Welcoming Prince in to Christianity!

We are beaming with happiness that the baptism of our second child and only son is now over and turned out to be very successful. He is now a Christian with blessings from God and the Holy Catholic Church.

The enormous amount of effort we exerted to put up the party without resorting to any party planners went really well considering that the reception was held at our residence with very limited space. My husband and I tried to make the party exclusive to family and relatives and a few very close friends only. Posing as the party planner, I make sure that all goes well. A week prior to the baptism, my husband and I attended the baptism seminar given by St. Mary’s Church in Dubai. It is mandatory for parents and godparents to attend the seminar prior to the Baptism of the child. The baptism guide booklet and form to be filled out and submitted on the day of the baptism are being distributed at this time before the seminar starts.

I made a list of the party details to be sure I cover everything. I start with the baptism invites, souvenir tags, and the party banner which I prepared using a PowerPoint presentation. There are a lot of DIY and free printable templates over the Internet and it helps me a lot in making them. We purchase the souvenirs in Sharjah and we made a very good deal for 20 pieces of a blue ceramic baby lying on his tummy on a pillow, we managed to attach the tags by tying them on with a blue ribbon.

I also write down guest names for whom we want to partake in this special occasion. Some of the godparents are not in UAE and a few of them are here and were notified that they will be one of Prince's godparents. To save some cash and in order not to print any invitations anymore, I upload it to Facebook and tag everyone who’s invited apart from the personal calls we made. I also thought of the decorations so I bought some blue balloons, and blue and purple ribbons and even the table cover I purchase was blue to compliment everything. The candles which will be used in the church were wrapped in blue ribbons as well. For Prince, we got him all-white clothes and shoes.

The food, of course, is our next priority which is pure Pinoy except for the fish biryani we received as a gift from my sister-in-law's friend. At first, we look at the possibility of hiring a catering service which definitely will cost more but in the end, after so much consideration, we decided that the food is better off home cooked. To avoid too much work on the day itself, I had the other dishes pre-marinated like the b-b-q and the Menudo while the filling for the lumpiang shanghai was also prepared and mixed ready to be wrapped, and then deep fried. The Leche flan dessert was steamed and cooked 2 days ahead.

The time I have is just enough for the preparation however an announcement from my daughter's school came out and it happen to be that her annual sports day is scheduled on the same day as Prince Baptism. It was a sigh of relief that it is in the morning because we cannot afford to change dates anymore.

Baptism at Mary's Church is every Thursday at 4pm. We left the house at 3:30 pm and reached the church before 4 o'clock, we are still early since the actual rites start at 4:30 pm. There are at least 10-12 babies to be baptized of different nationalities and it was Rev. Fr. Tomasito B. Veneracion OFM CAP who facilitated the baptism rites.

This time I would like to thank everyone who made this occasion very meaningful and successful. To all our friends, relatives, and family, thank you. To my son Prince, we welcome you into the Christian world, and may you embrace your religion as you are embracing God the father.