Anthony Cribbes – recipient of the most debonair hair-sweep, occasional farmer (only, or mostly during pandemics), wedding celebrant, founder of The Celebrant A List, and one part of the trio behind the iconic Collingwood Wedding chapel The Altar Electric.

Read on for all this and all the other things he does that didn’t fit in this sentence.

With Covid forcing us all indoors and all manner of brilliant doorstep portrait projects happening, I wanted to kickstart some convos with my local community and find out how the time and strange space is being used, as it’s never been more important to stay connected and sharing.

What changes did the percolation time of ISO make to your view of doing business generally?

Man what a time ISO LYF has been! I live in the country but for the last 5 years it feels like the road is more my home. Being able to stay closer to home has made me realised that I will be putting a priority on focussing my business in a more local sense.

It’s almost like I guess you could say that I am becoming a business cliched bourgeoisie and opting for a ’tree-change’ or ‘downsizing’… only I promise I am doing it in a non-pretentious way, not so I can start a new Insta account of: ‘My journey from big city life to self discovery’ kind of crap.

What role are you actively playing in the “new world” and how does Anthony Cribbes Celebrant see this benefiting couples?

Before ISO I was passionate about community and quality over quantity. I see weddings now moving from a ‘bigger and better’ world to one where people are placing a premium on the connection.

This means I can see a lot more smaller weddings happening. We actually made a change to the Altar Electric around 6 months ago for this very reason, we didn’t just want to be offering registry style weddings, we wanted people to be able to have a small wedding celebration.

One that was about creating great moments but didn’t bring with it the anxiety inducing costs.

You were ahead of the curve with The Altar Electric. Was this always the vision, are you generally a wizard, and either way has the vision for the space changed after Covid?

Haha…I’ll leave the Wizardry stuff to my mates out at Hogwarts. Altar Electric is actually Dee and Sarah’s (my amazing business partners) original concept, I just helped give it the nudge.

Initially we were thinking it would be about Registry Weddings…but in the end we realised what we were actually tapping into was a whole new vein of thinking from pockets in the community. We didn’t realise just how under served the small wedding market was.

From our understanding that wasn’t due to a lack of desire but more a lack of supply from an industry that was focussed on large groups only essentially.-

With your work running the Celebrant A List and seeing a huge cross section of the industry, what advice do you have for melbourne wedding celebrants in generating a sustainable business?

Oh so many! I think the biggest thing anything Celebrant can do is to not get carried away with their own ego, I see it all over the place and could also be accused of being guilty of it myself.

I think once you start telling yourself you’ve made ‘it’, things will turn, because it’s at this stage when people stop evolving, adapting, learning and improving.

I am definitely a way different Celebrant in terms of my style now then I was 5 years ago when I first started. How I win my work is also drastically different.

We can always learn from anyone… right now the people I am learning the most from are the Celebrants who are only 1-2 years into the business but are completely slaying it…also avoid having a gimmick, it will run dry very quickly, just be genuine.

Best general tips for couples in selecting a celebrant?

There’s 9,500 of us in Australia, so just know that there’s the right kind of Celebrant out there for you.

I always think it works best as a Celebrant when I work with couples who I can genuinely go and have a beer with down at the pub and talk about other things than weddings.

That’s the kind of fit you are hoping for, so make sure you try and find that kind of person for you.

Find Anthony Cribbes online

Anthony Cribbes Celebrant website
Anthony Cribbes Celebrant Instagram
The Altar Electric website
The Altar Electric instagram
The Celebrant A list website
The Celebrant A list instagram

A feature on Melbourne wedding celebrants is also here.