Getting started as a celebrant or officiant

As a celebrant, you’re often the first vendor a couple books and the one running the most legally significant part of their wedding day. Wedding Computer gives Australian celebrants tools specific to that role — NOIM generation and an ordered collaborative PDF-signing workflow — plus a ceremony-focused pipeline for managing leads and coordinating with the rest of the vendor team on the day.

Step 1 — Complete your profile and set your display title

Open Settings and complete the Business section:

Business name — your trading name as a celebrant
Category — select Celebrant
Display term — if you prefer to be listed as “officiant” rather than “celebrant” (relevant for interfaith, humanist, and some US-style ceremonies), change this in your profile settings. The slug in your URL stays celebrant either way; the display title is what couples and vendors see
Location — your base city or region
Bio and website — this appears on your directory listing and vendor profile

Why: Australian accounts in the Celebrant category receive the NOIM form and collaborative PDF-signing tools that other vendor categories don’t have.

Step 2 — Build a ceremony-specific enquiry form

Go to Forms → Enquiry and customise the questions couples answer. For celebrants, the most useful questions are:

Wedding date
Ceremony location (venue name and rough address)
Ceremony type: civil, religious, interfaith, humanist, barefoot, elopement, destination
Expected guest count (useful for ceremony logistics)
Whether they’re considering an indoor or outdoor ceremony
Vow style: traditional, contemporary, written themselves
Any cultural or religious traditions to incorporate
How they heard about you

Why: These answers let you assess fit before a discovery call. A couple wanting a traditional Catholic ceremony and one wanting a barefoot beach elopement are very different bookings, even though both need a celebrant. The right questions tell you quickly which enquiries to prioritise.

Step 3 — Set up your default service contract

Go to Settings → Contracts and create your one default service-contract template. Include:

Ceremony type and scope
What’s included: number of meetings, ceremony script, rehearsal attendance, travel
Notice of Intended Marriage (NOIM) obligations and timeline (in Australian jurisdictions: at least one month before the ceremony)
Cancellation and postponement policy
Payment schedule: booking fee (deposit) at booking, balance before or at the ceremony

When you create an invoice, Wedding Computer copies this default contract onto that invoice. On the booking page, the couple reads it, types their full name and email address, and ticks that they agree. Wedding Computer records that acceptance; it is not a drawn signature and does not create a downloadable signed service-contract PDF.

Why: Keeping one reviewed default contract makes your terms consistent while preserving the exact wording that was attached to each invoice.

Step 4 — Configure Stripe for payments

Go to Settings → Payments → Connect Stripe and complete the Stripe onboarding.

For most celebrants, the payment schedule is simple: a booking fee (typically 20–30% of the total) and a balance due before or on the wedding day. Wedding Computer can send the booking-fee payment to Stripe Checkout; later instalments stay on the invoice schedule and are recorded when you receive them.

Why: Stripe gives the couple a secure card option for the booking fee, while the invoice keeps later payments and manual bank transfers in one record.

Step 5 — Set your availability

Open Calendar → Availability and:

Set which days of the week you take ceremonies (most celebrants work weekends, some do weekday elopements)
Block individual holidays or personal commitments; confirmed wedding workspaces and booking events mark their own dates as booked
Under Settings → Availability sharing, choose Public so couples can see your available dates before they enquire

Why: Celebrants often have strict one-per-day limits — you can only be in one place at one time, and ceremony timing means you can’t do back-to-back bookings easily. Accurate availability means you only receive enquiries for dates you can actually take.

Step 6 — Understand NOIM generation

For an Australian celebrant account, open Forms, create or select the Notice of Intended Marriage Preparation (NOIM) form, and send it to the couple from their wedding workspace. Their submission supplies the details used to generate the PDF, including names, addresses, dates of birth, and country of birth.

The NOIM workflow:

Create the NOIM form under Forms (available to Australian celebrants)
Link and send the form from the booked wedding workspace
Review the submitted details and open the generated PDF
Choose Send for signing when the submission is linked to the wedding — see Step 7

Why: The form keeps collection and PDF generation together. You remain responsible for checking every detail and meeting the legal and professional requirements that apply in your jurisdiction.

Step 7 — Use collaborative PDF signing for the NOIM

Wedding Computer has a separate collaborative signing workflow for NOIMs and other PDFs. This is different from typed acceptance of a service contract. It works like this:

From the NOIM submission, choose Send for signing; for another PDF, upload it from the signing section of the wedding workspace
Release the document so the couple can sign on their logged-in device while you witness, or hand them your device
The couple signs first; their marks are written into the PDF and their turn is locked
You counter-sign to complete the document
The final signed PDF is stored privately under your celebrant access

Witness gate: the couple cannot sign until you release the session or hand over your device. After the couple signs, the document returns to you for the final counter-signature. The couple does not receive access to the final lodgeable copy; it remains a private celebrant document.

Why: The workflow preserves the required order and the final private PDF. Confirm that electronic signing is appropriate for the document and circumstances under the rules that apply to you.

Step 8 — Add your ceremony to the run sheet

When you join a wedding workspace as the celebrant, go to Timeline and add your ceremony items:

Ceremony start time
Processional
Welcome and introduction
Vows
Ring exchange
Pronouncement and kiss
Signing of the register
Recessional
Any other ceremony elements specific to this couple

Set visibility to vendors so other vendors — photographer, videographer, florist — can see the ceremony structure and plan their work accordingly.

Why: Your ceremony structure is the foundation of the wedding day. The photographer needs to know when the processional starts; the videographer needs to know the vow timing. Publishing your ceremony items in the shared timeline removes the need for “what time are the vows?” emails from every vendor.

For the free personal feed, open Account → Personal calendar and subscribe in Apple Calendar or copy the private link into Google Calendar or Outlook.

For a Pro business connection, open Settings → Calendar & contacts and create a named calendar connection. Its iCal or CalDAV credential is read-only: Wedding Computer events appear in the calendar app, but edits made there do not flow back.

Why: The feed includes wedding-day markers and the timeline sections shared with or assigned to you. Dates, times, and locations already recorded on those entries are available from your calendar without opening the dashboard.

You’re ready when:

Your profile is set to Celebrant (and your display title if you prefer Officiant)
Your enquiry form asks ceremony-specific questions
You have one reviewed default service contract ready
Stripe is connected with your payment schedule
Your availability is accurate and set to Public
You know how to generate a NOIM and use the signing workflow

What to do right now

Take your next booked couple, create a wedding workspace for them (or join one if a planner has already set it up), and add your ceremony timeline items. If you’re in Australia, review the NOIM form under Forms and its Send for signing flow before you need it for the first time.

Go deeper

Enquiry forms — form builder, branding, embedding, and AI auto-reply setup
Invoices, payments & contracts — Stripe setup, payment schedules, and the default service contract
Calendar & availability — private iCal feeds, read-only CalDAV connections, and availability settings
Run sheets & timeline — how ceremony items appear in the shared timeline and what other vendors see

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