Naming Day Ceremony

When baby was six months old we held a naming ceremony for her. We chose this over a traditional christening because we are not religious, but still wanted to welcome, introduce and wish baby well.

A lot of people are curious about what such a ceremony involves - so I'll explain what we did below.

Theme
I chose daisies and yellow gingham. To my mind these are childish: pretty, simple and innocent. I have found daisies to be incredibly resilient wee plants and that is what I wish most for my daughter - resilience. She wore a yellow gingham dress with daisies on it that her Granny made.


Decorations
We decorated the open plan lounge with daisies in pots trimmed with gingham ribbon, gingham table runners and scattered artificial daisies on the tables and floor.

We tied daisy patterned balloons on the mailbox and made a trail of paper butterflies to the door.

Food
We made several cold platters (seafood, dips and bread, antipasto etc) ourselves and got a catering company to deliver some hot finger food.

For dessert I baked daisy topped cupcakes and we made fruit kebabs drizzled with white chocolate.

Drink
We offered sparkling wine, sparkling grape or fizzy lemonade as guests arrived and top ups before the toast. We had an alcoholic punch, fruit juice, beer and red and white wine to go with lunch.

Invitations
I made these myself. They were in the shape of a baby's dress and bloomers and I was quite pleased with them, just quietly. I'll put up a post about how I did them later this week.

The Day of the Ceremony
On arrival guests were given a glass of bubbly, sparkling fruit juice or lemonade and mingled until everyone had arrived.

I made programmes and handed these out so that everyone knew what to expect and had a keepsake of the day.

Memory Box
The ceremony's focus was our wishes for baby which were represented by small gifts and placed in a memory box for her to open and treasure when she is older.

This is a really cute, fun idea that gets everyone involved and I wrote more about how I did it in my Memory Box post.

The Ceremony
1. Welcome and introduction
2. First Reading
3. Announcing the name
4. Parents Promises
5. Family and Friends Promises
6. Presentation of gift
7. Second Reading
8. Hopes for the future
9. Thoughts of absent guests
10. Toast
11. Song

I posted the actual naming ceremony wording in detail here.

Other considerations
There's no right age for a naming ceremony. We had ours on baby's six month anniversary.

Like this? got questions?
If you'd like to know more about any of these ideas let me know - I'm happy to share.