Michele Davidson, Founder and Principal Celebrant

Michele is a born storyteller. Complete strangers tell her the most extraordinary things about themselves. She’s open, curious, and knows how to really listen.  Famous for her uncanny knack of ‘getting’ people in less than 10 minutes, she remembers everything they tell her. As an interfaith chaplain and officiant, she brings incredible depth of knowledge to her ceremonial practice. She is a pioneering early graduate from the Celebrant Institute in the US, and one of the first Celebrants in Canada.

A practicing Buddhist for nearly 25 years, she is deeply attuned to the immense beauty of our human lives. Michele brings the same tender attention to wedding ceremonies, as she does to her Celebrations of Life and End of Life work. She is one of the few Funeral Celebrants who specialize in memorial ceremonies for suicide and traumatic death loss. It takes a special person to be fully present with the expansive happiness of weddings and the grief of mourning families. Michele sees that each of us is extraordinary and ordinary all at the same time. When you work with her in ceremony, she will inspire you in so many thoughtful and personal ways. And she will pour her heart and soul into it because this experience MATTERS. To you. To her. And to the people you love.   You might enjoy reading one of her recent wedding reviews.

Janis Horne

Celebrant Janis Horne is grounded in that which is significant to the human heart. Part of the Modern Celebrant team for four years, she has witnessed the power of ceremony to provide meaning to our individual and collective lives. She knows that marking the milestones of life gives us joy and comfort in an increasingly hectic world. This understanding continues to inspire her work as a Celebrant, and provides the bedrock for every wedding ceremony or memorial ceremony that she creates.

For Janis, life is all about connecting with each other. It delights her to discover what really matters to people, and she loves the creative process of weaving their thoughts, beliefs, values, faith and culture into a contemporary ceremony that is theirs alone. She is an accomplished public speaker, and uses her skill to conduct ceremonies with warmth, sincerity and humour.  Janis loves meeting and working with people from all walks of life. She is particularly interested in serving the LGBTQ community with heartwarming, respectful and culturally sensitive wedding ceremonies and celebration of life ceremonies.

Janis has been professionally trained and certified as a Wedding Celebrant by the Celebrant Institute and Foundation and is authorized to perform interfaith weddings throughout the province of BC. She is also certified by The Gay Wedding Institute, and recently completed her certificate in Funeral Celebrancy with the Fellowship of Professional Celebrants in the United Kingdom.  Michele feels compelled to add: “Janis rocks!”

 

Marcia Thomson

Marcia brings the richness of a life lived fully with an open heart and mind, to her work as a Celebrant. Like so many of our clients, her journey through life has been imbued with beautiful celebrations but loss and sorrow also. An intuitive and thoughtful person, Marcia listens carefully to get to the heart of what matters most to you so she can create a ceremony that reflects your most cherished values and unique personality. A graduate of the Celebrant Foundation and Institute, Marcia is certified in Weddings and End of Life ceremonies. And like everyone on the Modern Celebrant team, she is an authorized interfaith Religious Officiant recognized by the Province of BC.

When it comes to weddings, Marcia knows that long after the confetti and rose petals have been swept away, what you’ll remember most about your wedding is how it made you feel. Her gift for your marriage is a wedding ceremony that fills your heart for years to come. She wants you to look back and say, “That was perfect. That was just what we wanted.”And at times of death and grief, she understands how overwhelming creating a funeral or memorial service can be for loved ones. Innately sensitive and compassionate, you can trust Marcia to create an end-of-life ceremony full of heart, elegance, and grace. Know that she is strongly called to serve families coping with miscarriage, stillbirth and infant death.

Marcia will guide you with creativity, integrity and professionalism as you mark your life’s most important moments – guaranteed!

 

The Transformational Ceremonies Promise

At the heart of every ceremony we craft lies a single, unwavering promise: your moment will be held with the reverence it deserves. We don’t simply show up and recite words. We immerse ourselves in your story, letting the textures of your life—the quiet triumphs, the shared laughter, the unspoken bonds—shape every element. This is not ceremony as performance; it is ceremony as presence. When you stand at the threshold of a life-changing moment, you need someone who understands that the veil between the ordinary and the sacred is tissue-thin. We know how to linger there with you, honoring what has brought you to this point and what lies ahead.

What makes a ceremony transformational isn’t grandeur or elaborate staging. It’s truth. It’s the courage to name what matters most, even when it trembles on the edge of your voice. Our celebrants are trained to coax that truth into the light, gently, with the kind of deep listening that makes people feel truly seen. We’ve learned that a well-placed pause, a gesture borrowed from your family’s heritage, or a single, carefully chosen word can release a flood of meaning. That is our work—to create a container where emotion can move freely, and where your community can witness and uphold you exactly as you are.

Ceremonies That Reflect Your Truth

No two love stories are identical. No grief follows the same path. No family’s traditions speak the same language. That’s why we never work from a script or a template. When we design a ceremony with you, we start by asking the questions that unlock the marrow of your experience. What does this transition feel like in your body? What do you need to release, to welcome, to bless? We gather the fragments—a song that played on your first date, the poetry your grandmother loved, the ritual you glimpsed in a distant culture—and weave them into a seamless, authentic expression of who you are. Your ceremony becomes a mirror, reflecting not some idealized version of a milestone, but the real, flawed, magnificent life you are living.

The details matter immeasurably. We might include:

• A handfasting cord knotted by the most important people in your lives, each one whispering a blessing into the threads.
• A moment of silence where the assembly simply breathes together, holding space for a loss too vast for words.
• A reading chosen not because it’s popular, but because it cracked your heart open the first time you heard it.
• A symbolic gesture—lighting a candle, pouring water, planting a seed—that roots the ceremony in the physical world, giving your intentions a tangible anchor.

Every person who witnesses your ceremony should leave knowing something more essential about you. That’s not a by-product of good taste; it’s the result of painstaking, soulful preparation. We spend hours with your stories, your memories, your hopes, until they live inside us. Then we stand with you, often at the edge of our own tears, and we speak your truth back to you with the full force of our conviction. Because when a ceremony truly reflects your truth, it doesn’t just mark a moment—it changes you.

Marking All of Life’s Milestones

Life is not a straight line with a few big signposts. It’s a river with countless bends, confluences, and quiet inlets. We believe every significant transition deserves ritual, whether the world celebrates it or not. Yes, we pour our hearts into weddings, weaving together two lives with hope and wild joy. We walk alongside families facing loss, creating funerals and memorials that become a balm for shattered hearts—especially in the tender territory of suicide or traumatic death, where few celebrants dare to tread. But there is so much more: the birth of a child, the blending of two families, a milestone birthday that asks to be marked with gratitude rather than dread. A coming-of-age ceremony that welcomes a young person into their own agency. A divorce ritual that honours the love that was and releases it with dignity. Even the farewell to a cherished animal companion can be a holy moment when held the right way.

We have crafted ceremonies for individuals stepping into retirement, for adults claiming a new name that finally fits their gender identity, for communities healing after a tragedy. Each one shares a common thread: the need to pause, to gather witnesses, and to speak aloud what is true. Too often, our culture leaves these passages unmarked, leaving people to navigate profound change in isolation. We refuse to let that stand. By creating ritual where none exists, we stitch people back into the fabric of connection and meaning. Your transition, whatever it may be, is not too small, too unusual, or too sad to be honoured. It is worthy of our full, unflinching attention.

What It Takes to Hold Space

Standing at the centre of a life-changing ceremony requires more than a steady voice and a warm presence. It demands an exquisite ability to hold the full spectrum of human emotion without flinching. Joy can be overwhelming; grief can be raw and formless. Our celebrants have trained rigorously in the art of containment—learning how to be a calm, unshakeable anchor while allowing feelings to surge and break as they must. This is not a skill you learn from a manual. It is forged in years of spiritual practice, in personal encounters with loss and love, and in the humble recognition that every person we serve is experiencing something we will never fully know. We approach each ceremony with a beginner’s mind, shedding assumptions and meeting you exactly where you are.

Behind every seamless ceremony lies an extraordinary amount of unseen work: hours of drafting and redrafting the flow of words until they breathe; conversations with family members who may be reluctant or grieving; silent walks through the venue to feel its energy; the deliberate cultivation of our own inner stillness so we can be fully present for you. Our celebrants are also continual learners, drawing on interfaith wisdom, poetry, psychology, and the deep well of story that connects all humans. We are shaped by Buddhist mindfulness, by the earthy rituals of earth-based traditions, by the elegant language of humanist thought. This eclectic grounding means we never run out of ways to touch the sacred. It means we can stand before a weeping mother, a nervous couple, or a roomful of strangers, and in every case, find the thread that leads us home—to the moment that matters, to the heart of why we are there.