We spend months planning weddings. The dress. The flowers. The food. The music. Yet the one part of the day that gives everything else meaning often lasts less than an hour. Strange, really, because without the ceremony, all you’ve organised is a very good party.
The most memorable wedding I attended last year wasn’t the grandest or the most extravagant. In fact, the ceremony lasted little more than thirty minutes. Yet months later, it’s still the only one I can remember almost word for word. Set in the gardens of a clifftop villa overlooking the Mediterranean, the ceremony was led by one of Ibiza’s independent celebrants. There were no clichés, no borrowed readings and no sense that we’d heard it all before. Instead, there were stories, laughter, moments of quiet reflection and the unmistakable feeling that every sentence had been written for the two people standing in front of us. For half an hour, nobody glanced at their phone. Nobody wondered when the drinks reception would begin. Nobody was waiting for the fun part of the wedding to start. This was it. The ceremony had become the celebration.
A celebrant’s mission is not just to tell a love story; it is to enable family and lifelong friends to discover something about the couple that they didn’t know.
Standing, from left to right, the celebrants Oso The Celebrant, Raquel, Luus, Melchior Arnold, and Sean Fearon. In front, crouching, Nicole Shenton. Photo: © Valentine Riccardi
A week later, a friend who had travelled over for the wedding summed it up perfectly. Only days earlier he had attended a ceremony back in Britain, which he described as, “Just your usual mundane wedding with the same old boring service.” The contrast couldn’t have been greater. And it made me realise that Ibiza has quietly become home to some of the world’s finest celebrants. Not because they follow a particular style or philosophy, but because they all begin in exactly the same place. Curiosity.
Every one of the six celebrants I spoke to came to the profession by a different route. One started as a wedding photographer. Another worked as an actress and entertainer. One was a professional footballer and commentator. Another spent years teaching yoga. One toured the world as a musician. Another simply discovered that listening was the greatest gift she could offer another human being. Yet despite those remarkably different journeys, they all arrived at the same conclusion. A ceremony isn’t about filling thirty minutes. It’s about revealing two people.
“A registrar makes your marriage legal,” says Oso, who spent almost fifteen years photographing weddings before stepping in front of the camera himself. “A celebrant can make it yours.” It’s such a simple observation, yet it completely changes the way you think about weddings. The couple already know they’re in love. The ceremony exists so that everybody else understands why. That’s the real art. Not simply telling a love story, but helping parents, brothers, sisters and lifelong friends see the relationship through fresh eyes. “Guests should recognise the couple they know and love”, says Raquel Esteban, while also discovering something they’ve never seen before. “When you love a novel or a film, it’s because you connect with its characters,” she explains. “A wedding ceremony should do exactly the same.”
Ibiza has become home to some of the world’s best officiants. They all start from exactly the same place: curiosity.
Suddenly, the ceremony becomes far more than an exchange of vows, it becomes an act of storytelling. The first meeting rarely begins with vows. Instead, it begins with questions. Some obvious, others completely unexpected. How did you meet? What makes each other laugh? Who apologises first after an argument? What little habit drives you mad but secretly makes you smile? What would your closest friends say if they were describing your relationship? For Oso, those tiny observations often become the foundations of an entire ceremony. “I’m far more interested in how they connect with one another,” he says. “The parts their friends and family instantly recognise, and the parts that are a little more out of sight.”
Raquel agrees. By the time a couple stand in front of their guests, she wants every word to feel unmistakably theirs. “I write. I delete. I rewrite,” she says. “I change a single word ten times if I have to.” Her goal isn’t simply to tell a love story, but to create a moment that “couldn’t possibly belong to anyone else.”
For Melchior Arnold, no two ceremonies should ever sound alike because no two couples love alike. “Some are playful, some deeply emotional, others very grounded,” he says. “I don’t impose a structure on that. I listen until the ceremony writes itself.”
Sean Fearon, meanwhile, knows exactly when a little humour can transform the atmosphere. “It’s a serious occasion,” he smiles, “but it’s also a happy one, and laughter goes a long way.” After more than twenty-five years marrying couples in Ibiza, he’s learnt that the perfect script still depends on the way it’s delivered. Sincerity, warmth and impeccable timing matter just as much as the words themselves.
Nicole Shenton approaches ceremonies from a different perspective. With a background in yoga and wellbeing, she believes her role begins long before the wedding day itself. “The creative process, the guidance and the support all start the moment we meet,” she explains. Together, she and the couple uncover the values they want to build their marriage upon, creating what she describes as “a guiding light they can return to throughout their lives.”
Dutch celebrant Luus sees herself first and foremost as a storyteller. “There is a story behind every person,” she says. “It is a privilege to work with those stories.” By the wedding day, she already knows the couple’s families, their closest friends and the small details that make their relationship unlike any other. “I encourage them to share every detail of their love story,” she smiles. “And they always do.”
Listening. Storytelling. Humour. Empathy. They’re all different qualities, yet together they reveal something unexpected. The best celebrants don’t stand at the centre of a ceremony. They quietly place the couple there instead. Perhaps that’s why people travel from every corner of the world to marry in Ibiza. Yes, the sea helps. The light helps. So do the clifftops, centuries-old fincas and the scent of pine carried on the breeze. But every celebrant I spoke to returned to the same simple truth: a wedding isn’t really about a place. It’s about creating a moment that feels unmistakably true.
For Raquel, love isn’t something you find once. “It’s something you choose, every single day.” Melchior believes the happiest couples aren’t searching for perfection, but are those who “know how to laugh together, repair quickly and stay curious about each other.” Nicole sees hope in every ceremony she creates. Despite the uncertainty of the world around us, she says, people still choose love. They still choose each other.
Those who get married already know they are in love. The ceremony is held so that everyone else understands why.
Sean never forgets that, while a wedding is one of life’s most important occasions, it’s also one of its happiest. Humour, warmth and sincerity, he believes, are often what guests remember long after the day itself. For Luus, all ceremonies ultimately come back to one simple idea. “All those rituals share a single meaning: connection. That is the magic word of love.”
Those thoughts stayed with me long after the wedding had ended. The flowers had been cleared away, the music had faded into the Ibizan night and the guests had drifted onto the dancefloor. Yet what everyone was still talking about wasn’t the dress, the menu or the spectacular view. It was the ceremony. Perhaps that’s the quiet gift of Ibiza’s celebrants. They don’t simply tell a couple’s story – they gather together parents, brothers, sisters, lifelong friends and new family, weaving years of memories into a single moment of honesty, laughter and love. Because the best ceremonies don’t simply begin a marriage. They remind every one of us why love is still worth celebrating…
