About Jane French, Celebrant and Lifelong Storyteller
It Started With People Telling Me Things
When I was very small, people started telling me their story. I’ve no idea why, they just did. When I learned to drive and started ferrying friends and relatives about in my car, I learned all sorts of things I probably wasn’t meant to know.
I’ve been a trusted listener ever since, and I’m still constantly surprised by what people turn out to be carrying. Whatever I’m told, I’m calm, welcoming and completely unshockable.
Words Have Always Been My Thing
I loved creative writing and reading as a child, read English at university and loved every minute of that too. I have a natural gift for expression, which sounds like a boast until you’ve spent your career being handed other people’s drafts and asked to make them land properly.
That’s exactly what happened in my corporate life. Rewrite this email. Fix the tone on this. Say it so that this particular audience actually hears it. Thirty years of getting language right for the person receiving it turns out to be extremely good training for writing a eulogy or a set of wedding vows.
Then Celebrancy Kept Finding Me
My corporate career took me into operational leadership, and from there into training, coaching, facilitating, public speaking and a great deal of MC work. All of it was really the same job: listen to people, then bring out the best in them.
I reached the point where I wanted a change of direction, and celebrancy simply kept turning up. A magazine article. An advert. A funeral where I watched an old friend officiate and thought, oh. Then discovering that a new friend was a celebrant too. In the end I stopped ignoring it and trained.
I became a celebrant because I’m all about love, people and connection, and this is the only work I’ve found that uses every single thing I am and everything I learned along the way.
The Part You Might Not Expect
I love spending time in nature. It’s what draws me towards natural and woodland burials. I’ve conducted a small number of them, and I loved it. It was relaxed, deeply personal, held in a peaceful outdoor space and built in genuine collaboration with the family. It’s the direction I want to grow in.
I’m friendly and chatty. Some would say I talk a lot! I’m known for a quick sense of humour, which I promise I know when to deploy and when to sit on it.
What Guides Everything I Write
The love and connection we share with other people is precious, and everybody deserves to be seen, heard and celebrated at life’s most significant moments.
Every ceremony I create starts with me getting to know you and listening to your story. I also believe your ceremony should be exactly as you envision it, free from judgement or restriction. As I write your story and lead your celebration, I’ll be the calm, reassuring and friendly presence in the room, holding space for joy, grief, nerves, excitement and everything in between.
Qualified, Accredited and Insured
I trained and am accredited with the Academy of Modern Celebrancy for both wedding and funeral celebrancy, and I’m a Guild member.
Shall We Have a Chat?
The best way to find out whether I’m the right celebrant for you is to talk to me. No charge, no obligation, and you’ll know within ten minutes.