Helen Pfaff

"Als Sängerin steht man in Kontakt mit dem Hochzeitspaar und lernt sie durch Musikwünsche und viele Gespräche kennen. Doch als Traurednerin kann man einen ganz besonderen, individuellen und persönlichen Bezug zu Braut, Bräutigam und deren Liebe aufbauen." That's Helen Pfaff's own account of the difference between the 2 things she does at a wedding. As a singer, she says, the relationship with a couple runs through song requests and conversation. As a celebrant, it goes deeper: something she calls especially individual and personal to the couple getting married. She also performs as a wedding singer, guitarist and DJ, covered elsewhere on this site; this listing is about the other job, the one where she writes and delivers the words of the ceremony itself.

She didn't plan the career shift. Her own site traces it to a single question from a friend, in Swiss German: "Hesch Lust die Rednerin vo üsere Hochzit zsi?", would you like to be the speaker at our wedding? That's how, in her words, she "came to the task of Traurednerin." No year is attached to that story, and after a Bachelor of Arts in communications from Mannheim, finished in 2012, and what her page calls "many appearances as a singer and presenter," she says only that she specialised in weddings "a few years ago." Her stated preparation for the job is experience across "many church, civil-registry and free ceremonies," though the page doesn't say in what capacity she was present at the earlier ones, so this listing doesn't guess.

The page she's written for this role is built entirely around one format, the freie Trauung: a ceremony with no religious affiliation, which she describes as open to same-sex couples, couples with no religious affiliation, and couples who have left the church, and where the couple is, in her own words, completely free to choose the location, running order, rituals, timing and symbols. Her own definition calls it "the alternative to a church or civil-registry wedding," naming the Standesamt as a separate option rather than something she performs.

That's as far as the page goes on the legal question, and it's worth being precise about what that does and doesn't establish. Swiss law is unambiguous here even where a site says nothing about it: a marriage becomes legally binding only when a civil registrar performs it, in a place the canton has approved. Nothing on Helen Pfaff's pages claims she holds that role, or that her ceremonies take place anywhere with that approval. Her own copy never spells out the words "not legally binding"; it defines the freie Trauung as the alternative to the registry-office wedding and stops there, leaving the legal consequence unstated rather than wrong. She does not marry anyone, and the ceremony she leads is not, on its own, what makes a marriage legally binding in Switzerland; a couple booking her still needs the civil act arranged separately, with a registrar, somewhere the canton allows it. Her site says nothing at all about the civil preparatory procedure foreign nationals have to complete before that legal act, which tracks with her role: that paperwork belongs to the registrar's office and the commune, not the celebrant.

Stones, a map, and 2 sealed letters: the rituals on offer

Getting to the actual speech starts with a free consultation, offered as a phone call, a Zoom call, an in-person meeting in Switzerland, or an email exchange. The point, by her own description, cuts both ways: the couple gets a read on whether they trust her with the day, and she gets what her site calls "die wichtigsten Ereignisse eurer Beziehung," the important events of the relationship. Her actual prompts are specific rather than vague: how the couple met, their happiest moments together, what they value most in their partner, the funniest thing that ever made them laugh. "Formative moments, shared steps and experiences," her page says, are a genuinely important part of the finished speech, and the same conversation covers the ceremony's running order, with her offering suggestions and building around what the couple wants.

What comes out of it is a full structure, not just a speech. The processional runs one of 2 ways on her page: the groom already in place while the bride walks in with a parent or sibling, or both partners walking in together, either way cued to music she'll help choose. An opening line, a "Trauspruch," can come from the wedding invitation, a song lyric, or a personal thought. The main address covers the couple's story and who they are as people, with a thank-you to specific guests folded in if they want one. Ring exchange and vows follow, then, on request, spoken well-wishes from family and friends ("Fürbitten"), poems or a prayer, closing with a candle-lighting and a blessing before the exit music starts. Faith is optional rather than assumed: her own line is that it "can, but doesn't have to be" part of the day, and she'll bring in quotes or thoughts tied to a couple's beliefs only if asked.

She names 3 specific rituals she'll build a ceremony around on request, not just a general offer of "personalisation." A stone ritual: the couple collects stones on walks beforehand, guests write wishes on them during the ceremony, and the couple keeps them in a jar afterward. A map ritual: a wooden, cork or canvas map where each guest pins a place that matters to them and writes why in a book at the apéro, and the couple takes on the job of actually visiting it. A love-letter ritual: the couple writes 2 letters shortly before the wedding, seals them in a vessel, and reads them together on their first anniversary. Family involvement is built into the offer too, not left to the couple to organise: guests can read well-wishes or poems, the witnesses can get a specific thank-you, and a godchild or the couple's dog can carry the rings, all of it coordinated by her rather than assigned and forgotten. She'll also prepare what her page calls a certificate or attestation for the day, though nothing there describes it as more than a keepsake of the ceremony.

No English page, but a price line for foreign-language speeches

German is the default and, by her own account, the strongest: "perfekt Hochdeutsch und Schweizerdeutsch," standard German and Swiss German. Beyond that, her page draws a real distinction. Parts of the speech can go into French, Spanish or English as a matter of course. A full speech delivered entirely in one of 8 other languages, English, French, Spanish, Serbian, Polish, Croatian, Italian or Portuguese, costs more, though the page never puts a number on how much. Worth flagging plainly for this tenant's readers: there's no English version of the site and no language toggle anywhere in the menu. Every quote above is translated from the German original, and the planning conversation itself, unless you arrange otherwise, will run in German too.

On cost more broadly, the page states almost nothing in figures. Its one sentence on price ties the fee to effort rather than a rate: "Der Preis von freien Zeremonien hängt vom Aufwand ab," the price of a freie Trauung depends on the work involved. No CHF figure appears for either the standard German-language ceremony or the costlier foreign-language one, and there's no deposit or lead-time guidance published anywhere on the page.

Reach isn't in doubt, at least. The page lists her working area across 3 separate passages: Thurgau, the city of Zurich, Bern, Basel and Lucerne first, then St. Gallen, Appenzell, Valais, Chur, Geneva, Lausanne, Lugano, Biel and Thun as a wider catchment, then a further list adding Köniz, Schaffhausen, Zug, Dietikon, Wetzikon, the Walensee area, Winterthur, Romanshorn, Rorschacherberg, Graubünden, the Bodensee area, Liechtenstein, Solothurn, Schwyz and Uri. Strip the repeats between the 3 lists and that's 29 separate names, spanning German, French and Italian-speaking Switzerland plus a neighbouring principality, closed off with "usw." (and so on) rather than a hard boundary.

That combination is really the finding here: a genuinely personal process, built from specific prompts rather than a script, and named rituals rather than a vague promise of customisation, set against a page that publishes almost nothing you could put in a budget spreadsheet. A couple planning from abroad should treat the free consultation as the place to ask what a German site won't answer on its own: the actual cost, how a non-German ceremony gets scheduled and priced, and exactly how the day's legal paperwork gets handled by someone other than her.