Baptism Costs?

nikicody1 · October 2013

Hello all! My husband and I would love to get our daughter baptized soon. She's 6 months old and we wanted to do something really simple with just the 3 of us. However, I contacted a pastor that we really like and he said it would cost $250. Does this seem really high to anyone else besides us? I thought that it seemed a bit outrageous, but I'm not sure if I'm just out of the loop or if that's the going rate for Orange County California or not. Any help is much appreciated. Thanks in advance!

LisaLisa1980 · October 2013

What?! Ours was free

nikicody1 · October 2013

Thanks! That's what I thought, that it would just be a donation to the church. I didn't ask for anything special so I'm assuming that the $250 was a bit too high.

mamato3girls · October 2013

We are catholic as well and it was free. Although there was a question of whether they would have to have a priest come in from a neighboring church because ours was out of town the weekend we wanted, that would have cost us $50, I guess to pay for the priest's travel across town? But we just did the donation to the church which was no where near $250 and of course not required.

=Lee=B · October 2013

Our daughters was at a Catholic church, and it was free. We are actively involved in the church and when we asked our priest what kind of donation we should give he made it clear nothing. If we hadn't been involved then I would have guessed like $50 at most. There is little cost to the church for the baptism and it's just part of a priests duties.

We had a party, BBQ at the house with about 60 church folks/family out and paid for the food involved. But even all that was way less than $250.

If it were me, I would go find a neighboring catholic church and inquire as to their costs and have the baptism there...letting your church know why you went elsewhere.

nikicody1 · October 2013

Thanks so much everyone for the feedback. It's with a non-denominational church as we're not catholic, but this just confirms to me what I was thinking that it's too high in cost.

PepperBug · October 2013

I am going to chime in as a non-Catholic. I'm Protestant, and I was turned away from the church I grew up in because I wasn't a member (my parents are). We inquired at several other churches, and they also turned us away. We weren't able to join at that time because (a) we had an infant and couldn't attend all the classes and (b) we were only living in the town we were living in temporarily. We were planning to find a church to raise our kids in once we were settled somewhere and our kids were old enough to attend in some form.

We were so turned off by the whole experience that we decided to raise our kids Jewish (my husband is Jewish). It upset me quite a bit that churches that believe in baptism wouldn't baptize a baby for any reason (and we were prepared to pay any fee they charged).

I would consider myself lucky that a church was willing to do the baptism for a fee (I'm guessing there would not be a fee for a member).

jensriot · October 2013

When my niece was christened, it was part of a large group with several other kids during the same ceremony. I think my sister could have had a private ceremony and that would have had a fee. Maybe it's for a private event? We made a donation for my kids, but I don't know how much.

bibby32714 · October 2013

We are Lutheran and members of our church but it was free. I've never heard of a fee. Even for our wedding there was no fee, just a downpayment for cleaning that was returned when we left the church as clean as we found it. I'm surprised they would have somthing like this.

sgerrity23 · October 2013

Way to high! I attend a non-denomonational church and it was 100% free.

aibrean · October 2013

Lutheran and it was free. Our pastor says he gets that question sometimes (people just don't know). He said it SHOULD be free. If people feel obligated they can donate, but really, when it's a command from God to baptize, it seems "counting house" to collect money from it.

mhickey426 · October 2013

I live in the NYC area which is expensive like where you are from. My dd baptism was free. Granted we gave a donation but they did not tell us how much to give or that there was a fee. We spent a lot of money on her baptism but not on the church. Her baptism was a full mass and she was the only baby. I think I gave $200 for our wedding so I would never give more then that for a baptism.

ArmyWife114 · November 2013

Lurking from 9-12, but we're also Catholic, DS's was free. We chose to give a donation to the church, I think we gave double our normal donation for the mass we did his baptism at, but I can't remember exactly.

My sister was baptized Episcopal, but hers was completely free. My parents did a donation though (not sure how much).

We gave $250 for our wedding, and I'd never ever give that much for a baptism. We also didn't have to give a donation for our wedding either (but I was raised that that's what you do). I want to say we did either $50 or $100 for DS's and some of our friends (not Catholic) gave a similarly sized donation for their son's.

jaime52005 · November 2013

Our cost 250 today and its a "donation" because we are not regular church goers..if we were it would have been free

Zelda925 · November 2013

This has been an interesting read. I currently live in Germany and I met with the church's secretary today to talk about baptizing my daughter. It seemed too easy. I guess I should look up traditions of baptisms, just to see what's out there.

zzbb · November 2013

Not Catholic and we dont do baby baptisms because our church feels that it should be a person's decision when and if they become baptized. What we do is called a dedication and it's a vow as parents that we will bring the child up based on the bible...the idea being that the child will be brought up to want to be baptized once they can understand and follow to guidelines to live a Christian lifestyle. The ceremonies are very similar and it didn't cost us anything.

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