André Keller

André Keller's own blog gives away something his about page smooths over: the 2 qualifications he lists together as "2024/2025" are not one credential earned twice, they're 2 separate ones, months apart. His December 2024 post is titled "Abschluss 'Freier Trauredner,'" the wedding-celebrant credential, earned with a staged practice wedding for a real couple, Tamara and Steven; he says he was the only man on that course. His May 2025 post is titled "Abschlussprüfung zum 'Freien Trauerredner,'" the funeral-speaker credential, earned separately through written exams and a fictive farewell ceremony on 30 and 31 May, alongside 2 male and 7 female classmates this time. "Trauredner" and "Trauerredner" look like a typo of each other. They're not. One comes from trauen, to wed. The other comes from Trauer, grief. Keller trained for both, but only the first belongs on this listing, and since it was awarded, exactly 1 real, paying wedding has gone up on his site: Ramona and David, married 31 July 2025 at the Rütihof in Gränichen, before 100 guests, which he calls, in his own words, "meine erste 'richtige' Trauung," my first "real" wedding.

That timeline matters because weddings are one of 3 things Keller sells, not the thing his business was built on. He founded KALIBRA GmbH in 2019 as, in his own description, "der Spezialist für mobile-plakatierung.ch," a mobile-billboard and poster-advertising outfit, and that work hasn't stopped: the same week his blog logs his first funeral eulogy, before over 200 mourners at a Baden crematorium hall, it also logs poster-stand removal at the University of Basel and ad bookings across Aargau media. He's a trained "Kaufmann" (commercial clerk) who spent 28 years in an international paper-trading agency, 22 of them as co-owner, before starting KALIBRA. In 2025 he folded a small family firm, flag-making, run by his grandfather, father and godfather, into that same company. Born in Brugg in 1966, he's lived at 11 addresses without leaving the area, is 10 years into a relationship with his partner Regula, and has 2 grown children, Manuel and Sarah, from an earlier marriage. His account of himself outside work reads like a life spent on committees and stages, not weddings specifically: 10 years as president of the Radfahrerbund Brugg cycling association, over 20 years on the organising committee of the Brugger Abendrennen race, and 40 years on the board of the Musikgesellschaft Hausen brass band, where he plays saxophone. None of that is officiant experience, but it's decades of standing in front of a crowd and running an event, which is what his third service, Moderationen, event hosting, sells directly.

What a wedding with him is actually built from is spelled out step by step on the Freie Traureden page. It starts with a free "Kennenlerngespräch," up to 1 hour, at his office or a restaurant somewhere in the Lenzburg-Brugg area, meant to establish whether he's the right fit before either side commits. Around 4 to 6 months before the wedding comes the "Planungstreffen," at the couple's own home, which he says can run to 4 hours: life story, guest details, the shape of the ceremony, ritual choices, music. Then 1 or 2 shorter check-ins, online or in person, while he writes it. On the day he arrives early to check the sound system, the chairs, the rings, and leads the ceremony itself, timed at about 45 minutes to the "Ja-Wort," the "I do." On rituals, the page is candid rather than expansive: nothing specific is named or described there, only a note that a more elaborate one gets its materials billed separately. The only rituals actually named anywhere on the site turn up in the Ramona and David post: a ring warming and a sealing of the couple's own written vows.

The only language statement on the site is on a different page entirely

Every page on andre-keller.ch is in German, and there's no English version anywhere on the domain, checked against both of the site's own sitemaps. The wedding page never raises the question of language at all. The closest thing to an answer sits on the Moderationen page, about his event-hosting work rather than ceremonies: "Schweizerdeutsch und Deutsch sind meine Moderationssprachen." English and French are, in his own word, merely "geläufig" (familiar) to him, not good enough by his own account for a full booking or a longer interview. That's not a statement about wedding ceremonies specifically, but it's the only first-hand evidence anywhere on the site of how confident he is speaking either language at length, and it points the same direction as the missing English page: expect this in German.

A published number, and a distance he never puts a limit on

Most celebrant sites in this catalog price on request. Keller's doesn't: the Freie Traureden page states a flat range, CHF 1,900 to CHF 2,300 plus 8.1 percent VAT, for the planning meetings, preparation and the ceremony itself, with travel up to 30 kilometres from Holderbank AG already folded into that figure and each further kilometre billed at CHF 0.80. What the page never states is how far past that 30 kilometres he'd actually go, or whether there's a point where he'd say no. For a couple weighing him against a longer trip, that's a real, if minor, gap: the price of getting him there is spelled out up to a point, then it just stops.

On the legal question this tenant's readers care about most, Keller's own site says nothing, in either direction. A marriage becomes legally binding in Switzerland only once a civil registrar carries it out, in a location the canton has approved for that purpose. Across every page and every blog post read here, that question isn't addressed at all: no mention of a registrar, no mention of where the couple's actual civil act should happen, and nowhere does he suggest his ceremony is that act. What he offers is the freie Trauung, the spoken, symbolic ceremony a couple builds around their own story, led by someone with no institutional standing to make it the legal one.

Keller is genuinely new to this specific work. One qualification, one staged practice wedding, one real one since: that's a thin public record next to celebrants who've done this for years. Set against it, he publishes an actual price where most of the field leaves a blank, describes a real multi-meeting process rather than a vague promise of a personal touch, and brings a working lifetime of standing in front of crowds, on stages, at podiums, behind a race-day microphone, that a first-time officiant usually doesn't have. For a German-speaking couple within easy reach of Holderbank AG who want a specific, freshly written ceremony rather than a template, that combination is worth a call. For anyone further out, the honest move is to ask him directly how far he'll actually travel, because his own site won't say.