We have come to the end of February
and soon it’ll be Spring and Spring often times (in Nature mostly) means
babies. In some upcoming posts, we will be planning a baby shower! We are
actually throwing a baby shower at the end of March so we thought that we would
do a couple of posts along the way of how to plan it, decorations and any
crafting needed, and food.
This week we’ll look at the early stages of planning a baby
shower. Take it as a guide for throwing one if you have never done so before.
If you are planning one with others, kind of divide the duties as best you can.
We have three people planning this shower; one is doing food, one is doing
games and décor, and the other is hosting it at their house so they’re doing a
lot of the decorating and also working on the decorations.
First of all, timing is everything. You have to decide if you
want to do shower before the baby arrives or one after (Sip and Sees are
becoming ever so popular). Take the mom-to-be into consideration. Is she having
a rough pregnancy? Does she know the gender? Do her and her family have any
hesitations or superstitions about having a shower before the baby arrives?
When the mom isn’t feeling so great it might be better to have the shower
after. It may not matter to some, but if you are waiting on finding out the
gender it may be nice to wait for a shower so that you can buy gifts and decorate
accordingly (that may not matter to the mom at all). Also, some moms-to-be
might just want to wait until the baby arrives so that she can introduce him or
her to all of her friends and family. On the other hand, having a baby shower
before the baby arrives is very common. It’s a nice way to wish the mom well
before the baby arrives and to also play some fun baby prediction/belly games!
We decided on a shower after the baby arrived so that
everyone can meet the baby and mom can get some gifts that are more suited to
her brand-new little one. We chose a date almost a couple months after baby was
due. That gives mom time to adjust to things and to recover. That’s always
something very important to remember as well if you’re picking a date
afterwards. If you’re planning to do a shower before, check in with the mom to
see how she is feeling and if she’s up for having a baby shower in general.
Once we picked the date, then we started planning the food,
decorations, and the games. We’ll focus on all of these things in more depth in
later posts because we are still in the process of creating and preparing for
this shower, but here’s an overview…
Decorations/Crafting – We opted for a digital invitation.
Handmade things are our specialty, but we thought that it would be more
efficient and save money on all that postage if we just sent out an email. Ask
the mom for a list of important people that she would like to have at the
shower and ask her about people if you think she may have forgotten about some.
You can find many online templates to create a fun and original digital
invitation. We sent out these invites before mom gave birth so a fun thing that
we did was get everyone to send back their RSVP with a prediction of gender,
weight, and date. The person closest will get a prize on the day of the shower.
Make sure you give people enough time to send in their predictions but also a
fair deadline because they will lose out if mom delivers before they send in
their prediction!
Other crafty and decorative items that we have on our list to
make are garlands, favour bags, table décor, flower arrangements, and a name
banner.
Games – Games are always a fun part of any type of shower! We
went through a long list of ideas and narrowed it down to three. Baby food guessing, match the mom with the baby, and baby Bingo. We’re doing an afternoon shower from
2-5pm so you want time to mingle, hold baby, and have food so as much as we
wanted to have lots of games, we just had to pick three.
Food – This is my specialty and responsibility! On our invitation
we mentioned that if people want to bring food, then they can but they not
obligated to do so. We are going to provide the basics like drinks (punch, tea,
coffee, juice), a fruit platter with dip, a veggie platter with dip, and a meat
and cheese platter. We are also going to do some deep-fried won tons and some
special baked treats. Make sure you check if anyone coming to the shower has
any food sensitivities or intolerances. Since I have bad food allergies, I
always want to make sure and try and not exclude anyone from enjoying in on the
food. You can also do some alcoholic beverages and more finger type foods like,
sandwiches, chips and dips, skewers, and chicken wings. Or you can do a sweets only
afternoon too. It’s up to you and what you think is most practical.
So now you have a plan in place to throw a fun baby shower.
Stay tuned for more posts and to see how it all turned out!
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