A Whitefield woman who swapped match days for matrimony has been nominated for two wedding industry awards.

Joanne Lazarus has made the shortlist for Best Celebrant and Best Newcomer at the Wedding Industry Awards after launching her wedding officiation business last year.

The professional actor and former Manchester United tour guide spent two months training for her new role as a celebrant after the pandemic temporarily put an end to in-person work.

Joanne, 58, officiated her first wedding in July last year and is now a regional finalist at the awards, which take place on November 8, after four of the couples she worked with recommended her work.

The mum-of-three says she has "absolutely loved" the first year of running her own business.

She said: “I’ve found it’s a very supportive industry.

 “It doesn’t feel like work, it feels like I’m making people happy because they’re getting what they want from their wedding ceremony and I’m making friends along the way of other wedding industry people as well.”

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In order to gain her licence, Joanne took an online course with the Academy of Modern Celebrants and learned how to write couple’s individual personalities and passions into their ceremony and completed her final exam virtually.

While studying for the role, Joanne also learned to design multicultural weddings and got to know the legal ins and outs of the big day.

She added: “I had to write wedding ceremonies and for my very end module I had to perform it on Zoom because it was it was all in lockdown.

“I had a mock wedding in my sunroom, and I used my husband and my daughter as the married couple.”

Joanne’s ambition now is to make her job as a celebrant a full-time career and will soon branch out into the world of funeral officiation.

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“I want it to be my full-time career basically because I adore it," she said.

“It could be a matter of one day meeting a wedding couple, sitting having a coffee with them, meeting them and getting their story, and then a few months later I’m doing their wedding.

“I want to become my full-time career, as my own business, and it’s going that way so it’s lovely.”

Joanne, who has recently become a grandmother, suffered a difficult start to her new career after losing her mum to cancer in January.

However, she knows her mum would be so proud to see her success.

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Joanne added: “I had to take some time out when she was ill, so I had about four months out of that year.

“I didn’t really work, my brain was elsewhere so I had a bit of a timeout, so I’m quite pleased with where I am now.

“My mum definitely would have been very proud of me.”