Michelle Parfitt Professional Celebrant

Michelle was an absolute dream - from start to finish she made the process totally stress free and actually enjoyable ! Super helpful, understanding, personable and just utterly brilliant. Went above and beyond our expectations and would highly recommend to anyone looking for a Celebrant. Can't thank you enough Michelle :)

My mum was the most precious person in my life so when she died I wanted to give her a wonderful send off. Working with Michelle to create a celebration, rather than a funeral, was a pleasure - empathetic, creative and understanding, Michelle helped create a service my mum would have enjoyed. I got so many compliments about the service, and I proud to have given her the very best. I’m so glad that Michelle was my celebrant, she helped me get through an awful time and delivered a wonderful celebration of my mum’s life.

I first met Michelle in 2008 in a business capacity when my company embarked on a working relationship with Michelle’s company in London. When Michelle left her company to go on an around the world trip of a lifetime with her husband we remained in regular contact via social media, so I always knew where she was and what fabulous things she was up to.In the meantime me and my long term partner, Wayne, decided to get married and planned our wedding at Sidmouth Harbour Hotel, a place we frequent regularly and love, which was to be a two day event with very close friends and family. We were obviously very excited and booked the local registrar to carry out the service and ceremony.On Michelle’s return to the UK, I saw a post from her updating her future plans to return to work to do something that she would enjoy and that was to become a Celebrant. At the time Michelle did not know of our news to get married as we had only just finalised this so I told her of our news and asked, rather cheekily, if she would be prepared to be the Celebrant at our wedding, to which she replied, I would love to but shouldn’t you check with Wayne first!So, I took her advice and although Wayne had not met Michelle, he obviously knew quite a bit about her and said he would be delighted for her to carry out the service as this would mean that it would be completely personal to us. I quickly cancelled the registrar, even though I had already paid the deposit but it was far more important to us to have Michelle conduct our ceremony.Michelle has given us so much time, talking to us on the phone about our options, giving us suggestions on how the day could look, asked what we wanted from the whole experience and has been amazing in planning what we hope to be a fabulous day of celebrations, fun, laughter and tears, all shared with those closest to us. At this time we both decided that we would like them to join us on our special day, as Michelle will have contributed so much to make this our own and the bonus is, unbeknown to us, her husband has a passion for photography (hobby) and Michelle kindly offered his services to take a few natural photos for us! Double whammy!Michelle provided us with a questionnaire that we completed together on various topics to help her plan the day around us and provide her with information about our relationship such as where we met, what we most like/dislike about each other and any other information she can incorporate in the Ceremony, funny stories being a focus, as we want our guests to enjoy the day and come away feeling that it was not just special for us but also for them.Then the Covid-19 lockdown came! We held out hope that our wedding, scheduled for 12th July 2020, could possibly be one of the first social gatherings following lockdown and what a way to celebrate the end of it all. Hmmmm, well as we all know, that was not to be and unfortunately our wedding has been postponed and rescheduled for 23rd August 2020.It would now seem likely that August will also be postponed and another date has been set for 11th July 2021, again, Michelle has been so accommodating and flexible to ensure that we get what we had planned and not a wedding that only leaves memories of Social Distancing/Face Masks/Guest dotted all around the hotel not being able to share the occasion as one party and dancing on designated spots on the dance floor.We cannot thank Michelle enough for all her support over this quite stressful and emotional time and for being so accommodating. I would not hesitate to recommend her services, unconditionally. Rest assured, if you have her as your Celebrant you will most definitely have one special, personal day for both you and your guests to remember.

We were lucky enough that the undertakers we chose pointed us in the direction of Michelle to oversee my father's funeral. She was truly wonderful. It was as if she had known Dad all her life. The ceremony was faultless, truly professional, dignified but with the right touch of lightheartedness that suited the mixture of ages that attended. I would recommend Michelle to anyone looking for a celebrant. Thank you for making what we thought would be a difficult day that much more bearable.

Michelle married us in May 2022 and created a wonderful, personal, memorable ceremony that celebrates our unity of three distinct - yet similar - cultures; being British, Japanese, and Indian. She seamlessly incorporated the essence of our way of life and values in a way that really made our day special. We’re very grateful for a lifetime of memories, and highly recommend Michelle as a celebrant.

Michelle guided us through the process of arranging our Uncle’s funeral brilliantly. She was extremely patient and kind and worked very well with our funeral directors, who weren’t known to her. The funeral was delayed due to a post mortem, but at no point were we made to feel rushed or uncomfortable. The service itself was beautiful and so much better than we could have hoped for. Michelle pieced together the memories of several close friends and family and delivered a eulogy which was perfect, it was like she knew our uncle inside out. We are so grateful that she created a send of that we were proud of. We would highly recommend her.

Michelle was our celebrant for our wedding this July and right from the first moment we met her online to the wedding day, she was amazing. She is really friendly and easy to get on with and we felt comfortable talking to her about our relationship. She wrote a ceremony just for us with the help of her (long-but-worth-it) wedding questionnaire. On the day, the ceremony was truly personal and just beautiful. Both the photographer and a few guests who have attended lots of weddings this summer came up to me to tell us it was the best ceremony they had ever heard! Thank you so much Michelle for helping us make our special day so memorable.

Michelle is such a lovely caring person, so kind to all of us. Beautifully spoken and so compassionate. Michelle shows so much kindness, care and warmth to everyone throughout and after, highly recommend.