Advanced trainings and Continuing Professional Development for Funeral Celebrants

Our trainings are designed for celebrants and for others who work with bereaved people, including funeral directors, funeral arrangers, hospice workers, hospitals volunteers, medical professionals, mental health practitioners and other members of the community who wish to develop further skills

  • Become more confident in your celebrancy skills
  • Learn to write beautifully without generic scripts
  • Develop a greater understanding of how people grieve
  • Explore what your own life experience can offer to others at a time of challenge
  • Develop your confidence and skill presenting and even singing
  • Understand the difference between helping and serving others
  • Expand your knowledge of the latest developments in the understanding of grief, empathy and communication
  • Learn how to earn more as a funeral celebrant and charge fairly for your skills.
  • Enhance your ability to create a healthy professional relationship with both those who are grieving and your colleagues
  • Receive specialist resources to support you in your professional practice
  • Learn how to companion the bereaved in their grief
  • Build professional resilience and develop self-care skills
  • Understand how to create meaningful ceremonies within ceremonies
  • Discover how ceremonies are changing to fit people’s individual needs
  • Meet others and become part of our tribe!

Our trainings and conferences are now easily available to you, online and accessible from your home or office.

This site focuses on specialist trainings for celebrants and funeral professionals, both as group trainings and 1:1 training and supervision.

If you are looking for a celebrant to officiate an online celebration of life service click here

If you are a funeral director looking for information about the online services you can suggest to your clients/families, please click here for a useful guide.

If you are looking for a funeral celebrant, contact us directly at emma@ceremonymatters.org and we will be happy to recommend a celebrant in our network. 

Our Courses

Advanced Certificate in Bespoke Funeral Celebrancy

Next course: 1-2-1 to fit your schedule
Our signature training for those who wish to provide the highest level of service to their clients. An intense certificated one-2-one program with mentoring and tutoring to work to your strengths and support you all the way.

Working with the Bereaved

Next course: register your interest and we’ll let you know as soon as we announce the next date
Can you imagine feeling more competent in difficult situations with people who are grieving? Would you like to know more about what recent research tells us about grief and how to work with the bereaved?

1:1 Celebrant Support and Supervision

Get one-to-one help and support with whatever you need
Whatever you need help with from Zoom ceremonies, to creative writing, family meetings, presentation, voice production and much more. Check here for how I might be able to help you. 

Funeral Intros and Exits

Next course: Gather a few colleagues (4 – 12 people) and we’ll book a time to suit you all, working over Zoom – 3 hour workshop
Personalised services are what celebrants are becoming known for. Find out how to really personalise a service, from top to bottom, no more one-size-fits-all content. From £50 per person

Voice and Presentation Training

Next course: Gather a few colleagues (4 – 8 people) and we’ll book a time to suit you all, working over Zoom
Feel more confident using your voice in public, for speaking or singing. A practical and fun one three hour workshop. From £47.50 per person

Message Writing in Ceremony

Next course: If you would like to take this course online please get in touch
Learn to facilitate these beautiful and meaningful ceremonies within a funeral ceremony with confidence and creativity.

Learn by Doing

We learn best by having the opportunity to do things ourselves.

All our courses are interactive, a mixture of study and practice. We share all the most recent research in the field and give you the opportunity to explore techniques and tools in a supportive environment that is built for experimentation and learning.

Stay ahead of the curve

With many more celebrants flooding the market each year keeping up with developments is vital

We are the first exclusive providers of CPD trainings for celebrants and people already working in the funeral professions. You already know what you are doing, and you do it well, we are helping you to excel in an ever more competitive environment.

Working towards excellence

We want you to be the best. 

We want you to have a successful business, and to be someone who makes all the difference to the people that you work with, and to feel good about what you do. We are proud to work in the funeral profession and to help you continue to love your work, feel aligned with your purpose and serve your community to the best of your ability.

“Emma delivered with sensitivity, passion and fun, keeping everyone fully engaged from start to finish.

The practical exercises that she gave the celebrants to do were stimulating, thought provoking and challenged them to think outside of the box and stretched their creative writing skills to new levels, with those present even saying that they produced levels of writing which they didn’t know they could deliver.

Many celebrants have already fed back that they have taken these new going skills away and applied them to their work in the wider field of celebrancy.

Terri Shanks, Founder, Fellowship of Professional Celebrants

FAQ

We know that you may have questions if you are looking to take CPD training with us for the first time. You may find the answers here, otherwise talk to us and we’ll help you to find a course that fits your needs.

Where are the courses held?

We are currently planning courses in London and the Midlands. We also train and supervise 1:1 face-to-face and online.

Thank you Emma Curtis for your wonderful and inspiring creative writing session at the Convention. It encouraged me to try a new opening today, slightly out of my comfort/safe zone and ‘stretch myself’. At the funeral today it worked so well… The widow said that service was ‘brilliant’ and it was as if her husband was actually there.

Beverley Symonds

Independent Celebrant, Beverley Symonds, Independent Funeral Celebrant

Do I need to be a celebrant or minister to take a course?

Our group courses are programmed for celebrants and ministers in practice. as well as other funeral professionals. However, the skills are transferrable to many other professions, including palliative care, bereavement workers, carers or just people with an interest in learning. If you are not a practicing funeral celebrant but would like to take one of our courses, please email us.

Our 1:1 trainings are for you, whatever level you are at, beginning or advanced. Just get in touch for a chat.

Why should I be doing further training?

We have a duty to constantly improve the service that we currently provide to our clients. Also our courses will help you feel more confident and increase your sphere of knowledge and competence.

“Emma is wise and perceptive, compassionate and kind.”

Rabbi Dr. David J. Zucker

Rabbi, North West Surrey Synagogue

Do I get a certificate for CPD?

We offer all those who complete a course a certificate of attendance, stating the number of hours studied on that course.

The Advanced Certificate in Bespoke Funeral Celebrancy leads to assessment for a Certificate of Competence for those who achieve the required standard of professionalism and bespoke service.

Which celebrant organisations will accept this for my CPD requirement?

Talk to your membership organisaion about their CPD requirements. Ceremony Matters will give you a certificate for the hours of continuing professional development training you have completed.

How many hours of CPD do I earn?

Humanists UK accept Ceremony Matters CPD for their requirements. Ceremony Matters will give you a certificate of attendance for the hours of guided study on the program. Ask your registering organisation, as CPD allowances will vary between training and registration bodies.

Emma and Ceremony Matters in the News Media:

The Funeral Celebrant Accord

At Ceremony Matters we aspire to the highest standards: for ourselves and the celebrants that we train, in the service our clients.  Our founder, Emma Curtis, was on the team that drafted The Accord and at Ceremony Matters we have Adopted The Accord.

‘Amy* was just 21 years old when her close childhood friend Lydia* took her own life two years ago. “I went through so many different feelings and emotions – complete grief and sadness, mixed with anger and guilt,” she explains.

“Obviously you feel that grief, loss and sadness when you lose anybody, but it was worse as she was so young, with her whole life ahead of her. I was constantly asking myself ‘what if …?’ and I was angry that she’d made this choice, and left her family and friends in this situation,” she adds.

“It felt wrong to be angry, but it was an overwhelming feeling, and it was reassuring to know others felt like this too. Rightly or wrongly though, I also felt angry towards her family and her university friends because they all knew what was going on and how vulnerable she was, yet she was left by herself. I wish I had known and could have done something,” Amy says. (read more)’

‘Pop, classical, or maybe even a little avant-garde freestyle jazz? What music would you want to be played at your funeral?

Thinking about your own send-off might be something you’d typically put off, like visiting your bank manager or sorting out that bit of sealant around the bath that’s needed doing for ages.

But music is an integral part of celebrating a person’s life — of reflecting on who they really were, what they loved, what mattered to them. It can be a poignant, hankies-at-the-ready tribute, or a way of acknowledging their wonderful foibles. Coming up with your own funeral playlist is also a way of helping your friends and families with difficult decisions at a painful time… (read more)’

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