Tip #1:
Never shower alone!
I never knew talking about baby showers would lead to so many innuendos, so let's all laugh and move on...
Seriously, I've tried throwing a baby shower by myself and while you might feel you are the only one who knows your best friend and what she'd like, you need to save yourself the time, money and stress by recruiting other friends and family to help out. Know what you can do best and then delegate the rest. Plus, when great minds come together, some awesome ideas come up that you might have never thought of and other well-meaning ones can get a majority kibosh when they're not so great ideas, like some of the games I'll mention below.
I've had 2 amazing Showers thrown for me and was blessed to have the opportunity to co-host and attend several others, so I've learned from party planning pros and benefitted from their generosity, taking notes along the way. Come on girls, it's always more fun to surprise your best friend when you have help!
These categories need to be delegated: Invitations, Refreshments, Activities, Location, Decorations, Favors, Group Gift, and Special Surprise. When you have a team, you get to focus on what you enjoy and can also afford to do nice things, like paper invitations.
Cocodot,
Paperless Post, and
Evite are great services that make it easy to keep track of guests, so I'm not knocking them. If you want the Mommy to have an item to scrapbook, the paper invite is always a nice touch - you can even make them yourself if you're crafty!
Tip #2:
Please the Preggo!
I spent 5 hours at
Babies R Us registering for gifts, almost fainted from hunger, ate 2 donuts on the way home and had swollen ankles at the end of the day, all the while wondering "Will anyone even buy this stuff or will I be stuck with whatever I find on consignment or have coupons for?" Actually, I was lucky to have a caring friend who went with me and told me exactly what to register for, since she was a mom of 3 and knew the ropes. Thank you Sidney! I can't imagine what it would've been like without her.
If you don't already know, find out what your Mom-to-be is registering for. This will help in planning themes, colors, and gifts. If the gender is a surprise, you still have a world of options on themes and colors that don't have to be just yellow, green and beige ducks. Honor the Mom in every aspect of the shower, where possible.
What is your gal's personality? Is she girly, traditional, modern, eclectic, a party animal? Instead of tailoring the shower to the baby, tailor it to the Mom and then find a way to combine the baby. That's what my LA friends did with my Tea Party shower:
These girls had a traditional afternoon ladies tea planned out to a T. Each hostess brought a few sets of their china patterns from home to serve our guests set with a host at each table to serve tea and pass the sandwiches, cakes, jam and clotted cream around. I loved it and it was so beautifully thought out! They also knew I have a passion for building unique diaper cakes for baby showers, so they built me one for my little girl, including a monogrammed blanket:
As an added girly touch, my guests were sent home with
MOR lip gloss tins, donated by my friend, Danielle. I think everyone who attended felt special that day, which served me especially well. I love pleasing others and that point was taken into consideration. Thanks again D-group and Church gals!
Tip #3:
Use your resources
Do you have a clubhouse in your neighborhood you can rent or use free? Do you craft or have a crafty neighbor who can embroider or make invitations? Do you have a garden? Do you work for a makeup company and get free samples or discounts on items that could make good party favors? Do you have a pretty china set you don't mind using? You can save a lot of money and really make the shower special if you use your resources. Don't get the pink plastic baby shower items from the party store - they're going to be thrown away and they're choking hazards! Keep the decor simple and give resources a dual-purpose:
The Diaper Cake
Hello gorgeous centerpiece/group gift/game! It's an all-in-one show stopper! I'm going to follow up in a couple of weeks on how to buy for and build one of these bad boys, but take a look at a few I've done for friends...
My sweet friend, Anna, introduced the diaper cake to me when we built it together for our friend, Katherine's shower. I fell in love! I don't sell them because, let's face it, I have 2 toddlers, a music career, and barely enough time to take a shower...
These guys can run from about $30-$160 (or more if you want designer blankets), so they make a fabulous group gift, knocking out several needed items from the registry. For $30, you can do the bare diapers with ribbon kind you see sold all over the web, but if you want to save time and buy those, you could end up paying $50 and get cheapo-leako diapers (with the exception of a few
mindful sellers). You want to give your Momma something she can use and won't curse you for in the middle of a sleepless night.
Huggies Little Snugglers or
Pampers Swaddlers are always a good bet - and you might go with size 1 so she can keep the cake on display a little longer. Also, if you've got a green (or ambitious) mom-to-be who wants to use the cloth or
biodegradable kind, you can build a cake with those. (I'll add that how-to on my next post, so stay tuned.)
Ever played the
Memory Tray game? The diaper cake can also work the same way. When it comes to game-time, take it away and then have everyone list as many items as they can remember. If you're planning to use it that way, then make sure to hide little things, like pacifiers, q-tips, and diaper pins on and in the cake.
Music
Make a playlist for the party and burn CDs as favors. Everyone loves adding music to their collection and this is a great way to give another cheap gift to Mom and guests in a thoughtful way. Find out your Mom's favorite music genre or come up with a fun indie playlist from your own collection. It doesn't need to all be lullabies (might put your guests in a mellow, sleepy disposition) but maybe err on the side of family-friendly so the kids can dance to it in future years. Some of my baby shower favorites are:
Somewhere Over the Rainbow by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole
You Are My Sunshine by Pete Seeger
Everything by Michael Bublé
Banana Pancakes by Jack Johnson
I Hope You Dance by Lee Ann Womack
Blackbird by Sarah McLachlan
I Can't Give You Anything But Love by Ella Fitzgerald (Ella in Rome - The Birthday Concert)
What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong
L-O-V-E by Natalie Cole
Flowers
Flowers are always a beautiful, simple way to decorate a shower. Skip the balloons and streamers - I once used streamers and left tape with a scrap of the blue streamer on my ceiling that I kept forgetting to take down and stayed there for months (how often do you look up at your ceiling when you have time to get a ladder?). Buy small or various sizes of vases at the dollar store and go to the flower district (if you're in LA) or buy bulk amounts elsewhere of hydrangeas in one or different colors and other pretty flowers that have no or very little fragrance. If you have a garden, even better! Cut them so they sit securely on the vase (tape the vase criss-cross if needed). You could even tie a ribbon around the vase. Then, give them away as prizes for games! Done! Save one for the Mom-to-be, too.
Pictures
Don't forget the baby pictures! Have the Grandma(s) send you or bring copies of baby pictures and hang them up on a clothes line or set on a table for the guests to see. This makes great decor and conversation!
Guest Book/Advice Cards/Recipe Box...
When guests enter, have them write their name and address on a colored or pretty index card along with a bit of advice for the new Mom-to-be. For wedding showers, we often send these with the invitation so the guest can bring a loved recipe to share. Then all the cards are stored in either a recipe box or address box that the Mom (or bride) can keep for years to send thank you's, birth announcements, and various celebration cards. Really beats an old guest book that no one ever looks at and if there's a truly hilarious or memorable card, it will be easy for Mom to scrap-book.
Food
Unless you have a caterer on your team, have each hostess bring one or two home-baked or assembled items to serve. This will cut costs and add to your menu. Make sure everyone knows what to bring and offer variety. If food is a passion of the Mom, then make that your take-home item. My best friend, Jenny, loves chocolate chip cookies, so each guest had a bag of fresh-baked cookies to take home. Another loved Sprinkles cupcakes, so there was a single boxed cupcake for each guest. One Michigan Mom loved Cherries, so dried cherries were the favor. It's a unique touch that people will love and remember.
Tip #4
KISS
(Keep It Simple Sweetheart)
Especially when it comes to activities! That was one rule I forgot with the first shower I threw. Yes, I admit, I broke all the rules! I hosted by myself, bought the streamers and plastic toys, the cheap guestbook, spent way too much and left little time or energy to just sit and enjoy the moment with the Mommy and her friends. I filled the schedule with stupid games and forgot that girls just want to get together and chat!
So, if you must do games, then make them special. Yes, the "what candy is melted to look like poop" diaper game is funny. Maybe your Mom-to-be would love that - actually there are lots of good games for co-ed showers that make men squirm, so go for it. I love relay races for co-ed showers, where you put men against women in changing baby dolls, strapping them in the car seat and racing to the finish line in a stroller. Almost always, the women win!
We're talking about Ladies-only showers here. Remember, the Mom-to-be is likely the heaviest she's ever been, probably spent three months or more nauseous and unable to touch or smell most foods, and is dealing with changes in her body no one ever talks about. She needs to feel beautiful and be praised. So why on Earth would you have people guess the size of her belly using toilet paper?! Really, ladies, let's bury that game and keep in mind who's laughing. Not the Mom, except maybe for embarrassment or self-preservation.
Plan one or two activities that create conversation or involve gifts for the Mom, like the diaper cake memory game, drawing on plain onesies with fabric markers, create a slideshow or who's-who game of baby pictures, or a "what's on my back" game where the guests have to mingle and ask questions to find out what baby item or character is written on a card stuck to their back. Get creative and make sure what you do is fun for everyone.
Tip #5
A Special Surprise
Find a way to surprise the Mom. The shower in and of itself is a gift and so thoughtful of you to do for your friend. She's not expecting anything more! Find one element that she doesn't expect and she'll be in tears. Ok, pregnant ladies cry easily, but she'll be really moved.
At my tea, the ladies knew music was my passion and asked everyone to bring CDs along with their gifts. That was special. Then to top it off, the game was a "Name that tune" game with lullabies that were recorded by my friend and amazing guitar player, Andrew Jed. That made me cry! It was a totally unique one-of-a-kind gift made just for me! Everyone benefitted from the game and it was fun, but I really appreciated the thoughtfulness in the preparation.
A few years ago, Anna (who introduced me to the Diaper Cake) was pregnant with her first baby after trying to conceive for 3 1/2 years! We knew her shower had to be special. I decided to write her a lullaby and to top it off, asked her husband to play guitar and sing with me at the shower. When we prayed with Anna, he snuck in behind her and after the "Amen," started to play. Waterworks all around! It was a special moment.
It doesn't have to be a custom song or CD, but you can find a way to WOW her! Ask her husband or her Mother to write her a letter. Did she lose her Mother? Get her family to dig and find photos of her Mom pregnant with her and have them framed. Or, a simple way to make her feel special could be to go around the room and have each guest share a memory about the Mom-to-be and/or what they love most about her. If she's a Christian or spiritual, have someone pray for her and the baby.
The point is to "shower" her with love and gifts with her closest friends and family. It doesn't matter the cost of the shower, it's truly the thought that counts!
Happy Planning!
Love,
Elizabeth (aka Sugar)
PS. I didn't cover "Sprinkles" here. Those are showers for 2nd time Moms. You can do those the same way, on the cheap with "Mommy swaps" or just take her out for a drink and a pedicure while someone else watches the kids. By that point, she'll be happy to have time away with good friends.
