Organising christening before baby is born?

[butterfly245]

Hi all

I’m 26 weeks and with DH being a Christian we’ve always known we want to get baby christened. We also know we want it to be a fairly big ‘do as we had to have a tiny covid wedding last year.

Is it too strange/jinxing things to start organising this before baby is born? The reason I wanted to start soon was because I think some venues may be booked up for a while due to wedding backlogs (we know the kind of venue we want and it is a wedding one too), but then I’m worried about starting planning now and something goes wrong, or just without knowing what baby’s routine is going to be yet (it’s my first)

The baby's routine won't matter for christening but I would think it insane to book anything at this stage. There's a long way to go yet before baby is even here safely. Surely you could book when baby is born for a few months ahead?

A friend is a vicar. His church won’t book until baby is born so if you booked a venue, but the church couldn’t be booked, that may cause problems. They are also generally held on a Sunday as part of the usual church service so a Wedding venue wouldn’t really be full on a Sunday.

Many people would attend a wedding who wouldn’t necessarily accept a christening invitation so you may not need to have a huge venue.

You would be better off waiting though for all sorts of reasons.

Church won't accept a booking until baby is here, and you need to coordinate both. You could start a note book, get ideas for what yo u want etc to keep your mind occupied but I wouldn't do anything until she's out.

Church won’t take bookings until DC is here. You can suss out venues, DJ, catered etc of really keen but personally I would wait. We had a quite a big christening, 150 people when DC1 was 3 months old and it was easy enough to plan as much more relaxed than a wedding

I wouldn’t book now for the reasons given above. Also, how soon do you want to do it after baby is born? I certainly wouldn’t plan on doing it too quickly as you don’t know how your birth will go, how you will feel, how settled the baby will be etc. It would be best to wait a few months so y look are better able to enjoy the event as it is clearly (and understandably) important to you

Thank you all, that's helpful and I'll definitely hold off from making any plans yet. We're planning to hold it on a Saturday as his church generally has Christenings then, but not sure how soon we want the Christening after baby is born. Thanks all :)