Getting baby christened..

[firsttimemum111]

Hi all, sorry not sure if this is the right topic to post on but I was looking for some advice.

Partner and I are debating the idea of having our now five month old christened. A large part of it would be that the better schools in our area tend to be catholic ones, particularly the high schools.

Are christenings still important or are they a bit outdated now?
Is it worth it with neither of us being particularly religious?
Any mums who have had a christening is there an average cost?
How would you go about arranging one, would you contact the church directly or is there a way that you have to go about it?
Also part of what has put us off is the selection of godparents and not offending anyone by not asking, how many godparents do you have? Is there a certain number of males/females you have to choose?

Any other advice would be really appreciated ❤️ thank you.

@Fallagain

To get into a Catholic school they will need to be baptised at school and regularly attend church. Personally I wouldn’t want my child to have a Catholic education but only you can decide that.

This depends on where you are -- in the area where I grew up just being baptised Catholic will get a child in (baptised AND attending Mass regularly is higher on the list of criteria but there aren't remotely enough in that category to fill all the places so there's plenty of room for the baptised non-attendees). Where I live now you need three solid years of 75% attendance and you need to sign in at Mass to establish the necessary paper trail, and even then there aren't enough places for all those children.

I was brought up in a Christian family and altho I don't practise or follow any religion anymore I have huge respect for those who do.
We were invited to a Christening for the child of one of DHs friends - we had been to their wedding which wasn't remotely religious so I was surprised by the Christening. DH told me it was likely to do with schools in the area.
I felt very uncomfortable listening to people who had no idea about Church promising to support this child in their Christian life. Then afterwards at the party people laughing and mocking the preachers sermon , I found it very disrespectful.

I'm CofE so can't comment specifically on a Catholic baptism, however for my children's baptism, their Godparents also had to be baptised and confirmed in order to stand as Godparents. My DH is Godparent to a Catholic child and although DH is baptised and confirmed himself through the CofE, he had to go to a couple of Catholic 'classes' with the local Catholic vicar before he was able to stand as Godparent - the other Godparents were all Catholic so the priest was happy to proceed. Are the friends that you would want as Godparents actually Christians?

I think that there's actually a bit more to think about here tbh, rather than just how many Godparents you can have and how much it might cost....

It's a much more meaningful experience when an adult or older child gets baptised

No, it isn’t necessarily more meaningful.
Baptism is usually where godparents make vows. Confirmation is where you make the vows yourself. And one is not important than the other, because they are both sacraments.

2-3 Godparents for each child. We're not too bothered about it but my mum requested we had them baptised, all at the church her dad is buried. It's up to them if they want to be more involved in the church when they are older. There are faith schools near us but we didn't want to force religious schooling on them so they do not attend one.
Baptism didn't cost anything, they asked for donations instead so we could give what was affordable for us. Our older ones were done between 9 weeks and 5 months, youngest is 5mth and not had hers yet but think she'll be closer to a year old when we get round to it due to dh's job.