A Proper Welcome!
You want to mark your child’s arrival. You want the people who love them in one room, saying so out loud. What you do not want is to promise something in a building you have no connection to, on behalf of a person too small to have an opinion.
A naming ceremony gives you the opportunity to do this on your own terms, choosing your venue, the promises and the meaning that best suit you and your family. It is warm, it is as short or as long as you desire, and it is very much a real thing.
Yes, It Really Is a Thing
This is the question I expect most, so let me answer it head on.
A naming ceremony has no legal standing but neither does a Christening. The legal part of your child’s identity is completed when you register the birth, and nothing that happens in a naming ceremony changes that.
What a naming ceremony does have is everything else. A room full of people. Promises made out loud by the adults who intend to keep them. A moment your child can appreciate in the future.
Who Is It For?
Newborns, of course but also toddlers, older children, adopted children, stepchildren joining a new family, or siblings named together in one ceremony because you can’t face doing it twice!
Blended families in particular tend to find this ceremony does something a christening cannot. Everyone gets named. Everyone gets a role. Nobody is left out.
What Happens in the Ceremony
We shape it around your family, so nothing here is compulsory.
Most ceremonies include a welcome, the story of your child so far and how they got their name, promises from you as parents, and promises from the guiding adults you choose. People call these guideparents, mentors, sponsors, godparents without the god, or something they have made up themselves. Your ceremony, your vocabulary.
Then there is space for readings, for older siblings to have a job, for grandparents to speak, and for a symbolic moment if you want one, such as a candle lighting or planting something that grows alongside your child.
Where to Hold It
Your garden. A hall. A hotel. A woodland. A pub function room with the buffet already laid out next door. Because a naming ceremony carries no legal weight, no venue needs a licence, which means you can hold it wherever your family will actually be comfortable.
The Fee
A naming ceremony is £325.
A non-refundable booking fee of £100 secures your date, with the balance due four weeks before the ceremony.
This includes reserving your date, an initial consultation, email support throughout, your ceremony planning questionnaire, all research and writing, liaising with your venue if needed, delivering the ceremony on the day, and a keepsake copy of the words afterwards.
How We’ll Get There
A first conversation with no obligation, then your booking fee to hold the date and a questionnaire covering the practical details. Then a proper sit down, at home if that is easiest.
I write the ceremony, you review them and we adjust anything that is not right together. On the day, I will arrive early, hold the space and keep the service warm, and hand you the words afterwards for you to keep.
Words That Mean the Most to Me
“Lorna is a great celebrant as she listens, has empathy and is a good public speaker. I would recommend her services to my family and friends.”
Let’s Welcome Them Properly
Email hello@lornabye.co.uk or call 07347 082987.