Today is Zeeka’s Baptism

It’s Zeeka’s Baptism today! I’m so excited. I’ve been preparing for her baptism, since before she was born. Today, i’ll be sharing with you some tips on preparing for your son’s or daughter’s baptism.

Tips for Preparing for Your Child’s Baptism:

1) Process your Child’s Certificate of Live Birth

First of all, even if you are so ready to start booking suppliers after your child is born, you still have to wait for the Certificate of Live Birth from the Office of the Civil Registrar General. You will need this to book the church. In Asian Hospital, they help you send all the requirements to the civil registry office. I’m not sure about the other hospitals. I got the Certificate of Live Birth of Zeeka two weeks after she was born.

2) Prepare your guest list
To give you an idea of which venue you would have to reserve, try to list down the names of all your guests. EJ and I came up with a list of 150 people. We decided on getting a big enough village clubhouse that would accommodate all these people. If you plan on having an intimate and a small gathering, you can reserve a function room of a restaurant.

3) Fix and Follow a Set Budget
Determine how much would you like to spend for each. Your budget really depends on what you want to prioritize. Although, in most cases, the top priority is the food that you will have to serve guests.

To give you an idea, this is our breakdown in percentages:
Caterer: 60%
Giveaways: 8%
Decorations: 7%
Church: 5%
Venue: 5%
Photographer: 5%
Baptismal Gown: 4%
Cake: 4%
Invitations: 1%
Candles and Washi Tapes: 1%

4) Look for Suppliers
When looking for suppliers, have a theme in mind. Your theme may just be a color theme or a specific theme. In our case, our color motif was pinks and grays.

We also wanted to have a cute character, so we chose an owl. We had our design revolve around the invitation that our friend, Lique, made for Zeeka. The invitation was what I showed the cake supplier, etc.

Be sure though that you don’t go over your budget. If you do go overboard for a certain cost component, see to it that you save up on the other expenses.

5) JDIY — Just do it yourself!
I know a lot of moms now are very hands-on when it comes to preparing for their children’s parties. Doing it yourself saves a lot of money and you actually, get what you want and how you envisioned something right away (since you yourself are on top of it all).

For Zeeka’s baptism, I bought wash tapes from a mompreneur, Cai from Paper Chic Studio.

With all of these tapes, I was able to make these… 🙂

6. Don’t YOU forget to prepare, too!
After giving birth, I feel too lazy to fix myself. It’s true that sometimes you forget even to brush your hair in the morning as you hurriedly get up to feed your baby. For the baptism of your child though, do not forget to prepare, too. Prepare so that you won’t regret it when you look at your family pictures years from now.

For this occasion, I bought this pretty dress from Mommy Matters. I had to look for a pink nursing dress. Ang hirap pala! (It was hard!) There are a limited number of brands that you can choose from if you want to buy nursing wear.

I had to buy a nursing dress, since I’m still breastfeeding Baby Z. Also, I am now building my supply of breast milk for tomorrow. She’s normally fussy when she’s hungry, so we plan to bring extra milk just in case. 🙂

Hope all these tips help. I’ll be posting the complete list of suppliers and pictures of Zeeka’s baptism next week!

Have a happy weekend!

Love lots,