LAUREN HENSBY
MARRIAGE CELEBRANT
Lauren Hensby is a marriage celebrant extraordinaire and co-owner of
Hungry Hearts Co, the one-stop-wedding-day-shop she runs with her partner Rhys.
She brings the vows, he brings the camera. Lauren injects some realness into the
sometimes-sterile glossiness of a wedding day – one of the many reasons she’s so in
demand. Warm, bright, outrageously authentic and a palpable ‘just go for it’ vibe,
the charismatic celebrant shares her journey into the highly competitive – yet love
filled – wedding industry, the transformative power of a collaborative community
and what it’s really like to work full-time hours alongside your lover.
Alrighty, tell us about what you do Loz!
Hi! So as a marriage celebrant, I guess my primary job is to be a storyteller. I thrive on getting to know my couples and discovering the unique intricacies between them, that little spark of magic that bonds them together. I gobble all of that up and write a story about them and then I literally spew it onto everyone that they love with such great gusto that they feel involved. You get laughs, tears and shrieks of shock and horror like ‘Holy shit did she just say that? In a wedding ceremony?’
I’m telling a genuine story of two people and how they connect
and sharing it with everyone that they love. Celebrating them in
a way that feels real to who they are and how they experience
one another.
Ok, so straight off the bat this is going to be the easiest edit of our lives. You’re such a wordsmith. Bless. It sounds super beautiful and rewarding. How did this all start?
It's funny actually. When I was a tiny human, I would write little letters and stories for my mum and dad. Through school I just loved writing and English was all I was good at. But in my head, that wasn't really useful... So I went into retail where I could be really social and make new friends. Connection was always really important to me. A few years ago, I had a really bad car accident, broke my leg and couldn't go to work. So I started writing resumes for people for money. Random as. And then one of my clients said ‘You really nailed me in that resume, you really get me. Do you reckon you could write my wedding vows?’
Whaaaaat! Amazing!
I wrote both of their vows and they emailed me after the wedding and said ‘We wish that you could have been our celebrant, because you got us
so much better than they did’. And then a little light bulb just went off in my head. I was like, ‘Holy shit! Ok! This is it. This is it!’ So I applied for the course that day, and here we are.
That is so incredible, what a story!
So random, huh?!
It’s so true about retail, hospitality too, how much connection there is with people.
It is. It's all chat! I just really wanted to empower the women that came in, who were like ‘I don't know what to wear, I don't know what my body shape suits’. They were just little shells of themselves and I would take such great care and pride in building them up and popping them back out into the world feeling good and the best version of themselves!
I thought: ‘There has got to be a better way of doing
this than selling overpriced clothes!’
So what’s the process and timeline of becoming a celebrant?
You need a Certificate IV in Celebrancy, they give you 12 months to complete that. I was studying in my breaks at work. Cheeky. So I breezed through it in 3 months. You finish that course and then you've got to apply to the Attorney General's department, which takes about three months. Some people win the Attorney General lotto and get accepted within a week, but that’s almost unheard of. Once approved, you can start marrying people!
What are they teaching you?
A lot of it is about marriage law and the responsibilities that celebrants have. There's a lot of things about what you can and can't do as a celebrant – conflicts of interest, who you can and can’t marry, who you should be suspicious of and where you should ask more questions. The rest is about how to run a small business. They give you a lot of good tools.
I guess it's the same as uni – when you're in there you think ‘I know so much!’ and then you get into the real world and you’re like ‘I know nothing! None of this is applicable!’
So obviously a celebrancy course attracts people who love and believe in marriage… but your flair for creative writing and the extra investment that you have in your couples, that’s not really the focus of the course?
Yeah no, not at all. The course I did, you have to meet up twice with a group of people. They were all a bit older, 50s and 60s. At the end of the course, after I passed, they said ‘you’re so brave, doing this course as a younger person’ and I was like ‘oh... why?’ and they said, ‘Oh, well being a celebrant just isn’t really a young person thing. Just don’t have too-high expectations… you’re likely to get maybe three weddings a year, and that would be huge for you!’
Oh my god! Who are these dream crushers?! God I hope they’ve seen your instagram now.
Fuck the haters! Haha! I went back to Rhys and was like ‘Ah well, three weddings a year, that’s still pretty cool’.
I had always imagined that it would be a little side hustle to
distract me from the monster of the 9–5.
Then it just grew so quickly that I eventually had to think ‘OK do I stick with my job and this secure income, or do I deep dive into the unknown and risk it all?’ I was so lucky that I had such a good support network around me. Especially Rhys, my partner. So I just jumped... and we just picked it up as we went. There was a lot of lesson learning, we just totally winged it. I honestly didn’t know what I was doing.
My celebrancy application was approved in January, my first wedding was in February, and I'd quit my other job by September.
Damn! So six months done and dusted, see ya later!
Bloody oath. And never looked back. Now I’m full time and doing over 70 weddings a year.
See ya never!
See you neverrrr.
So tell us about the early days of your business, Hungry Hearts Co, run by you and your photographer partner Rhys.
Yes! The handsome moustache man! Rhys has always, as long as I've known him, been into photography – more so photographing people, not landscapes. When I started studying, I created a website that was for vow writing, just in the meantime, and we were sort of like… why don't you offer couple shoots as well? Is this a thing? Why don’t we try it. Fuck it. And then as soon as I became a celebrant it took off, really fast.
I was like, ‘If you’ve done couple shoots, maybe you could do a wedding?’ He had the skills, he had the stuff… We just dove right into it.
The wedding industry is massive, and super competitive, how do you use social media to market your business and stand out?
We started networking really early. We found people in the industry that we loved and just reached out. Some of those people we like, “yeah come along for the ride! I can help you, I can teach you, I can give you the tools that you need to succeed.” Before we knew it we had a thriving business and some of the best friends on the planet.
Like Monty, he popped up in our Instagram feed and I just messaged him immediately and was like “You look like someone I need in my life, please can we be friends?” We met up, clicked instantly and became really good friends. He took me under his wing and projected me into the world of celebrancy, and said “the more you that you are, the better chance you have of attracting couples who will appreciate your work.”
So from the get-go, Rhys and I were just ourselves. No filter. I'm so lucky to say we have not had one bridezilla, we haven't had an angry groom, no one who is rude – everyone is just chill and excited to be getting married.
They really appreciate Rhys and I for what we do. I think that
really comes down to our branding and our authenticity.
What you see is what you get…
Yeah. It’s all very cohesive. Someone who’s super organised and doesn’t leave room for any error or imperfections… they would just RUN from us. They would just think ‘you are fucking not okay’.
What’s the vibe like with other wedding vendors?
We are all so close! We are this tight-knit little community who thrive on helping each other and it’s just a ridiculous closeness that I have never experienced before. It’s crazy. We have this hub now called the Wedding Social Co , started by Sam from Silent Shout and Kayla, who owns two caravan bars (this one and this one) and is also a photographer. It is a co-working space and it’s completely transformed the way that wedding vendors work – normally it’s at home and alone. The Wedding Social Co is a place where we can all come together, we have our laughs but we’re also learning from one another and problem solving together. It means that when we do a wedding together, we can all work so well, knowing what the other needs – it’s so easy to help each other thrive.
Strength in numbers!
Yeah, definitely. I'm there an hour early and I stay an hour or two
behind because I'm always putting out little fires for the couple.
There are always little things that go wrong on a wedding day, you just can’t help it. There are so many moving pieces, it’s inevitable that something will fuck up. So when you have a team of vendors that just are working together seamlessly, you would never guess that anything went wrong, cos we had it under control.
You and Rhys have a pretty fast and loose energy. Did you have a vision for what the business was going to look like?
I mean money is always a huge motivator. We always dreamed that it would be a full-time job and that we could schedule our own lives. We wanted to choose when we could go away. We’ve shaped everything around our end goal of how much we want to earn and how we want our life to look. In terms of branding and the couples that we wanted, it's crazy to say, but it wasn’t strategic and all happened very naturally. We were just like, ‘let’s be ourselves and see what happens.’
And I mean, literally. All the colours in our house are the same colours on our website. The way that I write our copy and our captions, that’s just how I speak. Rhys doesn’t hide the fact that he HATES posing people. And that’s how his photos look.
You guys are a couple – A CUTE COUPLE – you live together, you run a business together, how are you managing that dynamic?
Oh my god. It’s crazy. It was really good for a while and then eventually was like… fuuuuuck. It became important to have separate hobbies and a bit of time where you can miss each other and have something to talk about other than work. It did get to a point where it was all overlapping and the line of personal/professional was very scrambled. It’s not like a usual 9–5 where you leave work at the door… work sometimes is at home, or goes into weekends and weird times. We’ll have phone chats with couples at 7pm or go and meet them out at night.
We had to get really strict on that, and say ‘Ok, we are going to stop emails at this time and not look at them anymore. We are going to arrange all our meetings within this time frame, and nothing outside of that’.
What are some of the highlights of your job? Why do you love it?
Seeing people react to something that I have written – whether that's bursting into laughter, or a snotty face from crying, that is just such a high that I can’t get enough of. My ego has never been better fed. It’s just so special to see that people feel things from what I write.
Are you looking for anything in particular when you interview couples?
I always try to get to know them in a way that makes them feel
comfortable enough to give me honesty. It's all well and good for
people to be like ‘Oh we’re so in love’. Like, cool, but what’s it
actually like? What’s the weird shit that you guys do behind
closed doors?
That's what I wanna know, because that's what people can relate to. When you’re having a ceremony and you’re telling their story, it’s for them of course, but all their guests want to be involved! They want to find little relatable nuggets that they’ve experienced or can laugh at because they know it’s true.
I will meet up with couples when I can, otherwise we will just do a zoom like this. The grooms are a little more reserved, usually. Then I send out a questionnaire and I beg – I literally BEG THEM – to do it separately because their opinions and perspectives are going to be so opposite and conflict 100%. I want them to go and get pissed, answer the questions, send them back to me, never look at them again – don’t talk about them, just give them to me. I really encourage them to just be honest and a bit vulnerable, to share their uniqueness. But I don't know that it would be so easy for them if they hadn’t met me first, and felt reassured that I would take care of them and not paint a picture that was untrue.
Can you tell when people are trying to say the ‘right’ thing?
YES! 100%! The questions are all just a bit of fun… I say ‘Imagine there are wet towels on the floor and a fight breaks out. What’s your strategy to ease the situation, your bargaining chip?’
Some people will write ‘We don’t fight!’ and I’ll be like…. ok.
And then you get these rock stars that are like ‘I’d be the one dropping the towels. Maltesers work every time... but I’ve gotta hand feed them to her.” Shit like that I’m like ‘YES! Yes. More of that!’.
What do you think are the expectations vs reality of your job?
Heaps of people say ‘Oh celebrants do like 15 minutes of work and then they’re off... I wish I could do that as a job.’ And I'm like… I will murder you.
People severely underestimate the work I do in really getting to know my couple and writing that good script. At least 10–15 hours goes into every couple. I can't speak on behalf of every celebrant, but for me, getting to know and understand them helps me write a story that is completely unique. Without all that groundwork, that 15 mins of fame would be nothing! Some celebrants just turn up and read something they wrote ten years ago and [have] repeated a hundred times.
I think that’s the biggest thing people don’t know, that a ceremony can be so full, exciting and satisfying. They still think it's this small shitty thing that you have to do… the least exciting part of a wedding. Like veggies on a plate. You’ve gotta eat your veggies before you can have dessert, but you’re secretly trying to feed it to your dog.
Couples are coming to the realisation that a ceremony can be
funny and clever and witty and really exciting. The stigma of these
plain Jane boring ceremonies is slowly walking out the door and
people are welcoming the idea of having a ceremony that sets the
vibe for the whole day.
I guess that stigma comes from the ceremony traditionally being the most religious part of the wedding, in an increasingly secular society less and less people feel connected to that. The ceremony is really the whole point! It’s why we are here and what separates a wedding from any old party!
Yes! 100%! A lot of the feedback that I get is ‘How long have you been friends with them, I learned something new about them!’ Like... fuck, my job is done! I'm so happy that they feel that way, that they feel involved and connected to it! Magic!
Ha! So heaps of people just think that you’ve been roped in to do it as a mate?
Yes! And I’m SO stoked about that! I am emotionally obsessed with these people and I’m glad that you see it as much as I feel it!
Job done. 10/10.
If you could travel back in time to when you started Hungry Hearts Co, what advice would you give yourself?
Invest in back-end things, like CRM and accounting software. It is invaluable and we waited until we needed it to invest in it. We were on the back foot and kind of chasing our tails once we got it.
What’s your least favourite part of the job?
Oooh. Controversial. I would say probably now – when couples are having to postpone. Having to shift their dates is really emotionally exhausting for them, but it’s also emotionally exhausting for me because I feel what they're feeling. I want to show up for them and be this beacon of light when they are obviously feeling crushed. From our postponements last year in March and April, I had three weeks where I did eight weddings in nine days.
That’s fucking insane, Loz!
Ya. I prepare for the wedding and then I’m there for maybe three hours, or if I MC I'm there for about eight. Being the celebrant, you are the whole vibe. You’ve gotta show up, and you’ve gotta be emotionally invested from start to finish. You can’t turn off or dial it down at any stage. That's a natural personality trait for me, but everyone has got to have their down time. When you’re having that many weddings in a row, it’s a looooot.
What are your de-stress strategies?
Definitely walking or running, taking Mosely out. Going out for
a brewski, love that. Or even just reading a novel. I love reading
and getting lost in a world that isn’t my own.
Do you prefer working from home, or going and working in the co-working space?
We love going into the Wedding Social Co. Rhys loves culling and editing there and I love doing admin there, but I always write my ceremonies at home. I need no noise when I’m writing a ceremony.
Do you have a process?
Not really. It would be so clever of me to write the questionnaire in a formulaic way, but I just don’t. I just muddle up all their answers and spray it on the page.
There is no process. I just sit down with a wine, read both their
questionnaires and start writing.
Do the couples sign off on what you’re going to say?
Never! It’s always a surprise. I always say to them, ‘Anything you say in this questionnaire, I will take. If you’re swearing, I’m swearing. If you say embarrassing shit, I’m going to exaggerate it for sure. Just know that about me. I’ll exaggerate everything you say.’
No revisions! That’s the worst part of any writing job taken away!
Haha yeah! I always say ‘What’s the point of you reading this the week before or night before and having a laugh? The day comes and you know what’s coming next, so you’re not really laughing, just smiling awkwardly’. I find that them having no idea what's happening, and just letting me guide them, calms them down so much.
What’s the timeline with your couples? How far out from a wedding are you interviewing people?
It depends. If they book me 18 months out then I will catch up with them maybe six months out, and they’ll get their questionnaire maybe five months out and we’ll keep talking from there. Some people will book me three months out! And then it’s all very congested... they’ll get the questionnaire pretty much then and there.
Were you already an organisational whiz? Having to plan 18 months out, that’s crazy!
HAHA! Nup. I was the least organised person on. this. earrrrth. That's why we needed the CRM. Rhys just does his thing and I do all of our admin (which is fine by me) but that CRM was SO crucial to having a smooth flowing process. Before that I was just like ‘fuck, what’s happening next, who’s paid what, what do I need to send them?’ I was so frazzled. The frazzliest frazzle.
At the ceremony, have you memorised the script?
Oh my god, no! I do memorise some of it, but I have it there with me on a kindle. I even capitalise words that I want to exaggerate or put ‘dot, dot, dot’ where I want to leave a pause for emphasis.
Public speaking 101! Do you get nervous? Have you had any disasters?
Nah I don’t really get nervous, I get really excited. The first wedding I ever had, I had ordered a top of the line PA. I was like ‘OK. I’m going to get this really good PA and have really good sound... it will start me off on a good foot.’
It arrived on Friday night and the wedding was on Saturday.
Rhys and I – classic us – we were like cool, we’re gonna play
with it, do karaoke and run around the house screaming.
Saturday comes. Two hours before the wedding, I try to turn
the thing on… doesn’t work.
The company was in Brisbane so they’re trying to troubleshoot it over the phone, but eventually I had to get in the car and head to the ceremony. I’m bawling my eyes out in the car and just thinking… ‘It’s windy, my voice is quite soft and I’m not going to be able to project to 150 people, I’ve ruined the day already.’ The guy on the end of the phone eventually says ‘I think it's faulty, you’re going to have to send it back to us.’
And I’m just like... FUCK.
We get to the wedding, I walked into the bathroom and just look in the mirror and I'm like ‘This. Is. Not. About. You. This is about Kayla and Dan. Fucking get it together and sort it out.’
Trying to be cool as a cucumber, I march on out, get a champagne, skull it, get another one, skull it, wander over and there happens to be Sam from Silent Shout who is DJing the ceremony. I was like ‘Hey, do you mind if I borrow your microphone for the ceremony? Mine’s just shat itself.’ I marched up to the stage with all this confidence… just like ‘Righto. Here we go.’ And it was just the best thing ever.
It all just worked out!
It all just worked out. At the end of the ceremony Sam said “Was that your first time? That was one of the best I’ve ever seen!” And I just started crying! I was just bawling my eyes out. I’m now not super nervous going into any ceremony. I feel like if a problem comes up, I can fix it. I’m prepared.
You’ve probably done enough weddings now that in the back of your head is Plan F.
Haha exactly. It’s just being super flexible and willing to make some magic on the spot. But that's another great thing about couples not having anything beforehand – if something goes wrong I can just improvise, and they never know. They’re just going along with it, and I am low key rocking in a ball inside thinking ‘you will never know the disaster that is currently unfolding’.
What do you think makes a marriage work?
I think it’s the ability to accept someone exactly as they are and love them with their faults. Being honest, communicating and always having a laugh is obviously so important, but just knowing your partner inside out, and understanding that they have flaws and you have flaws.
The best marriages that I’ve seen, they're just like,
“You know what, you’re a fuckwit sometimes, you snore
and your cooking is rotten, but it’s ok.”
What are your future plans for the business?
I want to be the best at what I do. And I don’t mean being the best celebrant, that would be impossible because we are all so different, but I really wanna be the best at what I bring to the table. So like, the quirky, silly, witty, carefree idiot that writes and speaks in a way that makes people feel something... I want to be the best at doing that. If I can keep learning and evolving then I will keep climbing my own ladder and eventually reach the peak of my own success. It’s really important to me to not only keep growing but to help others grow as well.
I love what I do and want to keep doing it, but I think there’s only so long you can be relevant. One day I’ll be 50 and people will want the young, well-dressed, vibrant celebrant and I'll be this old, grey idiot. I hope to eventually become a writer of novels. I wanna write, and Rhys and I want to have a wedding venue. We’ve got all these big dreams... but for now we are SO content. Being a celebrant is the best. We are so lucky.
Are you super pumped for this lockdown to end and to dive back in?
I’m really excited for weddings to come back. I’m very ready. I genuinely think that having to wait a little bit longer for a wedding makes it SO much better. The postponed weddings are actually the best ones. When the day finally comes, no one gives a fuck about anything. It rains? No one cares. Something sets on fire? No one cares! Everyone is just so happy to be together, to be involved, to party, to get loose. I am so excited for all these couples.
I’m going to be on some kind of wedding bender. Until the end of time. I’m gonna get in there and fuckin’ marry everyone.
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