On 30th April 2017, we had little Luna Bear baptised.
I’d been going to the church in Chepstow for quite a few months. I don’t really know why – catholic guilt I suppose. I planned to get her baptised when she was about three months old but it just took me so long to get round to it.
I chose my two best friends to be Godmothers: Juli from secondary school and Sorcha from uni, and then got started on planning the celebrations. Being me, I left myself about two weeks to organise the whole thing, in the middle of moving house and becoming self employed, so it was pretty stressful.
I decided I wanted some of those giant silver balloons saying ‘LUNA’, and a trip to hobbycraft meant I could tick that box up. Sorcha picked them up for me the day before the baptism, but when we noticed the ‘A’ wasn’t inflated properly. Amongst all the stress, we decided to just get another ‘A’ first thing in the morning – problem solved!
Then, because I just love to add as much stress to my plate as I can, I decided I would be making the cake myself. Dan came round early the day before to help, but when we went out to buy ingredients I remembered I didn’t have a dress yet (LOL) so we made a ‘quick’ detour to Cardiff centre, and after a couple of hours traipsing up and down Zara, I finally found the perfect dress in Lipsy. By the time we made it home, it was 5pm and we still didn’t have a cake. Sorcha then arrived and we baked all evening. We ended up with four 20inch sponges which we turned into 2 sandwich cakes, 50 cupcakes, and loads of mini cupcakes. We then took a break and headed to Tesco so buy icing and decorations. At about half one in the morning we called it a day and decided to finish decorating in the morning. The next morning, Juli decided that putting pearl balls in the shape of a cross onto each mini cupcake would be an interesting touch, so we all got to work. My job was to pipe a teeny tiny amount of white chocolate into a cross shape onto each cake, whilst everyone else then stuck the balls, one by one, onto the cakes.
After all the cakes were ready, Juli & Jackson, Dan and Sorcha, took them along with the decorations to the function room to set up whilst I went to morning mass with my mum. However, the pub manager wasn’t in yet and so couldn’t let them into the room so they had to drop the cakes off in the kitchen. Eventually, an hour or so later, he arrived and opened up the room.
We met the others at the function room after mass as I had the giant balloons in my car. As I got out of the car, my mum said “careful the balloons don’t fly away”, and just as I replied “it’s OK, they are weighted down”, the U broke away from its weight and flew away! We were so short for time but I didn’t have any alternative plan – unless I wanted the display to read LNA, I needed a replacement. We went back to hobbycraft and grabbed a U before waiting for the staff to inflate it. They obviously knew I was in a hurry and so decided to take as long as possible to fulfil my request.
I just about had time to get home, get dressed, slap some make up on and run the straighteners through my hair. Then it was a race to make it to the church in time. When we were about 3 mins away, I could see that Dan and Sorcha were right in front of us, but then they took the wrong turning at the roundabout. I don’t know where they ended up but it wasn’t St.Mary’s Catholic Church. After hurried phone calls and trying to direct them, the finally arrived and ran into the church just in time to start the baptism.
The actual baptism was really nice and Luna was pretty well behaved as usual. Then afterwards, the party was lovely.
I’m super excited to get started planning Luna’s first birthday party now!
