From the Attorney General’s Department – Annual Marriage Celebrant Returns

Below are a set of figures on Civil Marriage Celebrant work supplied by the Attorney General’s Department over a decade ago.

These figures show that

• civil marriage celebrancy has NOT been an occupation capable of sustaining a full-time income for the vast majority of civil celebrants for at least the last 15 years.

• then, as now, the vast majority of civil marriage celebrants (96%) have subsidised their celebrancy work in time or money.

Today 60% of weddings conducted by commonwealth appointed celebrants, 5% BDMs and 35% recognised religious celebrants.

On these figures, that means approx 72,000 weddings for 10,300 celebrants. The Regulation Impact Statement issued by the Attorney General’s Department (AGD) verifies the numbers as 6.6 weddings per celebrant pa.

To return to the 1999 average of 35 weddings per celebrant pa would require de-registering 80% of celebrants and even then a Registration Fee would NOT be justified given the fact that marriage work cannot sustain a full-time income.

Registration Fees may be justified for professions that do offer full-time employment and / or income to sustain a full-time wage, but not for one where part-time wage equivalents for the majority of professionals is evident.

Source: A-G’s Dept. and ABS
CIVIL Marriage Celebrants – UNDER Section 39.2. October 2000 No. of Civil Marriage Celebrants = 1671 In 1999 No of ALL Marriages in Australia 114,300   % Performed by Civil Marriage Celebrants 51.3%   No. Performed by Civil Marriage Celebrants 58,636 CIVIL Marriage Celebrants – UNDER Section 39.2	Figures in Blue were supplied from the Attorney General’s Department (no of CIVIL celebrants) and the Australian Bureau of Statistics. NOTE: Number of CIVIL commonwealth Appointed Celebrants, excluded the non-aligned religious, special needs language groups, special needs disability groups = 1671 This shows in 1999 the average number of weddings per celebrant was 35 ie approx 1 wedding per fortnight averageThis compared with 1995 Ratio: 1 celebrants per 64 weddings pa
Table 1 – CIVIL MARRIAGES 1999 Number Of Weddings Per Annum Celebrants % Celebrants Number Nil 6.78 % 113 1 – 10 29.53 % 493 11 – 25 26.20 % 438 26 – 50 21.70 % 362 51 – 100 12.08 % 202 101 – 150 2.53 % 42 151 – 200 0.95 % 16 200 plus 0.25 % 4	Figures in Blue were compiled from the Annual Returns submitted by celebrants and supplied by the Attorney General’s Department (AGD). The figures in black were extrapolated from the figures supplied by the AGD.Without Annual Returns, there is no objective data to verify the distribution of the number of weddings per celebrant. Recommendation: collection of statistics of number of weddings per celebrant pa be collected and built into the new database / web portal.
Average No. of Weddings per WEEK 1999 Total No. of CIVIL Celebrants 1671 Percentage of CUMULATIVE TOTAL NOS of CM Celebrants   1 or less 1406 84.21 % 84 % Over 1 268 15.81 % 16% Over 2 63 3.75 %	However these figures caution assuming the Marriage Celebrancy can sustain a full-time income. Given the fact that civil celebrants must supply their own resources and wage, an average of two or more weddings per week would be required to make a sustainable income from wedding work alone. Only less than 4% were able to sustain a level of work to make a sustainable wage.
MYTH: that civil celebrants earn a lot from wedding	TRUTH: that civil celebrants subsidise their wedding work, from their own personal wealth or other employment.

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