After four decades in IT and a retirement that was barely a few months old, Nick Parsons trained with the Academy of Modern Celebrancy and conducted his first funeral ceremony. This is how he got there, what the training was actually like, and what he is building now.

Forty years at a keyboard

Nick spent the better part of his working life in IT. He was a director at a medium-sized consultancy that specialised in life sciences, working with pharmaceutical companies and similar clients. It was a career that had given him a great deal, including the opportunity to travel, run workshops, and spend years presenting to large audiences. That skill, standing in a room full of strangers and holding their attention, would matter later.

But the working world had changed around him. The shift to remote working had stripped away the face-to-face contact he valued most. “Working in IT, especially over the last 6 years because I was home-based, you miss that social interaction element,” he reflects. He was good at the work. He had been doing it for a long time. But he was ready for something different.

He retired from full-time work at the end of 2025. By then, he had already qualified as a funeral celebrant.

The lightbulb moment

Nick had delivered eulogies at his parents’ funerals and drawn real comfort from doing so. When his father-in-law’s health was failing, the family knew the end was coming. His father-in-law had spoken about what he wanted, including a specific reading. Neither Nick’s wife nor her brother felt they could stand up and deliver it.

Nick did. His background in presentations and workshops meant he was comfortable in front of people. But there was something more than competence in the room that day. He had wanted to honour his father-in-law properly. He had done that. And then a working celebrant had walked over and asked a question he had never considered.

“Immediately after that, I drove back home, and I started looking at courses that were available and came across AMC and signed up.”

The blunt answer to why he chose AMC, as Nick readily admits, is that there was an offer on. But he had done his research. Most of the other courses he had looked at were residential, spread over a couple of weekends, and required him to step away from his life. He wanted something different. “I liked the idea of being able to self-pace study,” he says, “being able to study but also be able to carry on working and fit that study into my life and other demands on my time.”

AMC fitted. He enrolled.

Self-paced, supported, and stretched

Nick gave himself a personal deadline of six months to complete the course, well within AMC’s one-year window. He worked through the modules over weekends, three or four hours at a time, reading, researching, and drafting. The flexibility meant he could fit training around the tail end of his working life without sacrificing either.

The bi-weekly group calls were a highlight. He attended them whenever he could and found them a useful counterpoint to studying alone. His mentor, Roz, was a consistent source of encouragement and positive feedback throughout the practical stages. “She was incredibly encouraging,” he says. “Really positive, and just a delight to talk to.”

The part of the course that surprised him most was the scriptwriting. Nick has been working on his first book for five or six years. He describes himself as a frustrated writer. Finding that celebrancy required him to take someone’s memories and craft a narrative from them was, for him, one of the most satisfying elements of the whole programme.

The delivery module challenged him in a different way. He had years of experience presenting in corporate settings, but reviewing recordings of his own practice ceremonies taught him things about his engagement and eye contact that no amount of boardroom experience had surfaced. “I learned so much about myself doing that,” he says. “And what I was capable of as well.”

He passed with near-perfect marks. The one thing that cost him points was forgetting to include a baby’s name in an email. It still bugs him.

Getting started in funeral celebrancy

Nick qualified in June and spent the rest of that year finishing out his working life. When January arrived and retirement properly began, he started building his celebrant business. He contacted local funeral directors, introduced himself, and worked on getting onto their lists. The early months involved a lot of groundwork and patience.

A few months into his journey, he has conducted one funeral ceremony. He describes it as an experience he found deeply rewarding, which is partly why he is in no rush to shortcut the process of building things properly.

His approach to finding work is broader than simply waiting for funeral directors to call. He has been contacting local organisations whose members are of an age where thinking about end-of-life planning is relevant, offering to come along and give talks. He is also reaching out to venues to explore whether they offer celebration-of-life packages and, if not, whether there might be an opening. The rise of direct cremation, which has brought funeral planning into mainstream conversation, is, in his view, an opportunity for independent celebrants who are willing to market themselves directly.

His website is at nicholasparsonscelebrant.co.uk. He chose to lead with his full name, despite spending most of his life wishing it was not quite so recognisable. “For years I have hated my name,” he says. “And now I’m embracing it.” People do occasionally bring up Sale of the Century. He is, by now, comfortable with that.

The reality of starting from scratch

Nick is candid about where he is. He is at the beginning. One ceremony completed, a network still being built, and an industry that runs largely on relationships with funeral directors that take time to establish. He is not pretending otherwise.

The most demanding moment of his first funeral was not the ceremony itself. It was the conversation beforehand. The deceased’s partner had lived with him for thirty years but knew very little about his life before they met. She could not fill in the gaps. Nick had to find ways to draw out what she did know, to guide her down memory paths gently enough that she felt safe sharing, and to build something meaningful from sparse material.

“It was listening and trying to tease information out. Just to make sure you could build things up and just guide the person sort of down particular paths.”

The training had prepared him for exactly this. The modules on meeting families and helping them feel comfortable sharing information had given him a framework. He did not need to improvise from nothing. He had tools. What the ceremony taught him was that those tools work.

The other challenge, which he names without drama, is that building a business as a new retiree takes time. He has the advantage of not needing the income immediately. He is using that space to be deliberate about how he builds, rather than taking shortcuts.

What Nick would say to anyone considering celebrancy training

“If you’re passionate about providing care for other people, and you have a skill set, you’re personable, you’re empathetic, you’re able to listen to people, and you’re able to take in the information, I’d say go for it.”

He places the writing alongside empathy, not above it. It matters. It is a bonus. But it is not the core of what makes someone suited to this work. The core, in his view, is the ability to sit with someone at one of the hardest moments of their life and give them the confidence that they do not have to face it alone.

“Just to be able to say to someone, ‘I’ve got you. Don’t worry about this, I’ll take care of things.’ I think that is really rewarding.”

He says this from experience, not theory. He has been that person at three funerals now, twice for his own parents and once for his wife’s father. He knows what it feels like to sit on the other side of that conversation. It is why he takes the role seriously.

AMC training: what the experience looks like

AMC’s training is entirely online and self-paced, meaning you study around your life rather than clearing your diary for a residential course. From enrolment, you have access to professionally recorded video modules, workbooks and a resource library covering everything from ceremony writing to setting up as a business.

When you reach the practical stages, you are paired with a dedicated mentor for one-to-one support. Your mentor is a working celebrant, not someone who has stepped back from the field. They review your scripts, give feedback on your delivery, and help you develop your own voice. The funeral celebrant course includes nine weeks of mentorship support through the practical modules.

Alongside that, weekly live Q&A sessions give you access to the wider AMC mentor team, where you can ask questions of celebrants working across all ceremony types. The peer network continues after graduation: AMC graduates become part of a community of more than 1,900 students and graduates, and three months’ free Celebrant Guild membership on completion gives you professional insurance and a properly supported start in the industry.

Ready to find out if celebrancy is for you?

Nick found his path to celebrancy through loss and discovered that supporting other families through theirs was work he had been, in some ways, preparing for his whole career. If something in his story resonates, that recognition is worth paying attention to.