Christening menu card: template and tips

A menu card for a family lunch

A christening has fewer guests, fewer courses and less formality than a wedding. Usually it’s lunch after the service, at a restaurant, a pub, a hall or at home, with sharing starters, a main and the cake. The menu card matches that tone: short, clear and calm in its design. It works just as well for a baptism, a naming day or a welcome party.

What to put on the card

From top to bottom:

1. The baby’s name, largest of all: “Oliver”.
2. “Christening”, underneath.
3. The heading and the date: “Menu” and “Sunday 6 June 2027”.
4. The dishes, in the order they’re served: sharing starters, main and dessert.
5. The drinks, on one line: “Prosecco, wine, beer and soft drinks”.
6. At the bottom, the venue’s name and a thank-you: “Thank you for celebrating with us”.

If you like, the parents’ or godparents’ names can go in the thank-you line. Nothing more is needed.

A short menu reads better

With three or four sections and one to three dishes in each, the card can breathe. A few guidelines:

• Short dish names: “Smoked salmon blinis”, “Roast chicken with lemon and thyme”. The card is 99 mm wide.
• Sharing starters in one section: “To share”.
• A single main, the one agreed with the venue.
• The cake, with its name or simply “Christening cake”.

Babies and children at the table

There are usually other babies and small children at a christening. If the venue makes them something different (a purée, a children’s dish), add a section at the end with its own heading, such as “For the little ones”. And ask about allergies when you send the invitations: in small children, allergies to milk and eggs are common.

Allergens

The duty to give allergen information lies with whoever cooks; you can still put them on the card so nobody has to ask. Ask the restaurant or caterer for them in writing, dish by dish, and mark them with numbers or icons, with the key at the bottom.

In a typical christening lunch, the usual ones are: gluten in blinis, bread and anything breaded; fish in smoked salmon; milk in mash, cream and butter sauces; molluscs if there’s seafood; sulphites in wine, prosecco and wine-based sauces; and gluten, eggs and milk in the cake. Beer contains gluten too.

Printing it

• DL card (99 × 210 mm), one per sheet, for a printer; or DL · three per sheet, three cards on a landscape A4 to print at home or at a print shop.
• 250 to 300 gsm card if your printer can take it. If not, 160 to 200 gsm paper also looks good in the centre of the table.
• Actual size when printing and, for three per sheet, crop marks turned on. Cut with a guillotine or a lever trimmer.
• The PDF comes out at 300 dpi, ready for a print shop.

Three DL cards don’t fit across a US Letter sheet, which is narrower than A4: buy A4 card or print one card per sheet.

For round tables, a card in a small stand or frame in the centre can be read from every seat.

Design

The template uses the Nordic style: clean, airy and with a single accent colour. Botanical looks lovely in spring, and Sobremesa suits a lunch at a classic restaurant. You can change the accent colour to match the decorations or the invitations: a soft blue, a sage green, a sandy tone.

Make it with MenuDesign

Open the christening menu template, change the name, date and dishes, mark the allergens and download the PDF. If the celebration is bigger, the guide to the wedding menu card has more ideas on paper and cutting. Free, no sign-up.