Call of the wild: Amanda’s Journey to celebrancy in nature

Wellies, wild landscapes and working on her own terms: meet Amanda, The Great Glen Celebrant. How one AMC graduate turned a love of the Scottish outdoors into a thriving celebrant career in the Highlands

When Amanda Luscombe-Smith is scouting locations for an upcoming handfasting ceremony, she does it on foot — dog in tow, boots on, walking up a hill through the Scottish Highlands to work out the perfect spot. That’s not unusual for Amanda. It’s just how she works.

Based in the Highlands and known professionally as The Great Glen Celebrant, Amanda creates ceremonies that are rooted in nature, shaped by the landscape and built entirely around the couples and families she works with. Mountains, lochs, coastal beaches, woodland clearings, ancient ruins — for Amanda, Scotland isn’t just a backdrop. It’s part of the ceremony itself.

She trained with The Academy of Modern Celebrancy, completing her course in 2022. Three years later, she’s a working celebrant doing exactly the kind of work she set out to do. We caught up with her story.

From training to the Highlands: Amanda’s AMC journey

Amanda came to celebrancy knowing roughly what she wanted. She loved nature, she loved being outdoors, and she wanted to create ceremonies that genuinely reflected the people at the centre of them. What she needed was the training to get there.

AMC’s fully online course gave her the flexibility to study without putting the rest of her life on hold. As she explains:

“It meant that I could continue with other work, continue being a mum, and fit all my work and
training around that — which was so helpful.”

That flexibility is one of the things AMC is built around. Self-paced video modules, 1-2-1 mentor support from a working celebrant, weekly Q&As and a strong student community mean you can progress through the course in a way that fits around real life — whether that’s school runs, a full-time job or anything else.

Finding her identity as a celebrant

For Amanda, one of the most valuable outcomes of training wasn’t the qualification itself — it was what she discovered about herself along the way.

AMC’s approach to training isn’t just about teaching you how to write a ceremony. It’s about helping you understand what kind of celebrant you want to be. For Amanda, that process was transformative.

“Something that the AMC really, really helped me with was to find out who I was as a celebrant.
They enabled me to really believe that ceremonies outdoors — being part of my surroundings and the seasons — was something I could do. That it was as justified and as brilliant as somebody who really wanted to work in hotels and dress in high heels.”

There’s no single template for what a celebrant looks like at AMC. Some graduates thrive in ballrooms. Others, like Amanda, are most at home in wellies beside a loch. The training is designed to help you find your version — not hand you someone else’s.

As Amanda puts it:

“You need to know who you are before you can offer your service to anybody else.”

What it’s actually like to become a celebrant in Scotland

Scotland is an extraordinary place to build a celebrant career. The landscapes alone — Highland lochs, ancient castles, windswept beaches, forest clearings — make it one of the most sought-after destinations in the world for ceremonies. Amanda’s ceremonies regularly take place in locations that couples travel from overseas specifically to experience.

But Scotland also presents some specific challenges worth knowing about if you’re considering becoming a celebrant here. One of the most important differences from England and Wales is the legal landscape around marriage.

In Scotland, humanist celebrants are legally authorised to solemnise marriages. Independent celebrants are not. As Amanda explains, that distinction has shaped how she approaches her work:

“It’s something that differs here in Scotland, and it has probably made me work harder at who I am and what I want to deliver and to whom, and therefore making sure my website and what I put up on my socials are really relevant to that.”

In practice, this means couples who book Amanda typically complete the legal paperwork separately — at a register office — and then hold the meaningful, personal ceremony with her. For many couples, particularly those travelling to Scotland for a destination wedding or elopement, that separation isn’t a drawback at all. The celebrant ceremony is the one they’ve planned, the one they’ve chosen, and the one they’ll remember.

Amanda has leaned into this fully. Her ceremonies are chosen for their meaning, not their paperwork — and that clarity of purpose comes through in everything she does.

Ceremonies in some of Scotland’s most extraordinary locations

Amanda’s work takes her across the Highlands and beyond. Lochside handfastings, windswept beach ceremonies on the Isle of Harris, vow renewals at Loch Ness, woodland clearings and ruined castles — no two ceremonies are the same, and no two locations are either.

One vow renewal she describes captures exactly the kind of work she does. A couple who had originally married quietly near a military base years earlier travelled to Scotland with their loved ones to celebrate again — this time at Loch Ness, with a handfasting ceremony that let them mark the occasion in front of the people who mattered most to them.

Another couple on the Isle of Harris summed up their experience with Amanda in a review:

“Amanda’s flexibility was one of the things we loved the most. We literally made the decision about the timing of our ceremony on the day by looking out of the window. Her script was so personal and true to us, and she embraced all our ideas for it.”

That kind of responsiveness — adapting to the weather, the moment, the couple — is part of what makes outdoor celebrancy in Scotland so distinctive. And it’s something Amanda has made central to how she works.

Honest advice for anyone thinking about becoming a celebrant

Amanda is refreshingly candid about the journey. Passing your course is the beginning, not the end — and she’s clear about that.

“Even once you’ve passed your course, you’ve got to realise that there’s a lot more hard work about to start. You can’t expect loads of people knocking on your door the moment you open your website. It’s a slow burn — and that’s okay.”

The slow build, she says, is part of the process. Every ceremony is a learning opportunity. Every couple teaches you something. The patience required in the early stages is as valuable as anything covered in the training itself.

She also points to something often overlooked in career-change conversations: the work of figuring out who you are in your new role is ongoing. The course gives you the foundation. The rest is yours to build.

What AMC gave Amanda — and what it could give you

Amanda’s story is a good illustration of what AMC training is actually designed to do. The course doesn’t turn out celebrants who all work the same way. It gives you the craft, the confidence and the self-awareness to go and build something that’s genuinely yours.

For Amanda, that meant nature-led ceremonies in Scotland’s most dramatic landscapes. For someone else, it might mean something entirely different. That’s the point.

“Something that AMC really does is hold your hand, give you confidence, give you that foundation to really become the best celebrant that you possibly can. Go for it — you’ve got to be in it to win it.”

AMC has now trained over 1,000+ students across the UK and internationally. The course is fully online, NOCN/Ofqual accredited, and built around 1-2-1 mentorship from working celebrants — not just theoretical training. You’ll leave knowing how to write and officiate ceremonies, and how to build a business around them.

If you’re based in Scotland and wondering whether celebrancy could be the career change you’ve been looking for, the best place to start is AMC’s free quiz. It takes a few minutes and gives you a clear picture of whether this could be right for you.

Thinking about becoming a celebrant in Scotland?

Take AMC’s free quiz to find out if celebrancy is right for you, or explore the full course range at academyofmoderncelebrancy.com.

You can also read more about our Celebrant Training in Scotland on the AMC website.