Ceremonies
Weddings and unions, funerals and memorials, living wakes, naming days, vow renewals and divorce ceremonies.
Find out more →I’m Gail, a celebrant in Blackburn, ceremonialist and reinvention guide supporting people across Blackburn, Lancashire and surrounding areas. Whether you’re saying goodbye, making a commitment, marking a change or finding your way through one of life’s less tidy chapters, I create thoughtful ceremonies and offer gentle guidance that begins with listening to you.
Email: gail@gailjchisholm.com Call or Text: 07718 922691
What I do
From life’s biggest milestones to the quieter moments of change, everything I offer is shaped around you.
Weddings and unions, funerals and memorials, living wakes, naming days, vow renewals and divorce ceremonies.
Find out more →Circles, public speaking, community groups, death cafes, retreats and gatherings held with care and intention.
Find out more →For the quietly brave. Tools, truth and somatic yoga to help you get unstuck, release stress & overwhelm, and change your life inside and out.
Life, change & everything in between
Life rarely follows a neat script. There are beginnings we choose, endings we don’t, relationships that change us, people we never want to forget and moments when we suddenly realise the life we’ve been living no longer quite fits.
My work sits in those spaces.
Through Ceremonies, I help people mark love, loss, identity, family and change in ways that feel genuine. Through The Unstuck Club, I work with women navigating disruption, disconnection and reinvention, using embodiment and other tools to help them reconnect with themselves.
They may look like two different parts of my work, but to me they share the same heart. I listen, I notice what matters, and I help you honour where you are while making space for what comes next.
Ceremonies, your way
I don’t believe the important moments of your life should be squeezed into somebody else’s template. I create personal, story-led ceremonies with warmth, honesty and enough structure that you always know what happens next.
From a goodbye that needs exactly the right words to a joyful gathering that sounds unmistakably like the people involved, the focus stays where it belongs: on you, your people and your story.
When someone dies, finding the words can feel like an enormous responsibility. I work with families to listen carefully, gather the stories that matter and create a meaningful farewell that reflects the person who has died rather than reducing a whole life to dates and facts.
My Death Doula training also informs the calm, practical way I approach conversations around death, dying, remembrance and legacy.
Your ceremony should feel like the two of you, not something that could belong to anybody. I create warm, personal and story-led celebrations shaped around your relationship, your personalities and the way you want the day to feel.
There can be laughter. There can be ritual. There can be deeply meaningful words and gloriously human moments. What matters is that it feels true to you.
Not every goodbye happens in the same way or at the same time. Memorials, celebrations of life and living wakes can create space for stories, gratitude, laughter, grief and the things people want to say while there is still time to say them.
I shape each gathering around the individual and the people sharing that moment with them.
Some moments deserve to be marked simply because they matter to you. Naming ceremonies can welcome a child into their family and community, while vow renewals offer the chance to honour everything a relationship has already lived through and everything still ahead.
Both can be created with meaningful words, personal stories and symbolic elements that reflect the people involved.
There are plenty of important life transitions that don’t arrive with a ready-made script. Divorce and conscious uncoupling, significant birthdays, career changes, identity changes, seasonal gatherings and other thresholds can all deserve acknowledgement.
I create bespoke rituals and gatherings that give those moments shape without making them inaccessible, overly formal or performative.
My background in corporate financial services taught me how much preparation, structure and clear communication matter. My work as a ceremonialist taught me how to hold a room, tell a story and recognise when the human moment matters more than the running order.
I bring both sides together when hosting conferences, panels, awards, retreats, community gatherings and other events.
Sometimes there isn’t an occasion to organise. You simply know something has changed.
The Unstuck Club is for women finding their way through disruption, whether that has come through illness, divorce, loss or the quieter realisation that the life they’re living no longer feels like theirs. My approach brings together embodiment, Human Design, energy work and other practices according to what you need.
I guide rather than push. The intention is not to hand you another version of who you are supposed to be, but to create room for you to hear yourself more clearly.
Somatic movement invites you to notice what is happening within your body rather than treating movement as another performance to get right. My sessions create space to slow down, reconnect and explore embodiment in an accessible way.
Getting unstuck rarely happens because somebody tells you to try harder. Sometimes what helps is having space, support, useful practices and a community alongside you while you work out what you actually want.
A little about me
I’m not interested in being the centre of somebody else’s story. My role is to listen well, ask useful questions, bring calm and structure to the process, and create something that feels honest to the people involved.
I began my ceremony work in Scotland in 2023 before moving to Lancashire. Before this chapter of my life, I worked in corporate financial services and ran my own womenswear boutique, experiences that taught me organisation, communication and the importance of really understanding the person in front of me.
I’m degree educated, trained in Death Doula care and certified in Somatic Yoga and Embodiment. I’m also legally authorised to conduct marriages in Scotland through Sacred Heart Sanctuary, which can be relevant for people planning their marriage there.
Professional memberships & credentials
The person behind the work
I know something about life taking an unexpected turn. In 2019, a breast cancer diagnosis became one of the disruptions that made me look more closely at the life I was living, what fitted and what no longer did.
My route here has taken me through corporate work, business ownership, styling, spirituality, embodiment and ceremony. It may not be a conventional career path, but it has given me a rather useful collection of skills for work that is ultimately about people and helping them figure out who they are and how to get there.
I believe ceremony matters because it gives shape to what we feel. I believe everyone has a story worth hearing. And I believe endings and beginnings can both deserve our attention.
Blackburn, Lancashire & beyond
I’m based in Blackburn and currently focus my local work within approximately 20 miles. This includes Darwen, Accrington, Clitheroe, Chorley, Burnley and Preston.
I also undertake selected destination work in Scotland, including marriages where my legal authorisation there is applicable. These towns are areas I serve rather than separate business locations.
You don’t need to arrive with everything figured out. You might be arranging a goodbye at short notice, planning a joyful day months from now, imagining a ritual that doesn’t have a conventional name, or simply knowing you’ve reached a point where something needs to change.
Send me an email and tell me what is happening. We can start there.
Email or text / WhatsApp is often the easiest way to reach me because I may be conducting a ceremony or working with somebody when you call. If you prefer to phone, please leave a voicemail if I cannot answer so I know who is trying to reach me.
Email: gail@gailjchisholm.com Call or Text: 07718 922691
© 2026 Gail J Chisholm. Free ceremonies always available for babies, children