Glastonbury Festival has always been a special place for Tia and Max. They got to know each other there, got engaged there, and – in 2024 – had their wedding ceremony there with the help of a humanist celebrant.
“We knew we didn’t want a religious wedding or a big family wedding,” explains Tia. “One night, shortly before the ticket sales opened for Glastonbury 2024, I said to Max, ‘Shall we get married there?’ It felt right. This is where it should be.”
Ever since attending a friend’s wedding in 2021, Max knew that a humanist wedding would feel right for them too.
“It was the most beautiful wedding celebration,” he recalls. “I was in floods of tears listening to the story behind their relationship. I learnt so much about them.”
With the date and place set, the next thing Max and Tia needed to do was find a humanist celebrant who could conduct the ceremony. One problem – the celebrant needed to have their own Glastonbury ticket!
“It seemed impossible,” says Tia. “I think I emailed every celebrant on the Humanist Ceremonies website. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. We explained our story, and asked if they happened to have a ticket for Glastonbury.
“We were overwhelmed by the replies! We must have heard from about 60 people who were moved by our story and thought it was an amazing idea.”
But none of them had festival tickets!
“Then we heard from Alex and we knew straight away that she was the one!” continues Tia. “She had such enthusiasm. She said she had always wanted to do a festival wedding. She was so invested in our story. She really cared about the outcome.”
Max remembers, “She said, ‘I haven’t got a ticket… yet.’ But, even so, we all believed it was going to happen.”
But this was already November, and it wasn’t going to be easy to come by a spare ticket for Glastonbury.
“She tried all sorts of different avenues,” says Tia. “But by the ticket resale in April, she still didn’t have a ticket. We carried on anyway with writing the script. Would she get there? Or would we get my best friend to read it instead? But then in May, she told us, ‘I’m going!’ After six months of not knowing whether it would happen, we made it happen.”
Planning took place on Zoom. Max jokes that their conversations sometimes felt like counselling sessions.
“Alex gave us questions to answer separately so that she could get to know us,” explains Tia. “From these, she picked out things for the three of us to talk through. Then we wrote our declarations without talking to each other and had separate sessions with Alex about them.
“She knows us so well now! She’s shared such a huge moment with us. It’s beautiful to go through that with someone. We had to trust her and the process, and we wouldn’t have had that day without her.”
Max says: “We intended it to be just us with a few mates in the stone circle – it was more about the space than the audience – but sharing our story with strangers became a really important part of our day.
“At first there weren’t many people, but as the ceremony went on, the numbers grew, eventually it was 5 or 6 people deep all around us. I remember turning around and seeing everyone there! I wasn’t worried – it was liberating to say those things in front of strangers.”
“It still felt intimate, even with about a hundred people there,” agrees Tia. “In the weeks before the ceremony, Alex spoke to my friends and Max’s mum and dad and wrote a piece from each of them. It was her idea that strangers read these out on their behalf. She had bits of the script ready to give out. I thought we didn’t need family involved at all, but that made it really special.”
“It meant that they could manage to be there without being there,” explains Max.
The couple decided to include a ring warming, in which their wedding rings were handed around the crowd of strangers, as part of their ceremony.
Tia says, “We thought it would be cool if we could pass the rings around so that people could bless them. We put a lot of trust in Glasto goers… and our friend Ciaran was there to make sure the rings came back!
“People came up to us afterwards to thank us for sharing our story – the woman who tended the fire said that was the most beautiful thing she’d seen in the 15 years she’d been coming to Glastonbury.”
It wasn’t easy to pull off a festival wedding, and yet they did it!
“We wanted it so much, but there were points when we thought, this is impossible,” reflects Tia. “Even if you have a more conventional wedding, you’re likely to have that thought too. But I’d say go for it. Go for what you want.”
“It was our day and we did it for us,” agrees Max. “I’d say the same to anyone else – do it how you want to do it.”
Thank you to Tia and Max for sharing their story with us!
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