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Saturday, April 18, 2020

Scarlett Reese Christening Day (From Budget, Preparation and Reception)

One fine sunny day, we were able to pull off my second born's Christening day. It turned out pretty well despite some shortcomings in our finances. I know this has been way too late to post but I like to share how we executed everything. This might be of help to those mommas who are about to celebrate their childrens milestones.



We actually thought of not celebrating it big anymore since our finances was used up when my FIL was hospitalized. I actually saved up for this but because of that emergency, our finances were drained. Despite what happened, we still tried our very best to pull this off because Christening is one of the holy sacraments that we should celebrate in our lifetime. Everything on this post was made possible with the help of our family and friends so I wanna thank them first before I proceed. THANK YOU SO MUCH Y'ALL! 💕

PREPARATION

My good friend Armela of aroundthemetro.ph was able to shoot Scarlett when she was just about a month old. So the photos from that particular shoot were used for the invitation, tarpaulin and thank you notes for the big day. Who made it? Still Armela. She was so great in designing everything. What she did helped us to slash a big chunk off from our budget!




All three designs above were made by her. Even our photos on the reception were also taken by her! That's how good and generous she was! If you want to book her for her designs and photography services, just send her a message. Her fee was so affordable given with the skill like hers.

Anyway, going back to our preparation, I printed some invites to give to my coworkers and neighbors and the e-invite were sent to farther friends and relatives. On the other hand, the thank you notes are for the giveaways to attendees and gifts to godparents.





I just bought some twine and printed few copies of the invites and thank you notes in school. The twine is around P13.00 each. I got two.

As for the attendees' giveaway, I thought of giving something really affordable but then I remember I have tons of sheetmasks! So I decided to give it instead of purchasing something for giveaway. This is also something that goes well with the theme because sheet masks will give you baby's skin. 😍 This is a shot of my masks and I only gave away those kind that have more than one piece.


CHURCH AND RECEPTION HUNTING

We chose an accessible church where all our visitors and friends can easily go to and it's the Our Lady of Sorrows Parish Church at Dolores in San Fernando. My previous principal-turned-friend was Scarlett's godfather so I didn't want him to have difficulty in going to the venue. It would require him to commute really far if we opted the church near our house. Since most of our attendees are friends from far places, we decided to choose a church and a reception that would be half-way for them. This is something you might want to consider for your visitors accesibility.

CHRISTENING DAY

We arrived early at the church around 10:30 and had to wait for an hour since there is a mass. The church actually said to be there at 10:30 but the baptismal rites started at exactly 11:30. It was a mass Christening but the priest didn't waited for latecomers and started on time.

We had to take photos at the church first for some memorabilia then headed to Cafe Rustico where we had our lunch. It is just some meters away from the church.




 
This is Armela with her camera bag! 🤗


 




The night before the Christening day, we already went to the venue and handed the tarpaulin to the one in charge at the venue so that they can set it up together early with the sounds. My elder sister also set up the souvenir station early that day so when we all arrived at the reception, everything was ready and we just had to eat our hearts out. We have unlimited food so yeah, everyone was happy. 😆


It was just a simple gathering of around 50 people dear to us. Each of them went home with some face masks to make their skin feels like baby (just like Scarlett) and the godparents took home some homemade banana bread. The banana bread for the godparents were sponsored by my sister so that's an additional help for us. Btw, the banana bread received so many positive feedback from the visitors so if you wanna try it, pm me so I can forward you to the seller.




BUDGET

What we had in mind was really just a simple gathering. We removed the option of celebrating it at home because of these contributing factors: small space, no equipment, and having to feed more than 50 pax and preparing everything is not really practical for us. I have two kids which is difficult to manage in the first place. It is only me and hubby. So home preparation is possible but not practical

Anyway, since we decided to have around 50 pax, I prepared a budget of 20k or less. Let's try to break it down.

Invitation
     Layout - FREE
     Printing, paper, twine -  100

Giveaway
     Sheet Masks - OWNED
     Banana Bread - Sponsored

Tarpaulin - P270

Food - 13,120

Scarlett's Outfit - 1,000

JC's outfit - 900
__________________
TOTAL = P15,390
*******************

I am happy that we achieved our goal of not exceeding in our budget. You can still cut down this budget if you use your baby's clothes. In our case, I haven't bought her new clothes to be honest. Almost all of her clothes were hand me downs so this one's a treat for her already. Same with his dad. Plus the restaurant was also great for giving us free food since we have two plates left from the total number of reserved pax.

Overall, I am happy how everything turned out well. I like being hands-on with family events like this. This is not the first time I tried to execute it. I have prepared Railey's 1st birthday and I'm sure I will be planning Scarletts' too. I even planned and prepared our wedding years ago! I hope I can blog that one too even if years has passes because I saved a huge amount on that wedding and it will be a great help to show you how to save.

Anyway, I'd like to thank everyone who helped us and celebrated with us in this special occasion. It will be Scarlett's birthday soon and since we're still on a lockdown, I'm not sure yet how that one will go. I just hope for everyone's safety right now.
Stay safe and stay home everyone!

Much Love, Mommy ❤

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