The funeral that changed everything: how Kerry became an AMC-trained funeral celebrant in Scotland

Kerrie Farman is an Aberdeen-based, AMC-trained funeral celebrant who built her business to four or five ceremonies a month within a year of graduating. Her reason for training traces back to one funeral where she felt like a stranger to the woman being remembered, and the promise she made herself never to let another family feel that way.

Kerrie had been to about ten funerals in three years by the time she sat through her great aunt’s. Some of them had been beautiful, led by a humanist celebrant who could, in her words, bring the person into the room, so the service felt like a warm hug. Her great aunt’s was not one of those. She left feeling angry, not at anyone in particular, just at how wrong it had gone.

That anger turned into something more useful within days. After speaking at a couple of funerals herself, Kerrie realised she didn’t want anyone else sitting through a service feeling the way she had. She had been turning the idea of celebrancy over in her head for four or five years already. This was the moment it stopped being an idea.

Why Kerrie decided to become a funeral celebrant

Kerrie decided to become a funeral celebrant after her great aunt’s funeral left her feeling like a stranger to the woman who had died. She had already seen what a good service could do. “The celebrant humanist was able to bring the person in the room and it was like a warm hug,” she says of the ceremonies that got it right. Her great aunt’s did not. “I sat there feeling like this woman was a complete stranger to me,” she says. “And I felt so, so angry.”

“I sat there feeling like this woman was a complete stranger to me. And I felt so, so angry.”

She had been circling the idea of celebrancy for years before that funeral gave it shape. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while and then suddenly everything just clicked,” she says. “I found the company, well, the academy, and just bit the bullet and went, I can do this and here we are.” What stayed with her from that period was simple: she didn’t want anyone else left feeling that way.

How Kerrie’s customer service career prepared her for celebrancy

Before she trained as a celebrant, Kerrie spent years in customer service, most of it at an airport, calming down passengers who were stressed, delayed and far from their best selves. “People travelling, heightened emotions, they always need to get somewhere,” she says. “I was able to put my customer service heavily into reading people, and finding that bond over whichever it needs to be.”

That skill transferred more directly than she expected. Families meeting a celebrant for the first time are often at one of the lowest points of their lives, and her instinct is to give them space while she works out what she needs to know to do the ceremony justice. “I’ve been quite useful to dig into that kind of mentality,” she says, “while trying to tread around the information you’re kind of needing as well, to build that trust.”

Why Kerrie chose to train with the Academy of Modern Celebrancy

Kerrie chose to train with the Academy of Modern Celebrancy over the humanist route because she wanted a style that wasn’t boxed in. She had looked at becoming a humanist celebrant first, and it didn’t quite fit. “I didn’t quite feel that was the right fit for me,” she says. AMC kept surfacing in her searches until she gave in and looked properly. “It kind of felt that spoke a bit more to me in being a bit more flexible,” she says. “My opinions don’t matter, it’s what that family need and what that person needs at that time, so I thought that was a better fit than boxing yourself into one.”

What Kerrie’s AMC training experience was like

Kerrie’s favourite part of AMC’s course was the material on different cultures and ways of life, something she had always been curious about long before she considered celebrancy. The coursework on how different cultures value life and mark death sent her down what she calls her own little tangent, reading further into it outside the assigned modules.

She trained while working full time, and leaned hard on AMC’s Facebook community when she needed an answer fast. “Everybody jumps on and answers questions if they’ve been in that position,” she says. “You don’t go long without an answer.” Her mentor, Julie, made the difference when it mattered most. “Within minutes of speaking with her, she got an immediate sense of the person that I was, how I kind of gathered information,” Kerrie says. “She was able to adapt the kind of language that she used to suit me and how I understood it, even just a short ten-minute phone call.”

Building a celebrant business in Aberdeen, one funeral director at a time

Kerrie graduated from AMC in September and October, and spent November introducing herself to every funeral director she could find in Aberdeen. That legwork mattered: funeral directors need to see evidence of proper training before they will recommend a celebrant to a grieving family. Her first booking landed in January, delayed briefly by heavy snow, and she has averaged four or five funerals a month since. She is now stepping back from full-time employment to make more room for the business, with plans to widen out from Aberdeen into Aberdeenshire and to connect with the wider community of celebrants she hasn’t yet had the chance to meet. She now practises as KLF Ceremonies, named for her own initials, with a website due “by the summer.”

The ceremonies themselves have ranged widely: elderly clients, deaths from long-term illness, one from a ten-year battle with cancer, funerals for people who died from addiction, three burials alongside the more usual crematorium services. One family included a trans relative, which meant thinking carefully about language in the room. “That was a good kind of insight into other people’s way of life,” she says.

The challenges Kerrie faced building her celebrant business

The biggest early lesson was pace, not confidence: doing three funerals in a week while still working full time nearly finished her, even though the work itself came naturally.

The sharper challenge came from a family who hadn’t told her everything. Kerrie was booked for a man who had died on his sixtieth birthday after years of drug and alcohol dependency, and the family had agreed the eulogy could reference it directly. What they hadn’t mentioned was that his six-year-old granddaughter would be in the room. “When I kind of seen that she was going to be there, I swiftly changed it on the spot,” Kerry says. “I didn’t feel that that was appropriate.” Afterwards, the man’s son thanked her for the change. “He was like, ‘Do you know what? I didn’t even think. Thank you for that,’” she says. It is the kind of judgement call no course can fully prepare you for, and one she now carries into every family conversation: always ask about children in the room, whatever the circumstances.

“He was like, ‘Do you know what? I didn’t even think. Thank you for that.’”

Kerrie’s advice for people considering celebrant training

“Do it. If there’s signs out there, do it.”

Kerrie’s advice for anyone weighing up celebrant training is blunt: do it. “Do it. If there’s signs out there, do it,” she says. She had been circling the decision for four or five years before she signed up, half-expecting people to think it was a strange move. Nobody did. “I signed up, and then I started to tell everyone, and everyone just said, that makes perfect sense for you.” She finished her training in just under six months while working full time, fitting modules around cooking dinner and listening to course audio while cleaning. “You’ll find the time cuz as you get past that second module, it then ends up consuming you,” she says, “but in a good way.” Her only caveat for the nerves that come with a first ceremony: “Stuff will go wrong. You’ll say the wrong word. I’ve messed up a very Scottish poem shamelessly. But it’s fine. Nothing happens.”

Kerrie still thinks about her great aunt’s funeral, and about the version of it that never happened, the one where a stranger’s life gets handed back to the people who loved her instead of read off a page. Every ceremony she writes now is built to close that gap.

AMC training: what the experience looks like

AMC’s funeral celebrant training runs entirely online and at your own pace, which is exactly how Kerrie got through hers while still working full time. From enrolment you get recorded video modules, workbooks and a resource library, including the cultural and personal approaches to death that Kerry kept returning to outside the coursework itself.

Once you reach the practical stages, you are paired one to one with a mentor for nine weeks, and that mentor is a working celebrant, not someone who has stepped back from the field. They read your scripts, give feedback on delivery and help you find your own voice rather than a template version of one. Weekly live Q&A sessions put you in front of the wider mentor team, and the Facebook community means a question at ten at night gets answered before morning.

Graduates leave with an AMC certificate, with NOCN accreditation available if you want it, and three months’ free membership of the Celebrant Guild to cover insurance, support and CPD while you get started. AMC has trained celebrants across England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Spain, France, the USA, China and beyond, so wherever you’re starting from, including somewhere like Aberdeen, you are not the first.

Ready to find out if celebrancy is for you?

Kerrie turned three years of funerals that didn’t sit right into a business built one funeral director introduction at a time. If any part of her account of the moment it clicked sounds like your own thinking, it deserves a proper look.

→ Find out if celebrancy is right for you

→ Explore AMC’s funeral celebrant training in Scotland