Baby Naming/Guide Parent Ceremony

For those who may not know, I consider myself to be areligious. My wife Charlotte, on the other hand, is on her way to becoming a minister in the Unitarian Universalist (UU) movement. While Baptism is a Christian rite of admission, Unitarian Universalism celebrates the birth of a child with a Baby Dedication or Baby Naming ceremony. The purpose of this ceremony is to welcome our child into the family and circle of friends. Charlotte and I also included a ceremony of naming our daughter’s Guide Parents. A Guide Parent, much like a God Parent, is an adult mentor that helps to nurture the child’s spiritual, emotional, and moral upbringing. We named two of our closest friends, Brendan and Stephanie, who joined us from Charlotte, NC.

Over the Labor Day weekend, Charlotte and I decided (kind of last minute) to have Lilah’s Baby Naming and Guide Parent ceremony. With a small group of friends and family and a ceremony that my wife helped to create, we held the event on the bank of the Chattahoochee River in North Georgia. The temperature was perfect and the sun was shining brightly overhead – ideal conditions for the occasion. Best of all, we brought my video camera to capture the moment for those who were unable to be there with us.

Below is the transcript of the ceremony (some wording was changed the day of).

One Week, Four Days…

…since my last post. It’s been a while because, well…there’s a lot going on in my life at the moment. Though it felt like it took forever, I finally landed a job after about two months of searching. My wife starts her new job next week and we’ve been looking at, and test driving, cars in hopes of purchasing one by Monday. Anyways…

The other night when I got out of work, the moon was full and the sky was fairly clear. As I walked in the door, my wife immediately told me to grab the camera and that we were going out. Though I was exhausted from working all day, I grabbed the camera and jumped in the car with her. She drove me to a small park, which abuts the banks of the Chattahoochee River. The moon looked amazing over the tree line and in the reflection of the calm waters of the river. Though it was only about a fifteen minute drive to the park, I did not want to come back to get my tripod…which I stupidly forgot. And I only have a 18-55mm kit lens for my camera, so no real detail in the moon. (We do what we can with what we have.) The following, is some of what we ended up with: