Abi Fisher’s leap from the West End to wedding celebrancy

Abi Fisher spent a decade on stage and 25 years behind the scenes at some of London’s biggest shows. Then a podcast moment changed everything. This is how Abi trained with AMC, found her voice as a wedding celebrant, and discovered that jumping off the edge was exactly the right call.

For two years, the idea sat quietly at the back of Abi Fisher’s mind. Not urgently enough to act on, but persistently enough to keep surfacing. She was working in marketing and sales for West End productions, shows like Moulin Rouge and Mamma Mia, doing work she was good at and had built over decades. So why couldn’t she shake the feeling that something was missing?

Then came the podcast. She cannot remember which one it was, only that it triggered something she describes as a lightbulb moment. “I just love working with people and I love hearing people’s stories,” she says. “What can I do that can get me back into public facing and being creative again?” The answer came quickly, even if acting on it took longer.

AMC graduate Abi Fisher is now a wedding celebrant based in Leyton, East London, creating bespoke ceremonies she describes as warm, creative, with a big dollop of fun. To understand where she is now, it helps to understand how far she has come.

A career built behind the curtain

Abi started out as an actor, spending a decade in a profession where the good years and the quiet ones arrive in no particular order. Eventually a side hustle in box office sales and marketing took over, and for the next 25 years she worked in West End entertainment, most recently at a full-service agency handling creative for major productions. The shows she worked on read like a West End highlight reel: Moulin Rouge, Mamma Mia, and others. “Free theatre, like what’s not to like?” she says.

It was a career that served her well and built a skill set she draws on every day: working with the public, managing expectations, meeting deadlines, holding a room. But the creative part, the part that had once sent her to stage school and kept her acting for a decade, had gradually narrowed into the background.

The pull back toward something more people-centred began building slowly. When the podcast moment arrived, it landed hard. “At first I just thought, oh, what can I do to get back to my creative roots?” She briefly considered the registrar route, then stumbled into the world of independent celebrancy. “It just opened my eyes so much.”

She sat with it for two more years before enrolling. There is a Donna Ashworth poem she kept returning to. “If I’m going to do this, I have to jump off the edge,” she says. “Could be folly.” She pauses. It was not.

Choosing AMC

Once the decision was made, Abi researched her options properly. She was drawn to AMC for its community, its support structure, and the sense that it was a provider that took the training seriously. “They just seemed very together and very professional and very thorough,” she says.

“I did a lot of research, and I just liked the community aspect of it, the support. They just seemed very together and very professional and very thorough.”

Since graduating, other celebrants have reinforced that instinct. Several have told her they wished they had trained with AMC, after discovering their own courses lasted no more than a week. Abi’s reaction was unambiguous: “What?”

Thoroughness was part of the appeal from the beginning. She wanted to be genuinely ready for the work, not just in possession of a certificate.

What the training actually felt like

Abi completed the wedding celebrant course over six months, fitting it around a full-time job. She was deliberate about the pace and her advice to anyone doing the same is clear: resist the urge to rush. “Don’t rush because you want to be the best you can be at this. You want to do yourself justice.”

The nine-week mentoring section, working with her assigned mentor Helen, was the part that mattered most to her. The feedback she received there did more than help her improve. It quieted the self-doubt. “You stop doubting yourself then. You thought, okay. It gave you more courage with your convictions. You go, I am capable of doing this.”

“The feedback was fantastic. It was just validation that you were going in the right direction. You stop doubting yourself then.”

She also singles out the weekly live Q&A sessions as a highlight, praising their warmth and practical value. “Everyone’s in the same boat,” she says, “so you really feel a lovely warm vibe and there’s so much support from each other.” She gives particular credit to Miranda and Penny, who run those sessions alongside her mentor Helen.

The live ceremony assessment was the other significant milestone: a recorded ceremony delivered in front of friends. “All my friends were like, come on, we can do this. And then we had wine after.” It was a relief and a proof of concept in one. The course logistics, as she puts it, are straightforward. The hurdles are manageable. The work is worth doing properly.

Ceremony style and what she brings to it

Abi covers East London, Greater London, Essex, Hertfordshire, and, because she is originally from the north, Lancashire and Cumbria. Her ceremonies are bespoke, built from couples’ stories rather than templates, with symbolic elements like hand fasting, ring warming and light rituals woven in where they fit. She also makes her own lino print vow booklets, a personal touch that reflects the craft she brings to the role.

Her theatre background shapes everything. She brings storytelling instincts to the writing and a performer’s sense of timing to the delivery. Her mentor Helen Jubb, who is herself a working celebrant, described watching Abi in action as seeing “a powerhouse of personality, fabulous storytelling and awesome performance skills,” adding that Abi “has a warmth about her and is really easy to chat with.”

She is currently also beginning her funeral celebrant training with AMC. The draw is the depth of the work. “At the moment, I’m of an age where sadly I’ve been to a lot of funerals, but it’s so interesting and learning about people, how people were, how people tick.”

The reality of starting out

Abi graduated into the work that faces most new celebrants: a website to launch, a social media presence to build, venues to approach cold, and an industry to introduce herself to. She talks about this phase with honesty. It is not easy. “I’m in that middle of that journey at the moment where I’m like, life has peaks and troughs.”

She has structured her approach carefully. A marketing plan mapped out month by month. Venues in East London contacted weekly. A deliberate lean into her connection to the area, its history and character. “I love the history of a lot of the venues that are around me and the quirkiness of them.”

The advice her mentor gave her is the compass she returns to. If you put the work in, if your feet are pounding the pavements, metaphorically or otherwise, it starts to pay off. Small wins have followed: a venue putting her postcards in their wedding fair goody bags, a first booking confirmed, trade fairs lined up. She takes each one and uses it.

“Take those small wins when they come because they mean a lot and they can carry you forward.”

What she’d tell anyone thinking about it

Abi’s advice comes from a place of earned conviction. She sat with the idea for two years before acting on it, then went all in when she did. Her first piece of advice is simple: if it feels right, go for it. Do not wait for a sign that is more obvious than the one you already have.

The second piece is about pace. The training is thorough because it needs to be. “Don’t rush because you want to be the best you can be at this.” Take the time, sit with the material, honour the process.

And the third: have fun. Whether training for weddings, funerals, or both, the subject matter is rich and the process is genuinely enjoyable if you let it be. “It’s so interesting.”

Training with the Academy of Modern Celebrancy

The detail that struck Abi most when she compared notes with other celebrants was not about syllabus content or accreditation. It was about time. Other providers had delivered training in a week. AMC gave her six months of self-paced learning, a nine-week mentoring relationship with a working celebrant, weekly live Q&A sessions, and a live ceremony assessment that left her feeling genuinely ready for real couples.

That is the shape of AMC’s wedding celebrant training: a programme built around ceremony-readiness, not a fast track to a certificate. Mentors are active, working celebrants who bring current, practical knowledge into every session. The community, including the student Facebook group, continues well beyond graduation.

AMC has trained over 1,000 celebrants and holds a 4.8-star Trustpilot rating, supported by a community of more than 1,700 members. If you are weighing up your options, that record is worth considering.

Ready to start your Celebrant journey?

Abi made the leap to become a celebrant when the quiet call got too loud to ignore any longer. If you are being called to something altogether more meaningful and joyful, Celebrancy might be exactly what you are looking for.

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