Denis Janke (Wort-Klang)

Denis Janke's own price list opens with a sentence a solo celebrant would never need to write. "Bitte beachtet: Bei den Preisen weiter unten handelt es sich nur um meine (Denis) Preise, nicht die meines Teams," it reads. Please note, the prices below are his own, not his team's; ask Marco, Alexander or Maik directly for their own quote. Wort-Klang isn't a single person working under a brand name. It's Janke plus 3 other people, each keeping their own phone number, their own email address and, by that opening line, their own rates, loosely bundled under a shared site whose price page only actually prices Janke's own work.

Janke is the one this listing is about, and by his own account the work found him rather than the other way round. During what his site calls his theological training, he learned to speak and moderate in front of large crowds and, in his words, discovered more and more of a passion for it. More than 9 years ago, friends started asking whether he could imagine officiating their wedding. Since then he's led more than 180 free ceremonies, "freie Reden" in his own phrase, in what he describes as a range of settings, and built a second identity alongside it as the pianist who plays them too. The piano side came first, and less willingly: his parents put him through lessons as a child, "danke Mum und Paps," he writes, until an obligation turned into something he kept doing on his own.

7 numbered steps, from first meeting to the wedding day

His homepage lays the process out as a literal numbered list, 01 through 07, which is more procedural detail than most solo celebrants publish. It opens with a no-obligation Kennenlerngespräch, where he'll play live piano samples on request so a couple can judge the fit before committing to anything. If that goes well, a first planning meeting works out the ceremony's "atmosphärischer Flow," his term for making sure the opening song, the speech, the rituals and the closing party song all connect rather than sitting as separate blocks. A second meeting is where the actual material comes from: a detailed interview about the couple's own story, which he says becomes the basis for the speech, described on the page as "kein Copy/Paste, sondern nur echte individuelle Handarbeit," no copy and paste, only real individual work. He explicitly invites contact details for family or friends who might have an anecdote worth folding in.

Step 4 is where the 2 halves of his job meet directly: couples who book the version with piano get a private mini-concert to choose songs from, and he'll rehearse a couple's own song choice on request rather than sticking to a fixed set list. The stretch between meetings is working time on his end, piano practice and drafting the speech and the running order, and about a week out there's a "Last Call," an online run-through so nothing is left to chance on the day. Step 07 is simply the wedding itself, where his own copy frames his job as making sure the couple can let go and enjoy it. None of the 7 steps names a total meeting count or a total hours figure; what the list actually documents is sequence and division of labour, not a tally.

3 flat prices, a fourth priced by conversation

3 of his 4 packages carry a published CHF figure. Rede & Kernzeremonie, speech and ceremony only, costs 2200 CHF and bundles in a roughly 1.5 to 2 hour planning meeting and a roughly 1.5 to 2 hour speech meeting. Add piano and the price becomes 2800 CHF, with the planning meeting stretched to 2 to 2.5 hours to make room for song selection, and 3 to 5 songs from his own repertoire included; a fully custom song costs an extra 100 to 400 CHF depending on difficulty, because, his site says, a song genuinely needs 2 to 10 hours of practice to be played cleanly. The top tier, "Das Komplettpaket," adds about 1.5 hours of live piano during the apéro on top of everything in the piano package, for 3300 CHF, a figure his separate piano-only page corroborates independently with the same 1.5-hour apéro figure. A fourth package, for a destination wedding on an Italian beach or, his own example, "hoch oben auf dem Pilatus," carries no published number at all: it's priced by location and effort, on top of handling the logistics with local authorities or property owners across 3 working days, one each for arrival, the wedding and departure.

Every one of the 3 priced packages carries the same travel line: 0.70 CHF per kilometre, and if the ceremony location sits more than 250 kilometres from his home base in Weinfelden, he reserves the right to book his own overnight stay at the couple's expense. One more line is oddly specific: couples who found him through the DeinDJ marketplace pay a 5% commission surcharge on top, a cost of that particular referral channel stated openly rather than buried in a footnote.

A second price list, the same step up on every tier

Wort-Klang also runs a second, separately branded product called "Geistliche Trauungen," pitched at couples who want, in the page's own words, "eine echte Trauung mit Gott – ohne kirchliche Liturgie," a real ceremony with God, without church liturgy, because a traditional church wedding, it argues, leaves little room for a couple's own story. It offers prayer, a blessing or Bible readings as optional elements, the same way the general packages offer a non-religious well-wish. What's notable is the pricing: the same 3-tier structure exists again, at 2400 CHF against the standard package's 2200, 3000 CHF against 2800, and 3500 CHF against 3300. The gap is the same size on every tier, a consistent premium built into the whole structure rather than a single flat surcharge tacked onto one package.

The page also carries its own line about his marriage, "meine eigene Ehe, die mich seit über 16 Jahren prägt," his own marriage, which has shaped him for more than 16 years. That doesn't match the homepage's "15 Jahren Ehe" on the general Trauung page. Both are his own words on 2 live pages of the same site; this listing states the discrepancy rather than picking the more flattering number. Bundled onto this page as an add-on, not a wedding requirement, is a marriage-coaching product called "Führerausweis für die Ehe": Basic runs 2 to 3 sessions for roughly 390 to 520 CHF, Deep runs 5 to 6 sessions for roughly 780 to 980 CHF, and Premium runs 8 to 10 sessions for roughly 1'300 to 1'600 CHF, with a 20% discount when booked alongside any ceremony package.

Marco, Maik and Alexander, and their own rates

The team page names the 3 people behind that opening pricing disclaimer. Marco Pavone, a freier Redner in his own right, writes that he's spent 9 years as a celebrant and moderator across various events, was first asked by friends to lead a wedding 5 years ago, and credits a 2-year theological training taken 8 years back with preparing him to speak in front of large crowds, a biography that runs remarkably parallel to Janke's own. Maik Friesen covers cello and piano, with a repertoire that runs from Ed Sheeran's "Perfect" to Édith Piaf's "Sous le ciel de Paris," and he and Janke can also play as a duo. Alexander Jakovljevic, a freier Redner based in Romanshorn, publishes more personal detail than either of the others: born in 1979 in Salzburg, married since 2010, father of 4. Each of the 3 has their own phone number and email listed on the page, which matches the pricing page's instruction to contact them individually rather than expecting Janke's own rates to apply.

Switzerland only recognises a marriage as legally binding when a civil registrar performs it, somewhere the canton has approved the act to take place. Nothing on wort-klang.ch, not the homepage, either price page, the team page or the piano page, ever uses the words Standesamt, Zivilstandsamt or registrar; the site is silent on the point rather than making a claim about it either way, and no page here claims to perform, or replace, that legal act. Every page checked runs in German only, with no English toggle anywhere in the navigation, so a couple planning in English should expect the whole process, from the first Kennenlerngespräch to the written speech, to run in German unless they raise the point directly and confirm it works. Janke also leads funeral ceremonies, "Freie Abschiedszeremonien," booked by phone rather than through the wedding contact form; it sits alongside the wedding work rather than inside it, and this listing is about the wedding side only.

What comes through across all of it is a business built by demand rather than designed from the start as one: a solo celebrant whose own tenure (over 180 ceremonies, more than 9 years) grew into a small roster of 3 associates once the volume of requests outran what a single person could take on, all of it still priced, in Janke's own case, down to the kilometre and the platform a couple found him through. A couple who wants German handled with genuine specificity, a documented process rather than a vague promise, and the option of a religious inflection without a church building, has a clear, well-priced product here. A couple who needs the day run in English, or wants every number to add up on the first read, should ask Janke directly about the language and mention the 15-versus-16-year line if it comes up, rather than assume either one.