Christening invitation wording: 28 examples to copy

Six answers, before anyone can reply

Good christening invitation wording is short, and that is exactly what makes it hard. A wedding invitation has a whole day to explain and a page to do it on; a christening has one child, one service and one meal, so every sentence you write is visible and every missing fact turns into a text message you have to answer twice.

Six answers have to be on the page before a guest can decide anything:

• whose day it is, and the name the family will actually use
• who the parents are, in full, so both sides can see whose family this is
• who the godparents are, or that there are none
• where the service is, and the one time everyone should be seated by
• where you eat afterwards, at what time, and whether children are at the table
• who is asking, and where the reply goes

The word you choose at the top sets the expectations for all six. Christening and baptism mean the same afternoon to most families, though the priest may prefer baptism on the paperwork. Naming ceremony, naming day and welcoming tell guests there is no font and no church. Dedication tells a churchgoing family that the child is being presented and blessed rather than baptised. Pick one word and use it in the title, in the message and in the reminder you send the week before. A guest who reads two different words assumes there are two different things happening and asks which one they were invited to.

Christening invitation wording, section by section

The page is built in six blocks — the opening, the parents, the godparents, the church, the restaurant and the closing — and the examples below follow that order. Every one is usable as it stands: change the names, the date and the address, leave the rest alone. Each text field also ships with ten written options of its own, and all ten can be replaced with what you write here.

The opening line

The opening carries the child's name and nothing that competes with it. Three registers cover almost every family — plain, warm, and lightly funny — and the one to pick is the one that matches how you talk in the family group chat, because that is where the link is going to land.

Amelia Rose
is being christened on Saturday, 12 September 2026,
and we would love you there.

Our girl is being christened.
On 12 September 2026 we are taking Amelia to St Mary's,
and then feeding everyone who comes.

Amelia has agreed to be christened,
on the condition that lunch follows immediately.
Saturday, 12 September 2026. Come and hold her.

If the child has a formal name the family never uses, say both once — Amelia Rose, who answers to Millie — and use the short one everywhere else on the page.

The parents

This section exists so that grandparents, colleagues and the friends of one side can see at a glance whose family this is. Write it in the first person when you are the one sending the invitation, and in the third person only when a grandparent or the godparents are hosting.

Sarah and Tom Whelan
invite you to the christening of their daughter,
Amelia Rose.

We have spent a year learning her and we are still not finished.
On 12 September we bring Amelia to be christened,
with everyone who helped us get this far.
Sarah and Tom

Kate Nolan and Michael Byrne
are having their son Theo christened,
and are asking the people who love him to be there.

Different surnames need no explanation and no hyphen gymnastics — write both in full, once, and move on. A single parent's invitation reads better with the word single nowhere near it: your name, the child's name, the date.

The godparents

Naming the godparents on the page is a kindness to them and a piece of information for everyone else, who will otherwise spend the service working out who the two people at the front are. Ask them before you publish anything with their names on it, because the page has a link and links travel further than you plan.

Amelia will be christened in the care of her godparents,
Emily Barnes and James Kearney.

Two people said yes to a job with no end date.
Emily and James, Amelia's godparents,
will be standing right there with us.

Standing with Theo on the day:
Rachel Doyle, Peter Doyle and Anna Whelan,
his godparents, and from now on his second opinion on everything.

Some families name four, some name two, and some keep the names for the service itself and leave the section off the page. A naming ceremony usually has no godparent at all — the role gets called guide-parent, supporting adult, or simply Isla's people — and if you invent the title, define it in the same breath and it will be understood the first time.

The church, and the sentence that gives the time

This is the section people screenshot and send to whoever is driving. It needs the church's name, the address in the form a taxi app can swallow, and one time. Say which kind of service it is, because that decides an entire afternoon: a christening inside a Sunday mass runs an hour or more, a private one about half an hour, with guests arriving ten minutes before.

The time you print is the time everyone should be seated, not the time you personally intend to arrive. Write it once, here, and never a second time in a slightly different form further down. If you are still waiting on the parish to confirm the slot, the Church of England's christening pages set out what to ask them before you promise anybody an hour.

The christening
Saturday, 12 September 2026, 11.30 am
St Mary's Church, Ashford
Please be seated by 11.20 am. The service lasts about half an hour.

Amelia will be christened during the 11 am Sunday mass
at St Brigid's, Kildare, on 12 September 2026.
The mass runs an hour and the christening comes towards the end of it.
Stay for all of it, or slip in at half past.

A short service, just for us.
12 September 2026 at 2 pm, in the Lady Chapel at St Mary's, Ashford.
There are twenty seats and your name is on one of them.

The lunch afterwards

The restaurant section answers three questions, in this order: where, at what time, and whether children eat. Print a start time rather than after the church — a christening lunch usually begins forty to ninety minutes after the service, and a guest with a car full of children needs the real number rather than the gap.

Then say what the meal is. A sit-down lunch, a buffet in a function room and sandwiches at your mother's house are three different afternoons, and people dress and plan the drive home accordingly. If a set menu means you owe the venue a headcount, this is the line where you say when you need it by.

Lunch
1 pm, The Old Mill, Ashford
A sit-down lunch, high chairs booked,
and no speech longer than a nappy change.

Afterwards we go back to ours, from half past twelve.
There will be soup, far too much cake,
and a garden the children are welcome to wreck.

The meal follows at 1 pm at The Old Mill, Ashford.
It is a buffet, so come hungry.
We need final numbers by 1 September, little ones included.

Whatever wording you choose, the number the venue asks for a week beforehand is not about sixty. It is how many of each menu, children counted separately. When guests pick a menu as they confirm — the meat-free option, the gluten-free one and the children's included, with a line for anything they cannot eat — that total adds itself up instead of being assembled from forty messages on the Tuesday it is due.

Wording a naming ceremony, a dedication or a blessing

Not every welcome has a font in it. A civil naming ceremony, a humanist naming day, a church dedication and a service of thanksgiving after a hard start all use the same page and different words, and the difference decides what your guests bring, what they expect to sit through and whether their own beliefs sit comfortably in the room.

Two rules hold across all of them. Do not borrow the church vocabulary you are deliberately not using — christened, baptised, godparents — because a guest reads those words literally and prepares for the wrong thing. And describe what will actually happen, since most people have never been to one: who speaks, how long it runs, and whether they will be asked to do anything themselves.

Isla Maeve has arrived, and we would like to say so out loud.
Naming ceremony, Saturday 12 September 2026, 12 noon,
The Registry Room, County Hall, Ashford.
Twenty minutes, four short readings, and lunch straight afterwards.

No church, no fuss: a naming day for Noah.
12 September 2026, from 1 pm, in our garden.
We will say why we chose his name, three people who love him
will promise to be there for him, and then we eat.

We are bringing Theo before our church family to be dedicated
and prayed for, on Sunday 12 September 2026,
during the 10.30 am service at Ashford Community Church.
Coffee and far too many cakes in the hall afterwards.

A service of thanksgiving for Amelia,
who took her time getting here.
St Mary's, Ashford, 12 September 2026 at 11.30 am,
followed by lunch for anyone who can stay.

One invitation, two children

A joint christening changes the wording in three places and only three. The opening carries both names, in the order they were born, and neither child gets the bigger line. The godparents' section has to say who belongs to whom, because families guess and guess wrong. And the closing has to make clear that this is one event, one lunch and one reply — otherwise a single household will send you two confirmations and you will count them twice.

Twins are the easy case. Siblings of different ages are the one that generates questions: with a four-year-old and a baby, half your guests will wonder whether the older one is being christened too or simply coming along, so answer that in the first sentence and nowhere else.

Noah and Isla,
born eleven minutes apart and still arguing about it,
are being christened together on 12 September 2026.

We are christening both of them on the same day.
Theo, who is four and has questions,
and Amelia, who is seven months and has none.
Saturday, 12 September 2026, St Mary's Church, Ashford.

Theo's godparents are Rachel and Peter Doyle.
Amelia's are Emily Barnes and James Kearney.
All four will be at the front, trying to keep a straight face.

If the christening shares its day with a wedding, the wording problem is a different one — a single page has to carry two ceremonies without reading as two invitations taped together — and it is worth reading on its own: wording a wedding and a christening held on the same day.

The closing line, and the notes that stop the questions

The closing is the one place where the invitation gets to sound like you rather than like an announcement. Two or three lines, signed, with the reply instruction beside it and nothing else competing for the space.

Then come the notes. Almost every question a guest would otherwise send you at nine in the evening fits into one line: gifts, children, parking, what to wear. Say no gifts if you mean it, and if you have a preference, name it — people are far more comfortable with a specific request than with a refusal they suspect is only being polite.

Come and stand with us. That is the whole of the ask.
With love,
Sarah and Tom

It would mean a great deal to have you with us on the day.
Sarah and Tom Whelan

Amelia owns more soft toys than a small shop.
If you would like to mark the day, a book with your name written inside it
is the thing she will still have at eighteen.

Children are welcome at the church and at the table.
There are high chairs, a quiet corner at the back,
and no expectation of silence from anyone under five.

The invitation is a web page with its own link, and links get forwarded by the people you sent them to. Put the venues on it and think twice about your home address if the list is wide; a line saying you will send the door number to whoever replies does the same job. Leave the child's full date of birth off the page altogether.

When to send it, and what happens after the link goes out

Six weeks before the date is comfortable for a christening, four weeks is workable, and two is fine for the people who already knew it was coming. The exceptions are the ones that cost you guests: a bank-holiday weekend, the school half-term, and any date where family has to fly. Those want eight to ten weeks. If the parish has not confirmed your slot yet, send two lines now with the date and the words church to be confirmed, and send the invitation itself when you have the time — people block out a day long before they care about an address.

Ask for the reply in the same place the invitation lives. When the answer is a button rather than an e-mail address at the bottom, you get the things you actually need in one place: whether they are coming, how many are with them, which menu, what they cannot eat, and a message if they want to leave one. What you avoid is the version where the count lives in three group chats, a voicemail and a note on the fridge. Wording the request itself, and the chase that follows it, is a piece of its own: how to ask for the reply without sounding like a form.

Two more messages are worth writing before the week you need them.

A quick nudge: we give the restaurant our numbers on Tuesday.
If you have not had a chance to tap the button on Amelia's invitation,
today would be perfect. It takes ten seconds.

Small change. The service has moved to 12 noon.
The lunch is unchanged and the link is the same one you already have,
so it is already showing the new time. Nothing for you to do.

That second message stays that short only because the page itself can be corrected after it has gone out: you change the hour once and everyone who opens the link sees the new one, with no second invitation and no apology thread. The christening designs are laid out in the six sections this article works through — the opening, the parents, the godparents, the church, the restaurant, the closing — so the wording you pick here has somewhere to go, and the guest list, the menu totals and the seating build themselves from the replies as they arrive. Filling one in with the real names and the real date costs nothing; you pay only at the point where you publish it.