From the registry office to her own stage: meet AMC wedding celebrant mentor Katie Keen

Katie Keen knows exactly what a standard civil marriage script looks like. She spent years delivering them as a sessional registrar for her local council, a role she loved — the flexibility, the couples, the privilege of standing at the front of their day. But she also knew, from the inside, what those ceremonies could not do.

“I knew I could offer couples so much more,” she says. In 2013, she made the move, trading the registry office for her own practice and building True Blue Ceremonies into one of the most respected celebrant businesses in Kent and the South East. She has not looked back since.

Before the ceremonies, there was the corporate world”

Before celebrancy, and before her time as a registrar, Katie had a career that does not immediately suggest warmth and handfasting ribbons. She worked in administration and risk management, where she earned management qualifications and developed a thorough grounding in business operations.

Those years gave her skills she still draws on: staying calm under pressure, managing people and logistics, preparing thoroughly and executing reliably. The kind of discipline, she notes, that comes in extremely handy on a wedding day.

The move to the registry office came next, fitting around her young children while giving her a front-row seat at couples’ most significant moments. It was work she was good at, and she enjoyed it. But the fixed structure of a civil ceremony kept showing her the ceiling of what was possible. When she finally stepped into independent celebrancy, it was less a leap into the unknown and more a decision she had been quietly building towards.

Over a decade in Kent, and still finding the moment

Katie has been taking weddings across Kent and the wider South East since 2013. Based between Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells, she covers the full county and regularly travels further afield — to the Cotswolds, Hampshire, London, and beyond. She has worked at castles, walled gardens, woodland clearings, a wartime gun emplacement on the white cliffs of Dover, and on television.

“There is a really very special moment I find in each wedding ceremony when it feels like it is just the three of you,” she says. “All the guests seem to disappear. It is a genuine human connection that you make. It is really very powerful.”

That moment does not happen by chance. It comes from the work done beforehand: conversations that allow her to understand how a couple met, what they value, what they want the room to feel. It comes from two decades of experience across two formal roles and her own practice — knowing exactly what preparation looks like and why it matters.

Part of what she loves about the work, and what she is candid in describing to anyone considering it, is the ritual of showing up fully. Choosing an outfit that matches the couple’s colour scheme. Stepping into the celebrant role and out of everything else — partner, parent, business owner. It is, she says, all part of getting into the right headspace for what the ceremony requires.

What Katie brings to AMC mentoring

When Katie talks about what the celebrant role actually involves, she is honest about both sides of it. The freedom is real: you set your schedule, you build something that is entirely yours. But that freedom comes with everything else, too.

“You are also going to be [the] HR manager, and everything in between,” she notes. Running a celebrant practice means wearing a great many hats, and her background in business and risk management means she understands the shape of that, not just the ceremony work itself.

At the Academy of Modern Celebrancy, mentors are working celebrants. They are not former celebrants reflecting on the field from a distance — they are still in it, still taking bookings, still navigating the same practical realities that trainee celebrants are about to face. Katie is no exception. After more than a decade of building True Blue Ceremonies, she brings both the emotional intelligence to connect with couples and hold a room, and the organisational discipline to ensure everything runs smoothly around them.

She is excited to be supporting AMC students as they grow in ability and confidence. Her mentoring approach is grounded in the same qualities that have defined her celebrancy: genuine warmth, professional rigour, and a clear-eyed understanding of what the work actually demands.

Outside the ceremony

When she is not taking weddings or supporting AMC students, Katie can be found chasing a Wordle solution in four, tracking down Paul Weller tour dates, strength training twice a week, or spending time at home with her family and a small black cat called Dora, who considers herself firmly in charge.

After more than twenty years in weddings, two formal roles, an independent practice and a television career she certainly did not plan, Katie Keen has earned the right to be confident in what she knows. The couples she has worked with clearly agree.

Celebrant mentors: the AMC difference

Training with AMC means you are never learning in isolation. From the moment you enrol, you have access to weekly live Q&A sessions with the wider mentor team, where you can bring your questions, hear how different celebrants approach the same situations, and build your confidence alongside other students at the same stage. With mentors spanning weddings, funerals, naming ceremonies and beyond, those sessions give you a breadth of perspective that a single mentor relationship alone cannot offer.

When you move into the practical stage of your training, that changes. You are paired with a specialist mentor for dedicated 1-1 support, working closely together on your scripts, your delivery, and your development as a celebrant. Your mentor’s feedback is specific to you: your strengths, your voice, the kind of celebrant you are becoming. This is not a checklist exercise. It is a genuine working relationship.

The combination of the two — the breadth of the group sessions and the depth of the 1-1 mentoring — is what sets AMC training apart.

Ready to start?

Katie came to celebrancy because she could see what a ceremony could be when someone genuinely cared about getting it right. If that resonates with you, it might be worth finding out whether celebrancy is the right path.