Introduction
Photos
Guest Books
Memory/trinket boxes
Alternatives

Introduction

Whilst you yourself may remember this day for years to come, your child, who is the star of the show after all, is unlikely to remember very much about it.  Below are some ideas on how to create a personal and lasting record of the event for your son or daughter to cherish for the rest of their life.

Photos

The most obvious way of recording the special day is through photographs or video. You may want to hire a photographer or videographer to make sure that the day is professionally captured or you may prefer to keep things less formal and take the photos or video yourselves.

One thing to remember is that you are likely to be otherwise occupied during the ceremony and for most of the reception so it might be wise to appoint a friend or grandparent as the official photographer to make sure that those key shots aren’t missed.
If you are planning on taking photos or shooting film during the ceremony then don’t forget to get permission from your priest or celebrant beforehand.

The beauty of digital photography is that you can now easily share photos using an online service such as Arrival of the Year. Ask your guests to upload their photos of the event and choose the best from everyone’s snaps to create a really special album or scrapbook (see our Photo Albums Gallery).

Some services such as Photobox can now create a professional book of your photos which saves you having to stick prints into a conventional album.

Guest Books

A really lovely memento of the special occasion is to have a guest book in which everyone writes a message for your child to read when he or she is older (see our Guest Book Gallery). 

A clever twist on this, bringing the guest book to life for your child, is to get your guests to take a Polaroid of themselves on the day and stick this in the album next to their message. If you or any of your guests is a dab hand with a camcorder, you could even get people to record a message and create a video guest book.

Memory/trinket boxes

Fill a special box with keepsakes from the event for your child to look at later (see our Keepsake/Memory Box Gallery). Bundle the christening cards together with ribbon and add in a list of gifts and who they were from. Keep an invitation, a thank you card and a dried flower from the decorations. If you had readings, speeches or special music, put a copy in the box along with any baptism certificate or naming ceremony script.  

Alternatives

Another way of marking the occasion is by planting a tree in the garden to grow with your child or making a donation to charity.