Celebrant - family member!

My cousin had one of our uncles do it and was great as he could make it really personal and that came through as you knew he knew them. i think you need to set boundaries of the style you would like and where you draw a line on appropriate content. The best thing would be to sit down with her and discuss how you see it and work together to write something up that works for you, just be open if you don't like something she suggests, as long as it is collaborative and you have final sign off it will be great

Two of my friends have had friends as celebrants - one worked really well and was pitched perfectly, the other went too far down the road of using in-jokes that nobody outside of that circle of uni friends understood. You might expect something like that during the speeches, but not the ceremony really - even the families were exchanging looks every time the uni friends laughed at a joke nobody got!

So yes, it can definitely work but I think the celebrant has to remember they’re doing a job, and some personal touches are absolutely wonderful but shouldn’t exclude large numbers of the guests.

I'm doing a very similar thing to you - legal ceremony first, and then our friend is 'officiating' the main wedding.

I did some research online for structures of services and made a bit of a mishmash of them all into a template for our friend - make sure to include any readings and when you want them as it can be nice for the officiant's speech in between to connect to the themes of the readings, think about where you want personal vows and traditional vows, exchanging the rings, and also how you want to be announced (e.g. do you want them to end with any of the traditional things like "You may now kiss the bride" / "Mr and Mrs Smith everybody!" / "Congratulations to the bride and groom!" / "I now pronounce you man and wife!" so do you want something different?)

I then sent this template to our friend and we had a chat through about how it might work and his ideas etc, then he went away had a go at writing a first draft - he marked up in comments where he wasn't quite sure about certain bits or wanted to say something around Y but needed more info from us, then we did some editing off the back of this or wrote some sections where he was struggling which he is then going to go back and rewrite in his voice... so it's a lot of back and forth! I'm glad we started early because it keeps it fun and not stressful, it's nice that it's collaborative too so we're happy but he gets to feel like he's written most of it/had a strong say in the approach