David Campbell has been officiating weddings in the Canberra region for more than a decade. Photo: Supplied.
It’s no secret that a wedding these days will set you back a substantial sum of money.
According to the 2025 Australian Wedding Industry Report published by Easy Weddings, that sum is in the realm of $35,000.
That figure dropped during COVID and is back on the increase, with spending up 4.5 per cent for 2025 vs 2024.
But don’t let the numbers deceive you; couples aren’t walking into that figure willingly, with the report highlighting an average wedding budget overspend of 28.6 per cent.
Forgoing the expense of a wedding for something simpler is a trend Canberra-based celebrant David Campbell has seen firsthand in his side gig helping couples tie the knot.
“A bulk of my business now as a celebrant is legal-only weddings,” David tells Region.
The ‘legal-only’ wedding David mentions is a service he introduced to his business around six years ago and involves couples coming to his house to sign the legal paperwork to seal the deal.
David Campbell wed happy couple Claudiu and Jasmin. Photo: Supplied.
Going to a stranger’s house to get married may seem like an unusual arrangement, but in Canberra, there is little choice.
“The ACT doesn’t offer a registry-style ceremony; the closest registry offices would be in Sydney or Parramatta,” David says.
David also sees this trend for legal-only weddings influenced by other factors and feels the arrangement suits Canberra’s international population in particular, who may want to be married in Australia and head home to celebrate with family and friends.
I personally ran into this issue 10 years ago when I decided to forgo a wedding, the general hoopla of a wedding just not being of interest to my partner and myself.
Left with the option of getting married in a stranger’s living room or travelling to Sydney, we eloped while on an international holiday, with the whole marriage costing less than $1000 in a service that lasted around 40 minutes.
So where does that leave Canberrans who want to get married closer to home but don’t want to spend a fortune?
A number of Canberra companies have popped up in the past few years to help solve the problem. One such company, Canberra Small Weddings, offers a range of ceremony options suited to intimate weddings. Its Cake and Punch package for up to 25 people sees couples say their vows at Tuggeranong Homestead followed by an hour of cake and drinks.
Cake and punch will cost you $3200, still over many couples’ budgets, so when celebrant David moved to Bywong on the outskirts of Canberra with the intention of creating a generational living arrangement with his family, he saw an opportunity to expand on his legal-only services and bring them into nature in a memorable setting.
“It was a happy coincidence really; we moved out here, and we had this beautiful lake,” David says.
David says his lakeside vows service is really just an extension to his living room services and will allow couples to make their commitment and sign the legal paperwork, and it will only set them back $559 on weekdays and $659 on weekends and after-hours.
David Campbell feels it’s a happy coincidence he can now marry couples by his lake in Bywong. Photo: David Campbell.
With the move to the property being quite recent and winter not being the ideal time to stand by a lake, David is yet to host his first lakeside ceremony but can see the need in Canberra and is happily working on creating new spaces for ceremonies, including on the island in the lake.
“I’m in the process of removing blackberries from the island in the lake at the moment, and we hope to have a bridge out to the island, but for now, we will stand on the shore,” David says.
David sees it as a simple solution that helps solve a financial problem for many Canberra couples who may want to save the money yet still want a memorable experience to look back on.
Information on David Campbell’s lakeside vows can be found on his website.
