Lovelywords (Romina Brocker)

Before Romina Brocker performed a ceremony for anyone else, she sat through her own. On her lovely words team profile she writes that she married her husband in the summer of 2023, and adds what she calls a "kleiner Funfact," a small fun fact: the person who spoke at her wedding was Simone Gori, the colleague who now runs the 5-person collective Brocker works inside. It isn't offered as an origin story. It reads more like an aside dropped in among other facts about herself. But it does useful work for a reader trying to size her up: before Brocker has said a word about rituals or seating, she has already sat on the other side of the microphone from someone doing her own job.

Her own page reads less like a professional biography than a set of answers to "get to know me" questions. Her listed role is "Freie Traurednerin, Konzertgängerin, Weihnachtsfanatikerin," freelance celebrant, concert-goer, Christmas fanatic, and she spends more of the page on Leonardo DiCaprio films, wellness holidays and crying at airport arrivals than on how she structures a ceremony. She does own one specific, slightly odd talent: doing impressions of Swiss-German regional dialects for friends. Then she jokes that her own Eastern Swiss ("Ostschweizer") accent would be too much to sustain for an entire wedding: "45 Minuten Trauung schaffe ich die Parodie nicht," she can't keep the parody going for a 45-minute ceremony. It's a throwaway line, but the number happens to land inside the range lovely words gives elsewhere for how long a ceremony with any of its celebrants actually runs.

lovely words describes one shared shape of engagement for whichever of its 5 officiants a couple books, Brocker included. It opens with a first meeting that runs about an hour, free and non-binding. 4 to 6 months before the wedding, the couple and celebrant sit down again for a longer planning meeting, roughly 2 to 3 hours, held at the couple's own home rather than an office. On the day itself, the celebrant arrives roughly 2 hours ahead of the ceremony, which itself runs between 30 and 45 minutes, the same top end Brocker jokes about on her own page. The couple writes its own vows, with written guidance from the celebrant on how to structure them, and reads them from hand-calligraphed cards rather than a phone or a folded sheet of paper. Beyond the vows, the ceremony is built from a menu rather than a script: a ring exchange, a kiss, songs, poems, a reading or contribution from friends or family, and whatever personal promises the couple wants to add. For a smaller or faster occasion, the collective also runs a leaner elopements-and-micro-weddings line, described on its own page as "kurz und knackig," short and to the point, priced from CHF 1800 for the ceremony alone and extending to a Micro-Wedding format for 10 to 15 guests, with a certificate handed over afterward and help with restaurant suggestions and outfit questions.

Whose voice the site's English pages are actually in

lovely words genuinely publishes in English, not as a thin machine toggle: its homepage and a separate page titled "elopements-and-symbolic-weddings-in-switzerland" are both written in fluent, original English, stating plainly that "symbolic ceremonies aren't legally binding, you won't be married before the law if you choose to do one." That's real, and worth knowing for a couple choosing a celebrant off an English-language directory. What it doesn't tell you is anything about Brocker specifically. Both English pages speak in the first person as "I," and the person that voice belongs to is Simone Gori, the collective's founder and the one named as responsible in the site's own Impressum: it's her own CHF 2800 flat rate quoted on the English page ("I work with an easy flat rate of CHF 2800"), not Brocker's CHF 2500. Brocker's own team profile exists only in German, and the "EN" link sitting on her own page does not lead to a translated version of it. It redirects to that same general English page, in Gori's voice. So the honest answer for an English-reading couple is not a single yes: lovely words as a business clearly serves English speakers, but nothing on Brocker's own page confirms she personally runs a ceremony in English, and the site's FAQ answer to the question ("Viele Traurednerinnen in der Schweiz bieten Zeremonien auf Deutsch, Englisch oder bilingual an, auch ich," many celebrants in Switzerland offer ceremonies in German, English or bilingually, myself included) is again written in that same singular first person, without naming which of the 5 it applies to. Ask directly before booking if English delivery is what you need.

What the FAQ says about the legal line

lovely words' own FAQ asks the question a foreign couple actually needs answered, "Ist eine freie Trauung rechtlich gültig?" (Is a free ceremony legally valid?), and answers it without hedging: "Nein, die freie Trauung hat in der Schweiz keine rechtliche Wirkung." No, the free ceremony has no legal effect in Switzerland. That's the site's own claim, sitting a few clicks from Brocker's profile in the same navigation. Nowhere on her own page, or anywhere else on the site, does Brocker, or any of her 4 colleagues, claim to perform a legally binding marriage. What she runs is the Freie Trauung: the ceremony a couple layers around whatever separate process makes their marriage legal where they are. She never claims otherwise, and this write-up won't either.

The price holds up on a second page

Brocker states her fee on her own page without hedging: "Eine Freie Trauung aus meiner Feder kostet pauschal CHF 2500," a ceremony written by her own hand for a flat CHF 2500. lovely words' separate pricing page repeats the identical figure, naming her alongside 3 colleagues, Debby, Fabienne and Georgina, as a group: "Ihre freien Trauungen kosten CHF 2500, zuzüglich Reisekosten bei weiter entfernten Hochzeitsorten," their ceremonies cost CHF 2500, plus travel costs for wedding locations farther away. Landing on the same figure across 2 separately written pages is more reassurance than most Swiss wedding suppliers offer before a first phone call. What neither page spells out is a package: no line-item list of what the flat fee covers, no defined travel radius, no published mileage rate. Cross a mountain pass, or hold the wedding well outside her home area, per her own page, and the extra becomes a quote she says she'll prepare on request rather than a number printed anywhere. lovely words' FAQ recommends booking a celebrant 9 to 18 months ahead of the date, more urgently for a Saturday between April and October, which is worth building into any wedding-weekend timeline planned from abroad.

Brocker is one name inside a small, organized collective rather than a solo act, and on the evidence here that reads as an advantage more than a limitation. The price checks out twice, confirmed on a separate page written by someone else. The process is documented rather than implied: a home visit months out, cards she hand-calligraphs so nobody has to read off a phone on the day. And she has already lived the exact thing she now sells, with a colleague standing where she now stands. The one real gap is language: nothing on her own page confirms whether she personally runs a ceremony in English, only that the wider collective, and its founder, do. For an English-speaking couple that is a question worth one direct email, not a reason to look further down this list.