My role as a celebrant in Corrie inspired me to officiate funerals in real life

When I was asked to write about how my role in Coronation Street inspired me to become a real life celebrant, I hadn’t a clue how to start so, as Julie Andrews sang, ‘let’s start at the very beginning, it’s a very good place to start.’

I’m an actor, and I always knew from five years old that I wanted to perform. No one else in my family is a ‘thespian’ but they can blame Fred and Ginger for giving me the bug on numerous rainy Sunday mornings – I saw Top Hat, and instantly knew.

‘I can do that,’ I said.

Back then, there weren’t any stage schools in Preston, they were all in London, and of course my family didn’t know how to help me achieve my goal, let alone be able to afford the costs of stage school.

So, at age six, I started to have classes around the corner from home, in Ballroom, Latin and Old Time dance. I loved my dance but even at that tender age, I knew that I didn’t want to dance professionally, but rather that I wanted the skills for the stage.

It wasn’t until I was 13 that I had the opportunity to join a local Youth Theatre- brand new at the time. My sister, Heidi, heard about it starting up, while she was working as an usherette at The Charter Theatre.

There is a point to this, and that is, I guess, that I have always been the determined type. I always knew what I wanted, even if I didn’t know how to achieve it at the time.

Fast forward to now, and I have been working as an actor for over 20 years, across the board, in theatre, TV, film and radio. About 10 years ago, my dad suggested that I would make a really good celebrant, and I agreed.

Us actors have to be very in touch with our feelings, which, believe me, can be tiring sometimes, and I knew that I’d like to make a difference to people’s lives.

I’d attended a few services when I could tell that the officiant was just going through the motions. Anyway, I didn’t know how to get into it and eventually the idea slipped my mind.

Fast forward again to five years ago. I had an audition for Coronation Street and an hour later I was cast, the following week I was on set as Hazel, the celebrant.

This has become a recurring role which is fantastic as it’s a lovely place to work and I have a number of friends there too. After my first appearance, the idea of training as a celebrant in real life crossed my mind again.

What is a celebrant?

A celebrant is a person who performs or officiates ceremonies, including weddings, vow renewals, baby namings, funerals, interments and memorials.

Funeral celebrants construct and lead a personalised life centred funeral ceremony based on the life of the person the ceremony is for.

Information is gathered from the family of the person who has died to construct a life centred funeral.

A non-religious ceremony is referred to by celebrants as a life centred ceremony.

There are a number of providers of celebrant training courses.

You can find out more information on the website of United Kingdom Society of Celebrants

While I was working with The Contact Theatre, Manchester, one of the producers said that their mum would like to meet me as they were a real life celebrant.

We got talking, and Julie Wilson of Affinity Training kindly offered to train me. We began in the summer of 2019, before having a break due to her schedule and my own. Lockdown was the ample time to pick up where we left off and that’s what we did.

Since 2021, I have been working as a celebrant alongside my acting career. It’s actually appropriate that I have written this right now as it is World Celebrant Week!  

I absolutely love it. I write services and conduct weddings, funerals and baby naming ceremonies, as well as vow renewals and memorials.

Being in touch with your emotions and being empathetic are extremely useful qualities.

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Every service that I conduct is unique and tailored to the person(s), and no two services are the same.

Lately, I’ve been conducting a few public health funerals also, and very often these are for people who have slipped through the cracks in life. Often they don’t have any known family or friends and in these cases, I’ve done my own searches to see if I can find neighbours, for example.

Occasionally I find out things which some may think is insignificant but actually this could be what I need to create a personalised service just for that person. I also put call outs for people to attend if they are free.

I’ve had as many as 30 people attend, and I’ve had fiddle players, bagpipers, florists and gardeners offer to contribute to the service.

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A couple of months ago, someone asked if there was a type of group for notifying potential attendees of when and where the public health funerals are taking place, so I set one up.

I’ve been taken aback at some people’s kindness and it proves that there are more of us who care than don’t.

Everyone deserves to have a decent send off, don’t they?

Any one of us could have been in their situation had we been dealt another hand in life. I believe that regardless of background and wealth (or lack of), absolutely no one should go on their next journey alone.

You can find out more about Hayley Cartwright’s work as a celebrant on her dedicated Facebook page and you can visit her website here.

You can follow Hayley on Twitter here.

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