Building a retirement career with purpose. It isn’t about the money: Mandy Simons’s celebrant story

Mandy Simons spent 18 years keeping a small charity running. Now, as she nears graduation from AMC’s Master Celebrant course, she explains how funerals drew her into celebrancy, why the decision was never about money, and what it has taken to retrain in a new field, building a retirement career later in her working life.

Mandy Simons has been to a lot of funerals. Some were good, some were not, and somewhere along the way she started paying attention to what the celebrants standing at the front were actually doing. She spoke at a couple of those funerals herself. Afterwards, she remembers thinking: what a privilege, to be able to do that for a family.

That thought turned into a decision. “It was kind of like a lightbulb moment,” she says. “This is something that will really add value to my life. It isn’t about the money, it’s about the purpose.” Mandy signed up for AMC’s Master Celebrant course in March last year and is now, just over a year on, finishing her final module.

Grief brought her to celebrancy, but what she has found on the other side is something she did not quite expect: joy, purpose, and a sense of finally being in the right place.

From charity operations to becoming a celebrant: how her career prepared her

Mandy has worked for the past 18 years for a local charity supporting young families and children with autism. The charity runs a nursery and delivers outreach support, and Mandy’s role sits behind the scenes of it all. “I don’t work with the children,” she explains. “In a small charity, it’s a bit of a jack of all trades, master of none. I do all the ops, IT, HR, marketing. Anything that isn’t necessarily directly with the families probably falls under my remit.”

She describes it as humbling and purposeful work, and eighteen years is not a small commitment. It also explains why celebrancy did not arrive as an abstract career pivot. Mandy already understood what it meant to hold the practical, unglamorous parts of an organisation together so other people could do the visible work. Celebrancy called her to step out of the background and be the person at the front of the room.

Why she chose AMC’s celebrant training for her semi-retirement career

Mandy started looking into celebrant training as she approached semi-retirement, ready to step back from full-time employment without stepping away from purposeful work altogether. She found AMC through social media. “Obviously the algorithms were playing a part,” she says. She looked further, then signed up for one of AMC’s free webinars.

I went and spent half an hour listening to Tara at the time, and fell in love with what she was telling me. I just decided it was about time in my life I invested in me.

Mandy Simons, AMC graduate

She committed to the Master Celebrant course rather than a single discipline, choosing to train across weddings, funerals and naming ceremonies in one programme. It was, in her words, an investment in herself at the right point in her life.

Returning to learning: AMC’s self-paced celebrant training in action

Mandy had not studied formally since university, and she is candid that returning to structured learning took some adjustment. “I’ve kind of been a sponge again,” she says. “I spent thirty years working. The last time I did any studying was when I was at uni, and I’m not going to tell you how old I am, but that was a long time ago.”

The self-paced format gave her room to find her footing. She singles out the funeral training in particular as the area where her knowledge grew fastest. “No stone is left unturned,” she says of the funeral modules, which cover the history of the role through to the practical, step-by-step relationships a celebrant builds with families and other professionals.

The bigger shift was one of confidence rather than knowledge. “I’m really proud of myself because I’ve come right out of my comfort zone, and I’m now confident in, for want of a better word, performing,” Mandy says. “A lot of the skill set you get from the training is about having that confidence to deliver.” She found the recorded and live practical assessments genuinely nerve-racking, more so, she says, than conducting a real ceremony. Getting through them is where the training earns its keep.

The impact of 1-1 mentorship in AMC’s celebrant training

Mandy worked with two mentors during her training: Christine on the funeral module, and Laura on weddings. Both feature heavily when she talks about what actually got her through the course.

Christine, she says, was the mentor who started her celebrancy path in earnest, giving her a first proper mentoring experience to build on. Laura’s contribution was different: Mandy hit a genuine stumble with the written side of her wedding module, and it was Laura’s feedback that carried her through it.

I had a bit of a stumble with my wedding written stuff, but she helped me, she picked me up and gave me loads of feedback and told me I could do it, and carried me through, and that line at the end was just fantastic.

Mandy Simons, on her wedding mentor, Laura

Her favourite piece of coursework grew directly out of that mentoring relationship: the final live wedding ceremony assessment, which she refers to as “Penny and Helen’s wedding.” Having already recorded a version and received detailed feedback on it, she then delivered the live version one-to-one with her mentor. “I actually really enjoyed doing that final live,” she says. “That would be the biggest thing for me.”

What comes through in how Mandy describes both mentors is not gentle encouragement alone. “The mentors were so supportive and so encouraging, but also gave me so much constructive criticism,” she says. “The learning out of that element of the course really does stand you in good stead.”

Training as a wedding, funeral and naming celebrant on her own timeline

Mandy has now completed her funeral and wedding training in full. She has already conducted a funeral for someone from her own past, ahead of finishing the course. Her final module, on naming ceremonies, is the one remaining piece of the Master Celebrant course, and she is deliberately pacing herself as she tackles it.

The same deliberate pacing applies to her business. Her website is live, and she has started exploring social media, but she has chosen to keep building quietly while she finishes her training and her charity role runs its course. “It’s the business side that’s been a bit quieter than maybe some other celebrants,” she says, “because I’m wanting to complete my training and finish my paid employment to then actually launch the business. It was my choice to do it that way.”

One booking has already come close. Mandy had a wedding lined up, but it clashed with a holiday she had already planned, and she was unable to commit to it. She is unbothered about the timing. Her first wedding booking, when it lands, is the moment she is holding out for.

I didn’t think I’d really be a wedding celebrant, but I loved the training so much that I think that, for me, will be a sort of gold star moment: when I finally get a wedding to do.

Mandy Simons, AMC graduate

Mandy’s advice for anyone considering celebrant training

Mandy’s advice to anyone weighing up the same decision is direct, and it comes straight from her own experience of talking herself into it.

Don’t hold back. Believe in yourself. If your heart is in it, even if you don’t think you can do it, do the training, because the training will enable you to do it. Don’t be scared, because step by step, other students, your mentors, and the community will give you the confidence that you need.

Mandy Simons, AMC graduate

It is advice built on her own experience: a woman who had not studied in three decades, working full-time, choosing to retrain in a field she knew almost nothing about, and finding that the structure and the people around her did most of the heavy lifting on confidence.

Inside AMC’s online celebrant training: mentorship, structure and support

AMC’s training runs entirely online and at your own pace, which matters if you are studying alongside a full-time job, as Mandy was throughout her course. You get access to professionally recorded video modules, downloadable workbooks and a resource library covering everything from ceremony writing to the practical side of setting up a celebrant business.

Once you reach the practical stages of your chosen course, you are paired with a dedicated 1-1 mentor: a working celebrant, not someone who has stepped back from the field. They review your scripts, give feedback on your delivery, and work with you through the recorded and live assessments that most students, Mandy included, find more daunting than the real thing. Mentorship runs for nine weeks on the wedding and funeral courses, four weeks on naming, and twenty-two weeks across the full Master Celebrant programme.

Alongside 1-1 mentoring, weekly live Q&A sessions put you in front of the wider AMC mentor team, and the Student Hub community carries on well past graduation. Graduates also receive three months’ free Celebrant Guild membership on completion, giving newly qualified celebrants a properly supported start.

Is becoming a celebrant right for you? What Mandy’s story reveals

Mandy came to celebrancy through funerals. She trained quietly around a full-time job and found her confidence in a community that believed in her. She has already conducted a funeral ceremony, built a website, and discovered that this work has given her a genuine purpose. Her gold star moment still waits ahead: that first wedding booking. But the real transformation has already happened.

If her story resonates with you and you’re looking for work that feels meaningful rather than just profitable, if you want the chance to rediscover what learning and growth feel like, if you sense there might be more to your next chapter, take our quiz and discover if Celebrancy is for you.