Kathryn Palmer-Skillings: Redefining Success, Representing Disability and Resting

Image credit: Autumn Wild

Kathryn Palmer-Skillings is more than forgiving— she’s ready to roll with the hiccup when a series of technological misadventures makes me embarrassingly late to our meeting. That’s what strikes me first about Kathryn, her clear-headed, calm and enthusiastic demeanor that makes me feel comforted and comfortable without getting hung up on the many minute mistakes that felt only moments before as if they would overtake me completely. Does that sound familiar? Well then, you might be planning a wedding and someone like Kathryn—or even Kathryn herself—could be exactly who you need to guide you.

Kathryn Palmer-Skillings is a humanist wedding celebrant and a member of the inaugural A Most Curious Coalition. The Coalition was formed to pursue founder, Rebecca Hoh-Hale’s intentions, for the A Most Curious Wedding Fair to continue on its path of creating an intentional and inclusive space for couples and suppliers to meet in. Kathryn contributes as a member of the disabled community, particularly effective at speaking on issues of physical accessibility and ways we can accommodate mobility issues. “I have long list of things I’d like to shake up,” she confines conspiratorially. And we’re off!  

Before she was either a humanist celebrant, or a Coalition member, Kathryn worked as a community learning manager in some incredible venues—namely museums. “Inherently a lack of diversity is changed by the people who enter the museum,” Kathryn explains, mirroring the challenge Most Curious is undertaking by way of forming the Coalition—to make sure that the communities this wedding fair seeks to represent are the ones who know the door is wide open and looking to welcome them in. Kathryn worked to make sure people who felt museums were inaccessible understood they were more than welcome—they were necessary to fulfill the role a museum should play in a diverse community. Sounds very familiar!

Kathryn will work with any couple, but finds that those who seek her services are often looking to attain inclusivity and accessibility through their bespoke wedding ceremony. “I’m good at making people feel really celebrated,” she says with a wide, happy smile. “My role is to work with the couple up to the wedding day—to get to know each other. To learn their story; to learn how it feels to be them.” She covers the whole of the UK, but she’s primarily booked in England. “But I’m happy to travel,” she says with a little shoulder-shimmy.

She began pursuing her career as a celebrant a few years ago, initially thinking she might like to be a registrar. “Registrars work super hard, but they don’t get the chance to make that human connection,” she says, a note of regret in her voice. Then some friends had a wedding and at that wedding there was a celebrant! “No standard civil or religious ceremony could have supported their mix of cultures and communities,” she tells me with admiration. “What inspires me now is people and humans—and that’s why I identify as a humanist and not an atheist. I believe in lots of stuff.”

There is a respect for the natural world in Humanism that really appeals to Kathryn. “How I live my life is how I do my business,” she says before detailing ways in which she pursues sustainability both personally and professionally. “I give a portion [of my earnings] to a charity—this year I’m giving to my local women’s aid, last year Women for Afghan Women.” She seeks equalities-based charities and women-centric charities when looking to make a difference in the world; her work is about people so it only makes sense that these social enterprises are what calls to her most. She also limits her use of paper whenever possible—though for accessibility reasons holding technology during a ceremony isn’t ideal for her—and seeks out public transport to get her to and from weddings. She also frequently updates her social media with reports on how many trees have been planted in her name as a benefit of being involved with Rock My Wedding’s supplier directory. “I’m really values-driven,” she details, “so couples who choose me are values-driven too.”

Many of Kathryn’s couples identify as feminists—“We say the word patriarchy,” here she sneers the word, “at least once in our initial call.” Therefor, it doesn’t surprise me at all when we both begin contemplating the differences between American and UK ceremonies, the deeply embedded traditionalism that’s long gone un-questioned and the fiercely political nature of wedding ceremonies on these shores. She wonders aloud why we are so quick to give authority to institutions who don’t care for us as individuals and often do not represent our myriad identities. “I find the couples I work with best aren’t chucking out all tradition, but being intentional about their choices.” That’s what she specializes in, “Meaningful and intentional services…I don’t mind if you choose traditional, as long as you choose it.”

Then she says something profound: “A religious ceremony is your relationship in the context of the faith; in civil ceremonies it’s your relationship in context of the law of the land. A Celebrant-led ceremony is about your relationship.”

That seems quite solemn, but a celebrant-led ceremony can be a lot of fun! She tells me the story of two brides who met while taking shots. “The couple wanted a unity ceremony, which traditionally includes lighting three candles, one with the other two. It represents remaining an individual while joining together, but the venue wouldn’t allow open flame.” Kathryn sat with that, no stranger to an obstacle in her path. Also not without a sense of humor, Kathryn realized the particular shot the couple most enjoyed—which has a NSFW name—was comprised of three elements—two different spirits and whipped cream on the top. “This is about two powerful things coming together,” Kathryn said as she led the unity ceremony; the brides’ three attendants had each carried an element of their unity shots—tied with a bow—down the aisle. I laugh imagining it and laugh even harder when I learn that the conclusion of their ceremony was the downing of the shots they had made together. “It’s a creative enterprise,” Kathryn says of her work, “but I always take the risk.”

It seems fitting to tell you now what tattoo Kathryn Palmer-Skillings would next like to commission, a quote by the prolific poet, Maya Angelou:

“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”

As she details who she is, what she does and how she does it, I figure she must feel quite successful indeed by Angelou’s measure.

It’s time to name the elephant in the room: “Marriage equality doesn’t exist in every community.” As an inhabitant of both the Queer and disabled communities I know only too well what she’s speaking of. While I am privileged that the law of both mine and my fiancee’s lands (finally) formally recognize our union, in order to be together in the same country I had to federally surrender my disabled identity. I stopped a three-year-long pursuit of social welfare in order to be united in marriage. I learn it’s the same here. Often it’s our inaccessible society that disables us, so much more so than our individual conditions ever could.  Marriage to a disabled person often means the law will no longer allow you to legally identify as disabled, as if your partner in marriage is some kind of miracle cure for often life-long, or genetic conditions and impairments that a bit of social aid could see eased. Never mind if your partner in marriage is also disabled; you will simply erase each other’s identities, though your needs you will have to bear together.

“We grin and bear things because that’s what we do,” Kathryn says, referring to those of us who are disabled and pulling together a wedding. “I want to be grinning, I don’t want to be bearing,” she says with a laugh. When planning her own wedding, Kathryn was constantly up against ingrained ableism coming from venues and suppliers. Asked to “try the stairs,” at one venue where there was no lift option, Kathryn felt singled out and othered, rather than included and celebrated. “No, I will not simply try the stairs,” she says, righteously angry, even years later, about these small inequalities that made a large, negative impact on her experience. I think it’s obvious why Kathryn finds that her couples are often comprised of, in her own words, “People who are wanting someone in their corner.”

“During 2020 I had the chance to reflect on the need for representation in the disabled community,” she tells me, considering her own wedding experience and the inherent lack of representation or accessibility present at the time. “I thought it might have changed—there’s a less overt ableism, but it’s still there.” A smattering of representation: a few styled shoots here and there with visible disabilities represented have recently cropped up, but it’s still not the norm. Besides that though, how do you communicate a shift from optics to accessibility? “It doesn’t have to be all visuals; it can be information dissemination. How can we make adjustments to your wedding day for you?” The weddings world is trying to have these conversations—even Kathryn and I brainstorming together could be a ripple that makes a small wave hit the shores. From whence came the shift? “I think it came from a result of our cultural understanding of thinking about marginalized people—from Black Lives Matter—you can’t have one conversation without the other. Looking at a white supremacist culture you see how that effects all people with intersectional identities. This has to start shifting—not just in weddings.” But Black Lives Matter’s movement hitting foreign shores wasn’t the only thing galvanizing people in 2020. “This whole country spent every 5PM getting used to a death toll that wrote-off those with underlying health conditions—I’m in that group of those oh, never minds.” We sit with that for a beat and Kathryn checks in with me—this is my story too—is it too much for me? Is it triggering an abreaction? I appreciate her pause and her consideration and I’m okay—it’s nice to say these things out loud to someone who’s shared the experience. “I don’t know when that shift will come,” she says, echoing my own thoughts. It’s not a hopeless thought, but it’s a question without an answer for now. “It’s all in the question mark,” she says. 

Do we start with marriage equality, or with something smaller? For our part, we sit in our respective offices and we talk about weddings and the Coalition, which was created in part to do something about making the unique and transient world of weddings a more accessible and accommodating space. We rattle off some possible changes, Kathryn leading the charge, “Suppliers need to recognize communities as a whole,” she begins, citing that there’s very little representation for those with intersectional identities or whose love still manages to fit outside a slowly-expanding box of “acceptability,” like those in polyamorous—or polyam—relationships. And venues? She feels they could be doing more with their websites—reporting mobility challenges that may be present and what accommodations have been made. It would make her work a lot easier as Kathryn must always educate herself on a venue before she can even confirm a client. She also longs for a day when more of the suppliers who’ve privately come to her after her Weddings + Access Instagram Live series will feel comfortable speaking out themselves. “Is there a reason we’re not sharing? Is it we feel we mustn’t, or that we don’t want to? Not every impairment is visible—maybe we have more [suppliers who are “out”] than we realize—but my suspicion is we don’t.”

“That’s why I think the Coalition is so important—so the big names with lots of followers and voice can amplify other voices. I’m excited to learn from other people in the Coalition. It’s such a powerful group.”

One of the last things I learn about Kathryn is that she has great taste in music. She name checks some of my personal favorites, “Powerful, mostly women, and really good tunes—Arlo Parks, Lianne La Havas, Lizzo, Missy Elliott, Taylor Swift, Dolly Parton.” Kathryn points above her desk and tells me that there’s a “Dolly wants you to pour yourself a cup of ambition” poster hanging just over my head. I feel comforted knowing that the spirit of Dolly Parton was with us through our time together. She feels like a good omen. Maybe something will come of this conversation, or one like it—the first formal Coalition meeting is scheduled for the very next day—and maybe we will make Dolly proud.

I ask if there’s any one challenge Kathryn would like to soon meet in her life. She tells me some of her plans for her business, but after an hour of addressing the most fatiguing and frustrating inequalities and barriers she’s faced, I ask her if perhaps “rest” may be on the agenda? As a wise woman recently said to me, it’s all in the question mark.

She seems suddenly at peace, or maybe it would be more accurate to say she’s at joy in that moment—I know how it feels to be seen as worthy of rest. Disabled people often feel as if we need to simultaneously prove our disabilities and prove that we can somehow “overcome” them to be useful to society. The hardest thing is knowing we’re aiding in our own marginalization when we do this—it’s a really exhausting balancing act we aren’t actually equipped to undertake. “I am practicing saying you are achieving rest,” she tells me. “Gold star for resting—I’m not doing nothing; it’s that shift of mindset towards self-acceptance.”