North American celebrants’ retreat in Inverness

by Michael Hannah, SICA Chair.

 

SICA was contacted in May 2025 by Donna Forsythe, Director of the Celebrant Academy, a North American celebrant training and support organization. She explained that they were having a retreat in Scotland and wanted to reach out to SICA. They were inviting us to join them for a day when we would have the opportunity to meet them and share information, skills and experiences.

We considered this and decided it was a great opportunity to make international connections and to raise the profile of SICA and how we work. So we agreed to attend the retreat on Friday 25 July. Three of the committee members, myself, Gillian, and Gordon, and member Lynda Smith, all took part.

The Academy delegates were: Donna Forsythe, Pennsylvania US; Sabra Dettrore, Michigan US; Kiki Himmer, Michigan US; Sherrie Spencer, Florida US; Mitzi Schwarz, Los Angeles US; Joan Fergus, Wisconsin US; Carla Doshi, Chicago US; Lorraine Cowan, Montreal Canada.

Although they all did conduct funerals and weddings, there was a strong emphasis on the wedding side. It was therefore great that between the four of us we represented different ways in which celebrants approach weddings in Scotland. Gillian and Gordon both can do all the legalities, Lynda isn’t able to do that yet – but she does do a lot of ceremonies and I think that was really important in showing the visitors that the legal bit and the ceremony can be “detached” here – very useful for thinking about weddings in Scotland for Canadians and US citizens. (I represented the funeral celebrants who don’t do weddings – I think this is less common in North America.)

Gillian and Gordon gave a short chat about how legal marriages work here and about the role of the belief groups. Later Gillian and Lynda gave practical hands-on demonstrations of hand-fasting and jumping the broom. They’d also all brought quaichs and Gordon devised a simple friendship ceremony for the group – with whisky! Lynda demonstrated sand ceremonies and had devised a little ritual for everyone.

I led a chat about funerals in Scotland and illustrated it with images from the staged funerals that SICA organized in 2024 at Brewsterwells crematorium. There was a lot of chat about the differences between the ways we do things especially in terms of where ceremonies take place. But also about the similarities in the way we approach the writing of funeral scripts. The Academy delegates were interested in how we get work and the role of funeral directors as gatekeepers and our efforts to move beyond that.

We made some excellent contacts. I think there may be opportunities to find ways to facilitate weddings “across the Atlantic” – and if something comes of that it could provide a model for reaching out to celebrants in other countries especially Australia and New Zealand. Gordon has already been chatting to Mitzi from LA about some aspects of Jewish ritual, and I have been chatting to Lorraine from Canada about how SICA works for its members.

So a really valuable meeting that was highly enjoyable and useful both on a personal level and for raising the profile of SICA and our members. Many thanks to Donna for the invitation and the hospitality!