the meet-and-greet. Trigger X minutes before an appointment with Remind the client sends the couple a reminder an hour before the call. Put the [video link] field in the email and it carries the link to join.
• Chase the booking. Trigger Accepted, not signed at 3 days asks for the agreement. Signed, no payment at 3 days asks for the booking fee (chasing a lead that goes quiet).
• Ask for the story in good time. Trigger X days before the event at 90 emails the couple a link to their portal and asks them to finish their questions and documents.
• Send the rehearsal details. Trigger X days before the event at 7 emails the couple the rehearsal time and place. Add Email an address to the same rule to send the venue coordinator the same details.

Related articles

• A wedding day walkthrough covers the same day from the whole wedding's side.
• A wedding photographer walkthrough covers another supplier running their own couples in 1pm.
• Request packs covers every kind of ask and how a lead type adds a pack.
• Automations covers every trigger and action used above.