Naming Ceremony FAQs

Any parent can make the arrangements to hold a Naming Ceremony. Likewise, anyone who has parental responsibility or legal guardianship of the child or children. Parents do not have to be married and can come from any cultural background, with any spiritual or religious beliefs or with none.

Please visit our Naming Ceremony Bookings website page for information on how to book.

The Standard Ceremony at a venue costs £205, payable when you book your ceremony. There is an additional cost of £30 for the Standard Ceremony if it is to take place in your home. The Classic Ceremony costs £295 and the Bespoke Ceremony costs £395. These costs include VAT.

Neither the Naming Ceremony nor any document issued as a result of the Naming Ceremony has legal status and any certificates provided are commemorative only.

If it is your intention to change your child’s name, we recommend you seek further legal advice by contacting a local solicitor, the Citizens Advice Bureau, or you can make enquiries at your local Register Office.

You can arrange for a ceremony to be held in any venue such as a hall, club or hotel that is available for public use. The venue does not have to be licensed in any way, nor does it have to be local to you. Ceremonies can also be held in your own home or garden if suitable. Your Celebrant will visit you at home beforehand to meet you and to check Health and Safety requirements.

We recommend that if you are thinking of having your ceremony outside, you need to plan for shelter if the weather conditions are bad. Also bear in mind locations like pubs or beaches are open to the public and can therefore be rather disruptive and noisy. Please note that we are not involved in organising ceremony venues – they will have their own charges for room hire, catering etc.

The answer to this is yes, but there are certain conditions that apply. Take a look at our ‘Guidelines for Ceremonies at Home’ policy, this will give you an idea of the sort of things we will check and you need to consider. If you choose to hold your ceremony in the garden, we would require you to have an inside room or some form of cover available in case of bad weather. If you are booking a Standard Naming Ceremony there is an additional charge for a home ceremony.

Our Celebrants can conduct the ceremony for you at any time, most happen on either Saturdays or Sundays but they can happen on any day that is convenient to you. Alternatively, you can purchase a Script Only Ceremony and a friend or family member can conduct it for you.

The ceremony fee is the same whichever day it is conducted on.

We offer three different types of Naming Ceremony: a ‘Standard’, a ‘Classic’ and a ‘Bespoke’. We also offer a Bespoke Birthday Ceremony.

The Standard Ceremony is available on the ourceremony.co.uk system so you can make your ceremony choices online. This ceremony is read mainly by the Celebrant and includes selections for you to choose Parent’s Promises, Supporting Adults Promises, Grandparent’s Promises and there is the option to make a Personal Vow to each other as well. Two readings from the selection provided can be included.

The Classic Ceremony is also on the ourceremony.co.uk system for you to easily make your choices online. You will be able to select your Parent’s Promises and the promises that will be made by your Supporting Adults or Grandparents if they are taking part. You can choose up to three poems or readings from the large selection in the Readings Library, and give the reasons why your child’s names have been chosen and give a gift to your child in the ceremony.

The Bespoke Ceremony is tailor-made to your own requirements. We send you a booking pack containing a huge choice of ceremony content, readings and lots of suggestions and ideas for the day. You can also include your own additional words and symbolic actions such as lighting candles and releasing balloons.

The Bespoke Birthday Ceremony can be ideal for any birthday, it doesn’t just need to be the child’s first birthday. The ceremony content includes birthday references, and you can end the ceremony with the cake, the blowing out of candles and even sing ‘Happy Birthday’ if you wish!

This is your choice. Either, one of our fully trained professional Celebrants will carry out the ceremony for you. Alternatively you can purchase the ‘Script Only’ option from us and arrange for someone you know to conduct the ceremony for you. We have Celebrants in most areas of the UK but not all, so the Script Only is ideal on the very rare occasion we could not provide a Celebrant.

You would meet the Celebrant beforehand in all of our ceremonies – EXCEPT if you were having a Standard Ceremony at a venue, if the ceremony were to be arranged at very short notice or if the Celebrant lives a huge distance from the ceremony.

This depends on how much you choose to include. The Standard and Classic Ceremonies generally last between twenty and thirty minutes. Since a Bespoke Ceremony usually involves more elements, it normally lasts between twenty and forty five minutes. Do remember that the ceremony itself is part of a potentially much bigger family event. There are countless additional activities you can arrange to enhance the overall success of the whole day.

Yes – in our bespoke ceremony.  There are still great choices to make in the more structured Classic or Standard ceremonies. Please refer to our ‘Standard, Classic or Bespoke’ pages.

If there are religious readings or references that have special meaning for you, you are welcome to include them at any point in a Bespoke Ceremony. In a Classic Ceremony the readings offer you the opportunity to include any religious or spiritual content. The content of a Standard Ceremony is more structured and doesn’t contain any religious or spiritual reference.

The Standard Ceremony is your best option if you need to arrange a ceremony quickly. A Classic Ceremony can be arranged within a few weeks but a Bespoke Ceremony takes a lot longer to create, so cannot be organised at short notice. It is always best to plan your ceremony as far in advance as possible and contact us as soon as you can.

We have developed this system so that our clients can create their own ceremonies online. We will send you login details and you will be able to select your ceremony wording, choose poems and readings and select the promises that are to be made in the ceremony. You can then produce and print the whole ceremony and an Order of Ceremony. You can make as many changes as you like and when you are completely happy with everything you have chosen, you simply send the ceremony to us for your Celebrant to deliver.

No, it doesn’t matter how many of your children you would like to be named as part of the ceremony, you only pay one fee.

Yes, a Naming Ceremony is not just for babies, children of any age can have a Naming Ceremony and you may wish to include your older children in the ceremony as well as your new child, at no additional cost. There are also many other ways of involving older children in your ceremony.

Yes you can, we offer a Joint Bespoke Naming Ceremony where two sets of parents make their own choices but parts of the ceremony are combined and the ceremony is attended by guests from both sides. Please refer to our fees page for the cost.

It does not affect you at all, we carry out lots of ceremonies for single parents and we adapt the wording to suit your ceremony; sometimes grandparents play a slightly larger role in the ceremony.

Yes! In a Standard and Classic Ceremony you will be able to print a copy of the ceremony from the online system. In a Bespoke ceremony we will email the script and also post a copy to you.

Yes, a commemorative certificate is signed during your ceremony. If you would like additional certificates i.e. Supporting Adult Promises and Grandparents’ Promises, just call us at Civil Ceremonies and we can provide certificate prices.