Baby namings, milestones and bespoke ceremonies
Not everything that matters comes with a ceremony. Weddings and funerals do. The rest of life usually gets a card, a cake, and a round of applause, then we carry on. We’ve lost the habit of gathering to mark a change, but we're missing a trick.
A ceremony marks the threshold properly, so you know you’ve crossed it.
New beginnings
A baby naming. A chance to properly welcome a child, give them their name in front of everyone who’ll help raise them, and have the adults around them make their own promises out loud.
A new home. Cleansing and blessing a house you’ve just moved into, or clearing one that carries something you’d rather not carry forward. Both are old and powerful practices.
A move, or a leaving. Emigrating, coming home after years away, the end of something, and the start of whatever follows.
Rites of passage
A significant birthday. Eighteen or eighty. Some birthdays change what you are, not just how old you are.
A croning. A ceremony marking a woman stepping into the next part of her life, and into her own wisdom. It’s an old, beautiful tradition that women are wisely rediscovering.
A retirement. Forty years of work deserves more than a card signed by the office and a box of chocs.
A coming of age, or a graduation. Something finished, something earned. An individual and bespoke ceremony so you don’t get lost in the crowd.
Bespoke ceremonies
A pet remembered properly, because that grief is real and you can’t believe how much it hurts.
A boat named. A business opened. A community gathering to mark something that happened to all of you.
A divorce, or the end of a long relationship, which has as much need of a threshold as any beginning.
If what you have in mind isn’t on this page, that’s not a problem. It’s a good sign. Tell me what’s happened or what’s about to, and we’ll work out together how to mark it in ceremony.
How it works
We talk first, about the occasion and about the people it’s for. I’ll ask a lot of questions, come up with ideas, I’ll write it and lead it.
Ceremonies can be twenty minutes or an hour. Indoors, outdoors, in a village hall, or in somebody’s back garden. Two people, twelve people or a hundred plus.