Tim Maguire
Tim Maguire
Humanist celebrant
Honorary Humanist Chaplain to the University of Edinburgh and Napier University
I was a producer and director for 25 years before I trained as a celebrant in October 2005. Since then, I’ve conducted thousands of ceremonies of all kinds, and I now realise that I’ve found my vocation.
To me, Humanism is a very simple philosophy; it asks you to try to think for yourself, and try to be kind. As well as being a celebrant, I am also the Honorary Humanist Chaplain to both the University of Edinburgh and Napier University.
Our guests couldn’t believe how good the ceremony was because it was so personal to us!
The ceremony was by far our favourite part of the whole day, which is exactly how a wedding should be!
The ceremony was honestly our favourite part of the day. Funnily enough, you told us it would be, and it was very much true!
What I love about the humanist weddings is that it gets down to the true roots of what marriage means, not just to society, but to you and your partner. Yes, there’s a whole legal side to marriage, and you can incorporate a religious side to it, but at the end of the day, it’s the unity, the partnership, and the promises made to your partner that you are making during your ceremony. I truly cannot thank Tim enough for the guidance and support to creating and writing our ceremony ourselves (not just the vows). It meant so much more knowing that the words coming from Tim were the words that came from the heart of who Patrick and I are together and what our marriage meant most to us. Highly recommend truly doing the love works. My fiancé, husband now, dragged his feet over doing the love works because he’s not always the best at expressing his feelings. When we finally had that extremely sentimental moment of reading our love works to each other it brought our relationship to new heights and more depth to our connection. This made the wedding ceremony/marriage so much more meaningful to us, and to our guests!
Tim was fantastic. We truly appreciate his patience with us as we waited till last minute to finish the most important part of the wedding, the ceremony. It is so easy to get caught up in all of the planning of a wedding, especially if you’re doing a destination one, that sometimes the most important things get pushed off. But he worked with us, was patient, and did a fantastic job. All of our guest truly enjoyed the important role he played and sat at the edge of our seat (with a tissue for the happy tears) as we listened to every word he said. Not just because of his perfect Scottish accent, but for the way he presents the words with as much meaning and power as the ones Patrick and I wrote. So again, thank you Tim for being the perfect addition to Patrick and my wedding at Thirlestane Castle.
Thank you SO much, Allison & Patrick – I can only apologise it’s taken me until now to realise you’d written this and I’m very touched.
A very special thank you to Tim for taking the time over the last year to help make our ceremony not only special to us, but one of a kind! Every single one of our guests has mentioned just how wonderfully our ceremony was written and read out. Whilst nerves and excitement truly did take over, myself and my beautiful wife cried continuously throughout the day. Tim honestly made us feel so happy, comfortable and we felt so at home in the woods by the waterfall.
Now, it wouldn’t be a wedding without a little bit of chaos haha! We would also like to say a very special thank you to Tim’s absolutely wonderful colleague Iain who made a tremendous effort to join Tim in marrying us on our day! We have been lucky enough to have 2 absolutely brilliant celebrants who made sure every fine detail of our ceremony was spoken with utter love and warmth.
Being in a same sex relationship, we do have so many worries each day. Our wedding, it just wasn’t one of those days that we needed to worry. We truly did have the most incredible day, filled with a lot of happy tears, never ending love, laughter, a beautiful hand fasting and a quite ridiculous never ending game of rock paper scissors that we still can’t seem to beat each-other at!
We have said everyday since our wedding, how we just want to do it all over again. See you again in a few years Tim? 😂
From the deepest depths of Marital happiness, thank you! For leaving a loving mark on our journey through life together.
Mrs&Mrs Thomson!
Thank you so much, Mrs & Mrs Thomson! I’m just delighted to read this and I’ll make sure Iain sees it too