From wards to weddings: Former Dubbo hospital manager finds success as a celebrant

"I thought, I'm too young to fully retire and get ready to move into a nursing home so I'll do something else completely different. I decided I wanted to be my own boss so I did the course to become a celebrant and ran my first funeral in 2018," he said.

"At that point I hadn't really decided if I was going to do funerals as part of the business, but a close friend said to me about 4 months before I graduated that he wanted me to do his funeral - he said 'there's no-one else in the world he'd rather have officiate his funeral than you'.

"I couldn't really say no to that."

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The former-Dubbo Base Hospital business manager now runs his own celebrancy business hosting non-religious weddings, vow renewals, commitment ceremonies and funeral services in Dubbo and surrounds.

"There are families here in Dubbo where I've done a funeral for them and done a wedding for them as well, I've become the family celebrant I guess," he said.

"On the stress scale for families - they say a funeral is number one and a wedding is number two, number three is buying a house."

"So the way I see it is I am helping people through two of the most stressful parts of their lives, so if I can help reduce the amount of stress then I've done a great job."

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Despite being new to the industry, he has already earned accolades for his work for three years in a row - he was announced as a finalist in the celebrant category in the 2020 and 2022 Central West Wedding Industry Awards and he was awarded Highly Commended in 2021.

"You couldn't wipe the smile off my face the first time I was notified that I was a finalist in the awards. I was just so proud and amazed," he said.

But it's the stories he gets to hear and the special moments he gets to share with people - whether it be bringing newlyweds together or celebrating the life of their loved ones - which are the most rewarding part of being a celebrant, he says.

"I love meeting so many different families and couples. Everyone's circumstances are so different and their stories are what I really enjoy talking to them about," he said.

"Because you spend a lot of time with them, talking to them about what they want in their service and you go home and write the ceremony for them, there's a fair bit of knowledge you build up. And some of the stuff they tell you is stuff they may not have actually told anyone else about."

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Mr Woodward hasn't only hosted weddings in Dubbo - he's travelled up to Brisbane for one and had married another couple in a hay shed in Bugaldie, a town of just 144 people north-west of Coonabarabran; "my word, that was a very unique experience."

"There's a wide variety of couples you see too, not just the young ones right out of high school," he said.

"You see people at the other end of their lives too - there was one couple whose wedding I did who were probably getting towards their early 70s. They had an absolute ball on their wedding day, it was just the five of us."

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The keys to being a good celebrant are being flexible, being a good listener, having a good sense of humour and being a good presenter, said Mr Woodward.

As for what makes a great wedding day - even those days where everything seems to go wrong can make for amazing memories.

"I hosted a wedding out in Ballimore on the weekend and they were flooded out. They lived on a property and the wedding was supposed to be on the other side of the river and they couldn't get to where the wedding was," he said.

"So we had to race around on the Saturday to get the local hall booked - and in a little community like Ballimore the whole community jumped in to help."

"Everyone seems to think the worst whenever they get a bit of a snag in the road - but usually when there's a bit of a problem everyone pulls together and things come out right on the day."

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