QLD Sunshine Coast Merlin Coughlan

Many thanks to Merlin for providing her profile.

Merlin Coughlan – Sunshine Coast Civil Marriage Celebrant - Appointed 2 September 2008.

I am privileged to follow in my mother’s footsteps as a celebrant – and delighted that she is my willing mentor as I continue the life-long journey of learning about Celebrancy in all of its forms and developing my own version of best practice. After working in education, teaching both children and adults) for over 30 years, I was exhausted by the intensity of the day-to-day work, but loved the interaction with people of all ages and backgrounds that the job involved. I also loved to write and to teach writing, so when I was considering my options for the next 20 years, the idea of Celebrancy was high up on my list.

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I trained through a distance education whilst still working full time as Deputy Head of an Anglican Junior School in Townsville. Fortunately, my close friend Ruth Kuss, who was working with me at that time, trained with me and we had many lively discussions around the lunch table as well as during our designated ‘study time’ about our developing knowledge and understandings about the Marriage Act and other aspects of Celebrancy – and my Mum so willingly shared her knowledge with us via telephone when we couldn’t resolve an issue through our own discussion. These discussions ensured we developed a deep understanding of the Marriage Act. Ruth, now living in Brisbane, and I continue to co-mentor each other.

I began to work professionally as a Celebrant at the beginning of 2009, a year after moving to Montville in the hinterland of the Sunshine Coast. I am one of the few Celebrants in this area who speaks Japanese and have conducted a number of bi-lingual wedding ceremonies. I primarily work in Maleny and Montville, as well as at various Sunshine Coast beaches. I set a goal of 15 weddings for my first year and managed to exceed that number, and bookings for this year are very strong.

A Treasured Memory

Each wedding I do is memorable – whether it is a quiet elopement, a small family affair or something quite grand. Each couple is unique with their own special story and many are genuinely surprised and quite excited about all the options that are available to them for personalising their ceremony.

My own sister’s wedding, in front of all of my family, was one of those nerve wracking, but very special times – what an incredible privilege!

However, I guess, if pressed, one of the more special weddings was the one that was brought forward as the bride’s mum was very ill and the couple wanted her to be at the wedding. A week before the wedding, the bride’s Step-dad phoned me and wanted to incorporate a reaffirmation of vows ceremony with the bride’s mum (as a surprise to her) into the wedding ceremony. After confirming with the couple, I agreed to go ahead and write this into the ceremony – I had no idea how it would work and told all them if I felt it wasn’t working I would pull out – and had written various options that would enable me to pull out graciously and unobtrusively if necessary. Fortunately it wasn’t needed and it ended up being a beautifully complimentary part of the wedding ceremony. Mum died a week later and the family asked me to be the celebrant at her funeral, even though they knew it would be the first funeral at which I would officiate. That was a challenging, but very worthwhile experience. My first ‘word-of-mouth’ booking came via this couple and I look forward to accompanying that family on many more life celebrations.

The best feedback I can receive is when, unprompted, a couple tells me that their ceremony was everything they wanted and more – just perfect in their eyes. The other pleasing feedback is when guests voluntarily come up to my wonderful assistant (my husband) or myself and thank me for creating a very special ceremony. Creating something that allows for the expression on deep feeling thus bringing joy to all involved just has to be the best job in the world!

In 5 years time I plan to be fully engaged in Celebrancy in all of it’s aspects and perhaps giving something back to the profession, possibly through becoming a Celebrant Trainer.

Merlin Coughlan
Civil Marriage Celebrant

Sunshine Coast QLD

More about Merlin See: http://www.ceremoniesinmontville.com

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