🌈 🧡 Creative, colourful humanist ceremonies for weddings, namings and funerals 🧡 🌈
10/11/2025
Beyond excited about this wedding 💕 Valentine’s Day 2026 is going to be really, really special! 🥂
If you’re thinking about a celebrant led wedding next year (or the year after!) I’d love to hear from you - but don’t wait too long, because those dates won’t be around forever... 📆
Not sure yet what sort of wedding you want? Curious about what’s involved in a humanist wedding and how it’s different from a registry office wedding? I’m always happy to chat!
09/11/2025
A piece that I wrote about why we probably don’t talk about our funeral wishes, and why we definitely should 🧡
Talking about death won’t make it come knocking on your door any sooner. It won’t jinx you. Far from it, in fact. Talking about death and dying can free you up to really live . So, what’s stopping people having those conversations?
09/11/2025
🪷 She’d made a life for herself here in England, thousands of miles from Australia, where she was born. Cambridge, where she arrived to study all those years ago, became her home and she spent her life here surrounded by the books that she loved.
🪷 When she died, her niece and nephew travelled here to see her laid to rest and we live-streamed the celebration of her life - carried out with the same quiet dignity with which she had lived it - all the way to her brother in Melbourne.
🪷 She’d asked - her only real instruction, in fact - for a non-denominational funeral. Her niece was reading the eulogy and her nephew was reading two poems, so my task wasn’t to share her life story. Instead, I was there to create the right atmosphere and the right space for the people who loved her to honour her.
🪷 In opening the service, I spoke about how joining together in collective reflection, even when we are separated by distance and even when we hold different beliefs, is powerful and a true act of love.
🪷 I also spoke about how, although she may not have called herself a humanist, she held many of those same values; curiosity about the world, a belief in the power of community and a consciousness of the impact of her own actions.
🪷 And I drew my welcome to a close by repeating some words from Mahatma Ghandi, reminding us all that even ‘in a gentle way, you can shake the world’ and that every life can make a difference.
🪷 With the whirlwind of travelling halfway across the world, and all the deathmin they had to do, it was also really important to create and hold a space where her niece and nephew could pause - even if only for half an hour - to reflect and remember.
🪷 Very grateful to them for taking the time, among all the flurry of activity and tying up loose ends before returning home, to send these lovely words of thanks. It was a very different, very quiet and gentle, but very special farewell and I often think of it.
05/11/2025
Why do I talk so much about natural burial?
🌿Because it’s a more sustainable choice. It uses significantly less energy and releases fewer harmful chemicals into the environment. It’s plastic free too, encouraging the use of biodegradable coffins and shrouds, and taking up fewer scarce material resources.
🌿Because it has such a strong connection with nature and the seasons. There isn’t much that feels more beautiful than returning someone to the earth at the end of their life. Natural burial supports local wildlife and biodiversity too.
🌿Because it invites more chances to be creative and spontaneous in the way we say goodbye. These ceremonies can have fewer time restrictions, and give us a much stronger sense of connection with the person who has died. It keeps us closer and feels much less remote.
🌿Because it allows someone’s values to live on after their death, and makes it possible for them to continue changing the world and looking after the planet even after they are gone.
🌿Natural burial isn’t the perfect answer, I know. After all, what is? It uses land that is becoming more and more scarce, and we should certainly keep exploring other ways, like aquamation. But still...
🌿I love natural burials because they are beautiful and true, authentic and real.
03/11/2025
✨ MAKING IT YOURS ✨
There’s so much to think about when you’re planning a farewell, it can easy to overlook the ceremony space itself 💭
Funerals aren’t just for crematorium chapels - they can be held anywhere, with or without the coffin present. You can hold a ceremony in your own garden, in your front room… in a hotel where they enjoyed visiting for dinners, a favourite park where they walked the dog. Anywhere that feels meaningful 🌳 🐾
I’ve celebrated lives in all sorts of places, from community allotments among the bees and butterflies 🐝 🦋 to lakeside teepees with paper lanterns dangling overhead 🌻
Don’t ever feel rushed into deciding where a funeral should be held… you have TIME to find the right place.
Even in a crematorium chapel, you can personalise the space to make it feel more like your person. I’ve seen…
🏁 Chequered flags over the exit door for a racing fan
🍬 Bowls of sweeties, because they never let you leave at the end of a visit without one
🎶 Copies of a musician’s last CD and an artist’s glass sculptures
🥣 Well worn recipe books from which they cooked your childhood dinners
The possibilities are endless, and decorating the space is a great way to involve people who perhaps don’t want to get up and speak… to make them feel part of the celebration of life.
You can place all sorts of items on or around the coffin too. It’s such a loving gesture, to approach your person and say… “Ah, there you are.” Not to be afraid to stand near them 🧡
What would you pick to represent you? For me it would be rainbows 🌈
27/10/2025
Someone asked me this weekend what it is about being a celebrant that brings me the most joy, and their question really got me thinking.
Walking alongside families and being there to witness the key moments in their lives is right up there.
I’ve done namings for couples that I’ve married, and now Jess has asked me to be the celebrant for her and Charlie’s wedding next year. So excited! And thank you so much to Jess for this lovely little review 🧡
Just the kickstart my week needed 🌈✨
25/10/2025
Hello, it’s great to have you here! 🌈🌻I’m Alex, and I’m a colourful, creative celebrant based in Cambridge.
Not sure how to book me for your wedding?
I like to make sure that working with me is nice and simple… and that includes booking. Swipe to see what happens next 📲
It really is that easy! 🧡✨
Not made up your mind yet? Save this post and share it with your love… and do drop me a message if you have any questions. Happy wedding planning! 💐
Photo credits:
1, 2, 4 and 6
3 and 5
24/10/2025
Every celebrant business like mine depends on word of mouth - from guests as well as clients. So, if you’ve ever been at one of my ceremonies - whether that’s a wedding, a naming or a funeral - and you’d like to put a little spring in my step this Friday afternoon, would you consider taking a couple of minutes to leave me a lovely little review? Click on the link below!
Still in love with this brilliant branding from actual wonder woman ✨🦸🏾♀️
It’s made such a huge difference having all all this at my fingertips whenever I’ve need to create something for my business - welcome info for namings, funeral flyers, banners for wedding fairs… or updating my website, like I am this week (finally - sshhhh!)
It’s bold, bright, bursting with colour and 100% me. It’s helped me stand out, and show up as a celebrant 🧡🌈
Plus, it meant working alongside a local, independent, female owned business - so it’s a win all round! 💥
18/10/2025
🍂 Something special for D’s natural burial today
🍂 With the rose petals his family asked for to scatter into his grave, I mixed some oak leaves, foraged from under the trees at the woodland burial ground 🍂
🍂 As one of his sons said in his tribute, D’s surname came from the old Norse words - ayk skoog - for oak wood, trees that are associated in folklore with wisdom and knowledge, resilience, strength, and endurance… all qualities that D possessed in abundance 🍂
🍂 Really moving to see the oak leaves and rose petals fluttering down through the autumn sunshine, and his youngest grandson making a border of them around his grave 🍂
🍂 Gentle, authentic and performed with love. How farewells can be 🍂
18/10/2025
A special keepsake ready to send out to Sarah’s family. She wanted to be buried along the Joshua trees, so I stitched her a picture of them… 🌅
17/10/2025
🍫MAKING IT PERSONAL🍫
I always encourage families to make a funeral space their own and to bring anything along that they want place on or around the coffin, in memory of their person.
Today, for B, we had his familiar hat, his bottle of gin and gin glass (never missed his 4 o’clock G & T and, if it looked like he was going to be late, he’d be tapping his watch)… and this box of Maltesers.
Never comfortable with accepting gifts, he would relent if you offered him chocolate - especially Maltesers. If you were very lucky he might even let you have one. Only one, mind you - he made sure he kept the box!
Today, as we concluded our celebration of his life, everyone there was encouraged to take a Maltesers - just one - from the open box we placed on the top of the coffin. B took the rest with him, just like always.
Aged 4, his first memory was being taken into care…walking down the garden path to a waiting car. He went on to build a wonderful life for himself and gathered around him the family that he’d never really had as a boy and today they all gathered to say goodbye to him one last time.
Simple funerals can still include meaningful moments 🧡🌈
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I strongly believe that we should all have access to the type of funeral we want. With around 40% of the UK population now describing themselves as non-religious, choice is becoming increasingly important.
Trained by Humanists UK, I work closely with friends and family of the person who has died to create personalised ceremonies that help the bereaved to say goodbye but also celebrate the life that has been. Your funeral, your way.
Eight years ago my father died very suddenly and my sisters and I found ourselves arranging his funeral. A bit lost as to what to do for the best, one thing we were sure of was that we wanted a non-religious funeral, one that reflected his love of music and his personality. We found a humanist celebrant, and knew straightaway that it was the right fit for us.
My background is in community work, particularly anti-poverty charities, teaching, research and working in end of life care. I am also a member of Humanists UK Pastoral Support Network (think non-religious hospital and prison chaplaincy) and am currently training as a volunteer with Addenbrookes Hospital.
I am based in Cambridge but work across East Anglia. Please take a look around the site for more information on the services I provide, and do get in touch if you have any questions.
