Alexander Jakovljevic

Alexander Jakovljevic's homepage lists 3 ceremony formats side by side, in the same section, given equal weight: a wedding ceremony (Freie Trauung), a child-welcome ceremony (Kinderwillkommensfest), and a funeral address (Trauerfeier). Each one carries its own numbers instead of a shared description. The wedding format runs 2 to 3 preparatory meetings, the first one non-binding, building toward a ceremony he times at about 45 minutes. The child-welcome format is lighter: 1 preparatory meeting, structured as a phone or video introduction call, an in-person visit about 6 weeks before the event, and a follow-up call about 1 week out, with a ceremony he puts at about 35 minutes and room for godparents to take part if the family wants that. For a funeral, it's 1 meeting again and a ceremony he estimates at 25 to 35 minutes, and here he drops the "Redner" (speaker) title for something more specific: he calls himself a "Lebensredner," a life speaker, for this format alone.

He works from Romanshorn, on the Swiss side of Lake Constance, and by his own account was born in 1979 in Salzburg, Austria. His site names a wife, Laura, married since 2010, and 4 children, and describes him, in the run of adjectives printed under his photo, as a devoted family man, encouraging by nature, "100 percent" affirming of life, entertaining, a music lover, a coffee drinker and hopeful. Asked why he does this work at all, his answer is short: people matter to him, and everyone has a story worth telling. There's no account of what he did before this, no training narrative beyond a single credit line, and no founding year for the business anywhere on the site, checked across the homepage, the ceremony page, the contact page and the impressum.

The freie-trauung page spells the wedding process out in 5 steps. Contact him and you get a quote first. Step 2 is the "unverbindliches Kennenlernen," a no-obligation first meeting; afterward you get a week to decide, and only once you commit does he send a contract along with a deposit and reservation invoice, no figure attached to either on the page. Step 3 is where the actual writing starts, about 6 weeks before the wedding, in person, and his own line about it is specific: he isn't going to simply repeat the couple's own words back to them, the speech gets written fresh, built around them. Step 4 is a follow-up meeting 1 to 2 weeks out, preferably online, and step 5 is the day itself, when he arrives at least 1 hour early and, where needed, sets up his own sound system.

The site's FAQ tells a slightly different story about timing than the Ablauf does. It puts the planning meeting at about 12 weeks before the wedding, not 6, and gives the ceremony's length as a 30 to 45 minute range rather than the flat 45 minutes the homepage states. Both versions sit on the same page, and nothing on it resolves which one is current. On where he'll actually go, the FAQ is generous rather than specific: it names the Bodensee shoreline, the Säntis massif, a boat, unnamed spots in the mountains of Austria, and other locations in Germany, closing with a simple line, "ich komme zu euch," I come to you. No radius, no travel fee and no cut-off distance appears anywhere on the site.

6 reviews behind the 5 stars

Jakovljevic's homepage runs 6 testimonials in a section headed "Kind words," each signed by a named couple: Can & Juliane, Manuel & Chun-Yi, Adina & Jeremias, Roland & Christina, Dustin & Mareike, and Alex & Irina, the last of whom date their own wedding to 8 October 2022. The freie-trauung page carries a separate reviews widget pulled from Google, also showing 6 entries and a 5.0 average. Only 1 name clearly links the 2 sets: a review from "Juliane S," posted about a year before the page was checked, reads as the same account as the homepage's Can & Juliane testimonial, and his reply to it is signed "Juli & Can." The other reviewers read differently. Denis Janke writes that he has experienced Jakovljevic "several times" as a speaker and as a person, which reads as a colleague's view rather than a client's. Helmut Hannesschläger says simply that he has known him a long time. Samuel Renk describes watching him speak at an event rather than booking him for one. Boas and Peter Forrer leave short reviews with no couple framing at all. None of that makes the 5.0 average false, but a couple reading it as proof of 6 satisfied wedding clients would be reading more into it than the widget itself supports.

The one line his site gives the Standesamt

On the legal question, his site says exactly one thing worth quoting, printed on the freie-trauung page: "Eine freie Trauung ersetzt nicht das Standesamt," a freie Trauung does not replace the Standesamt, the civil registry office. That's true, and it's as far as the page goes. It doesn't name a registrar, doesn't point to where the actual legal act should happen, and never claims any legal standing for Jakovljevic himself. Under Swiss law, a marriage only becomes legally binding when a civil registrar performs it, somewhere the canton has approved; his own copy never claims that role, so a couple building a Swiss wedding around him should plan the civil act as a separate step, arranged with a Zivilstandsamt, rather than expect this site to walk them through it. He leads the ceremony. He does not marry anyone.

No English, not even "on request"

Every page checked, the homepage, the freie-trauung page with its Ablauf and FAQ, the contact page, the blog, the impressum, is in German only. There is no language switcher and no English version of any page, and no line anywhere offering to run a ceremony in a second language. For a couple who needs the planning conversations, the contract and the ceremony itself to happen in English, nothing on this site supports assuming that's available; it would need to be confirmed directly with him, never assumed.

2 credit lines sit near the bottom of the homepage. One reads "Ausgebildet von Freie Redner," trained by Freie Redner, attached to a logo with no course name, date or link behind it. The other is a recommendation badge from Eventbutler.ch. Neither adds a detail beyond its own label.

What this site actually gives a couple is a menu, not a price list: 3 formats, cleanly separated by meeting count and ceremony length, and a promise that the speech gets written from scratch rather than assembled from a template. What it withholds is just as consistent: no figure for any of the 3 tiers, no travel cost, no English anywhere, and a star rating that, read closely, rests more on people who already know him than on couples whose wedding he's actually led. Book him for the writing and the delivery, in German, somewhere on the Bodensee or wherever else he's willing to travel, and settle everything else, the price, the language, which planning timeline actually applies, on that first no-obligation call.