Jacob's Baptism - The Details

Jake's baptism was one of my favorite events to plan to date. Of course I enjoyed the creative aspect of the planning process - I always do. But I also thoroughly enjoyed being able to spend unlimited amounts of time with Jacob's godmothers: my sister, Yolanda and Leo's sister, Maria.

We had SO much fun.

In short, We shopped. We dipped. We carefully crafted and we shared lots and lots of laughs.

All of the elements that we used for the reception were found via my favorite websites for inspiration: Pinterest and Etsy. If you are a Mom and you're not already using these website, I highly recommend both.

 I also have a party-planning secret weapon: I have a friend who is a very talented graphic design artist - Debbie of Dagal Creative. I absolutely LOVE working with her because she always manages to see my vision even before I have it completely figured out. She did everything - the invites, the prayer cards, the favor tags the thank you cards.

My process goes a little something like this: I find something I like on Pinterest or Etsy, I email the picture or the link to the picture to Debbie and she modifies it based on my theme. For instance, I found "My Wishes for You" cards via Etsy and she modified the text to make them more baptism appropriate by changing it to "My Prayers for You."

 I can't tell you how much we both enjoyed reading each and every one at the end of the day. There were SO many great comments - here are just a few: 

I pray you get to....have one great love

I pray you never forget...to call your Mom

I pray you are never afraid of...what you don't understand

I pray you become...a friend to Joaquin

I pray you become...Captain America

I pray you get to...be successful and follow God's way

I pray you learn...about the stars

I pray you laugh...every day

For favors, we decided on white chocolate dipped Oreo cookies so Debbie created a favor tag based on another sample I found via Pinterest. They of course matched the color theme perfectly.

One of my very favorite elements that we incorporated was a fingerprint tree - you may have seen this done at weddings or bridal showers. I saw it on Pinterest and immediately fell in love with the idea. The concept is simple - guests add their fingerprint to the tree and write their name above it to serve as a record of their presence.

I plan to frame it and hang it proudly on our wall and then one day, when Jacob has a family of his own, my hope is that he will hang it proudly on his wall. I knew I wanted to somehow honor our family members in heaven so I was able to accomplish this by adding their names - the color of the flower represents that of their birthstone.

For the centerpieces, I wanted something bright and cheery but also inexpensive. I asked a local pizza restaurant if I could take their empty cans of tomato sauce off their hands and they happily obliged.
My go-to florist also happens to be a great friend of mine from High School - Ricardo and his wife, Erin have a very successful floral business called Irises Floral Designs.

They spray painted the cans, added a thick chocolate brown ribbon around the middle and then added a favor tag to tie everything together. We skipped flowers and went with simple bunches of babies breath.

They were absolutely perfect.

The last element was the cake. Again, I found the initial design via Pinterest but I modified it by adding a cross and as funny as it may sound, a pair of converse tennis shoes. Ever since Jacob was a baby, he's mostly worn converse so I thought it would be fitting. We ordered the cake from the same person who did his first birthday cake - Susie from Havana Taste. The bottom layer was chocolate cake with cookies and cream filling and the top layer was blueberry cake with lemon curd filling - delish!

Finally, it was important to both of us to have lots of great pictures so that one day when Jacob is old enough to grasp the concept of baptism, we will be able to give him a clear picture of what the day was like. I didn't want to worry about not having enough or worse, having pictures that were blurry or too dark. We decided to ask my friend Sheila who used to work with me at La Verne. She is now a graduate but she loves photography and when I asked her, she happily obliged. She did such a great job - we couldn't have asked for more.

The day was by no means perfect. There were family members who were unable to attend and other loved ones who we would have loved to invite but for financial reasons, were unable to. And because Jacob missed his morning and afternoon naps, he was fussy at times. But still all in all, we were very happy.
Happy for him and happy for us.

We can't thank Jacob's godparents enough for their generous contributions and none of the beautiful details would have been possible had it not been for our amazing friends - my party planning secret weapons: Debbie, Ricardo and Erin. We are also eternally gratful to Sheila for capturing it all so perfectly.

We are truly blessed.

Enjoy the day!
Malissa