Bespoke Naming Ceremony Candles

The best commission to date. 65 Bespoke candles. 

The dreamiest of days celebrating the naming ceremony of Jack, the adored son of one of my oldest and best friends, Amy, and her fiancé Chris. And why might I be writing about this on a candle blog? Because Amy and Chris asked me to create them a one off bespoke fragrance for the Naming Ceremony.

Amy and I had two sessions to mix essential oils and come up with what we thought was the perfect fragrance to capture the day. The theme was English countryside, inspired by the family farm Amy grew up on and where the ceremony took place.

The first session was at Amy's house, where I brought along around 40 essential oils, along with the perfume triangle map, pots, pressed flowers and all sorts of other lovely things. We had a good go at what we thought would work, with Oak Moss taking centre stage. Oak moss is the most divine smelling essential oil, it is incredibly earthy and green and really does smell like nothing else.

The issue with this essential oil is it takes over everything else, so is very hard to pair with other fragrances that can compete. 

Allll the essential oils were out, along with dozens of mixing jugs.

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After making a test candle of Oak Moss, lemon and bay and giving it a burn, we decided it was just a bit too masculine and grown up. So, the second session was in my lovely little garden studio (along with Jack of course) where we finally landed on the most beautiful, subtle, and slightly masculine scent. Neroli, bergamot, a tiny bit of lavender, clary sage, and frankincense; delicate but sturdy, with the frankincense adding that ceremonial feeling to the fragrance. 

Amy and Jack mixing, testing and creating fragrances in the log cabin. 

Finally we picked the toppings for the candles, with Amy wanting every detail to be considered and meaningful, we chose pressed forget-me-nots, which represent true love, lavender for the floral element and an amethyst for protection. 

A selection of candles were created; 60 smaller candles to gift to all the guests, 5 larger candles for the Guide Parents and some hand decorated taper candles to use during the ceremony.

For the large Guide Parent candles, we added three crystals; Angelite for guidance, amethyst for protection and rose quartz for love. 

The most beautiful part was that Amy asked if I could light the candles as part of the ceremony, for the guide parents to receive their candles — lit from the parents’ candle. It was really special.

There are more photos (which I will bombard you all with at another point!), but if you’d like a one-off candle made for an event you’re holding — or maybe for your brand — please do get in touch. I have 100,000 ideas and it really is a super special way to have something truly one off and creative. You will also then get to keep your 'recipe' for a life time, and make it into all sorts of other lovely things; roll on fragrance, bath oil, bath bombs, the list is endless. 

If you aren't close to Berkshire and still would love a bespoke candle fragrance for an event or brand, then I also have created a fragrance before over zoom and the good old postal service! We had some chats online, to get the ideas going of what the brand wanted to create and then I went away and put together three samples and posted them to the client. This worked beautifully and later on became the Nowruz fragrance. 

The event took place at the most wonderful location of Bailiffs Court in Clymping, nestled in between Amy's family farm.