What to bring to your graduation ceremony

Start with your booking confirmation. The university emails an official one in the week before the ceremony; keep it on your phone, and on paper too if a printout settles your nerves. Bring photo ID with it. At the box office, staff check both before they issue the paper tickets for you and for every guest you've booked. Nobody else can collect them on your behalf, and nothing comes by post.

The order of the morning matters for your guests. Their tickets leave the box office in your hands, so they can't take their seats until they've found you. The university suggests meeting at the Silk Street entrance. Settle on a time as well as a place, because the mobile signal inside the Barbican is very limited and a plan made by phone that morning may not survive it.

If you've hired official robes from Ede and Ravenscroft, those are collected at the venue, and that needs your photo ID and you in person as well. Hiring from us? You collect it the night before or on the morning itself, and walk into the Barbican already dressed.

Four things, then: the confirmation, your ID, the gown and a charged phone. Put them by the door the night before; everything else on this page is comfort.

"Photo ID is required by all students to collect (physical) tickets for both themselves and their guests, and to collect their gowns."

— City St George's, University of London

Pack a few hair grips. A mortarboard rests on top of your head rather than around it, and the first time you lean in for a hug or a picture it starts to slide. Two or three grips at the edges keep it level from the portrait to the reception.

You'll be standing for much more than the hour and a half you spend in the hall: the queue at the box office, robing, the portrait, then the drinks. If you're in heels, pack flats too, and drop them at the cloakroom beside the box office (it's free) until the ceremony is over.

Look at the weather forecast before bed. Almost the whole day is indoors, but you still have to get there and home. Met Office records for London put January at 3 to 8°C on average and July at 14 to 24°C.

Tempest Photography takes the official portraits inside the venue, including family groups of up to six, and there's no need to book or pay beforehand. Your guests can take their own pictures during the ceremony, from their seats: tripods aren't allowed in the hall, and nobody should get up for a better angle. Every ceremony is livestreamed as well, so the people at home see it too.

Count back from your ceremony time. The university asks graduates to check in at the box office two hours ahead, which leaves room for tickets, robing and photographs. Its terms ask for tickets to be collected at least 40 minutes before the start, and for you to be seated at least 15 minutes before. For Clerkenwell and Moorgate ceremonies, arrive by 9.15am for a morning ceremony or 1.15pm for an afternoon one: the box office stops issuing tickets at 9.40am and 1.40pm, and anyone later is treated as a latecomer.

Getting there is easy. Barbican and Moorgate are the nearest Underground stations, and the main entrance on Silk Street is ramped, with lifts to every level straight ahead as you come in.

A guest without a seat in the hall can still watch: screens in the foyer, on the stalls level, show the ceremony as it happens. If extra tickets are left after the registration deadline, the final few are sold at the box office on the day, first come, first served, and you're the one who has to buy them. Once the ceremony ends, everyone gathers for drinks in the foyer just outside the hall.