You would think that getting baptised is a major event in the life of your parents. baptismal certificate
They must be excited about it. Pprobably made a big fuss over it. They dressed you up in the best outifit they could find and threw a party as big as they could afford. You would imagine a whole family together for the occasion.
Not mine.
My parents didn’t care much about the day. My father was probaby annoyed because my mother decided to christen me in her own religion, not his, and she was probably upset because my father wasn’t excited about it, or simply didn’t care much about it herself. The thing is my baptism was pretty much overlooked.
Basically we went to the church, got wet, went home. No more. She didn’t even bother going back to the church two days later to pick up the certificate. baptismal certificate
So there I was, thirty six years later, learning for the first time that there was no certificate. I did not have my baptism certificate. And guess what? For a church wedding, this is a must.
No paper, no wedding; simple, plain and non-negotiable. baptismal certificate
The problem was that my baptism happened 12,000 kilometers away and nobody wrote down the address of the church. Nobody remembered. Rescuing the document required arqueological research.
I contacted the only friend I had left in my home country and asked her to help me. I told my mother to really squeeze every drop out of her memory and remember where the church was.
With the help of a map, we managed to track it down. My friend (who lived in a different city now) sent people to look for it. They managed to dig it out and sent it to me, barely a month before my wedding.
I often wonder, did my mother ever expect me to get married at all? Did she not know that one day, in the future, somebody was going to request that paper?
Do keep your papers safe. You never know when they’ll be useful.