Planning a Holy Communion? Here's some ideas for the day 

COMMUNION fever is hotting up in our village and it is so wonderful to be able to look forward to it.

While this is technically the second communion in our house, my eldest daughter’s was during the first year of Covid so it feels like it barely even happened. It consisted of a class Zoom with the priest on the original date set and a very muted affair later that year.

We are not particularly holy in the traditional sense of going to mass every week, we do make an effort to go periodically, and more so this year, and I have often taken comfort in faith during testing times.

We are having a lot of fun planning the big day and the dress is really the main event, outside of all the religious prep. Knowing we had four daughters to get through this sacrament, we opted for a dress from the Paul Costelle range in Dunnes Stores three years ago for my eldest lady.

My two eldest girls are completely different in everyway so I felt if we didn’t break the bank altogether on the first dress, the second lady wouldn’t be under pressure to wear the same one. Anyway, all that aside it turns out the same dress can look completely different on two different children so she is going to wear her sister’s dress. I am delighted, she is delighted and the eldest lady is totally flattered her younger sister loves the dress too, which is just lovely.

Accessory-wise, my second lady is not a girly girl so is shunning the satin style shoes for a pair of white converse.  Even before she had the dress picked, she knew she was going to wear runners and I applaud her individuality. 

We are going to add a little sparkle to them and personalise them ahead of the big day to make them extra special.

My second lady gravitates towards me a lot when I am out in the office, crafting whatever craft has captured my attention, so she decided she wanted to sew her own communion bag. We got a lovely fabric from a shop in Sligo and she is going to make a bucket bag with fabric flowers all over. The technique is fairly simple so I am looking forward to sitting down with her to do that.

We are going to host the party in our house. It will probably be a small affair as we don’t have many cousins and her friends are obviously all busy that day! We have a bouncy castle booked and we will do the food ourselves.

I love hosting gatherings at home so the plan is to have a couple of dishes like a lasagne and quiche, things that can be made easily a couple of days before and popped into the oven on the day. My dad is a master at making brown bread so he will be on bread duty and between us all we will whip out some salads like coleslaw, green salad and pasta salad.

We love making pizza in our house so I am under strict instructions to make it on the day, we have an indoor pizza oven which is unbelievably handy as it is not weather dependent and there is no flame to be watched over. 

Pizza is handy as I can make them as they are needed and they only take three minutes to cook so we can fire them out as they are needed.

I am also making the cake – three tiers were requested but we have settled on two and a cupcake to finish it off on top. I’m not sure how we will decorate it yet, I always struggle to make white buttercream icing and strongly dislike working with fondant because I can never get it perfect.

Irish butter is particularly yellow in colour because of the way our cows are grazed at grass. If you beat the butter for about ten minutes, it will knock some of the yellow out of it, add a little white food colouring and you’ll end up around ivory which I think will work.

I haven’t found something to wear myself yet. I wore a tailored bright pink suit to the eldest girl’s communion and I adored it because it was something different and comfortable.

My attitude to shopping has changed dramatically over the last few years, and, coupled with my recent foray into dress-making I have the over-confidence to believe I can make myself a dress good enough to wear.

I am a bit of a one trick pony on the dressmaking front at the moment, sticking with slight variations of the same pattern, but it’s a style that suits me. I ordered some beautiful viscose fabric from Fabric Romance, a loud pattern in a bold colour that I can hopefully transform, it could be absolutely awful or the best thing ever, we shall see!