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A few weekends ago, I had the opportunity to co-host a gender reveal baby shower for one of my good friends. The new mom recently moved away, but still visits Durham regularly so we decided to celebrate her pregnancy while she was in town and wanted to make it an extra-special gender reveal. When we were looking for ideas online, there weren’t a ton– so I thought I’d share what we did and give anyone planning their own a little advice.
That’s not to say we didn’t find some great ideas online via Pinterest. Honestly, I’m not even sure how people planned parties before Pinterest! I also read some differences of opinion about whether or not to even have one. Some people throw a Gender Reveal Party in addition to the baby shower and for others this seems like overkill. I think it’s just up to you to decide what you and the people who you are inviting would appreciate. Some people said they throw the separate gender reveal for just family. We decided to make it part of the baby shower to spice things up a little. Many of us were excited to know if she was having a boy or girl and since she doesn’t live in town, it was easy for her not to spill the beans (yeah, she knew).
Colors and Decorations
For me personally, the whole girl/pink and boy/blue color coding isn’t really the way I roll. But with the gender reveal theme, it’s the most common color scheme. You could also go with a neutral theme (How cute is this Bee theme?) or choose alternative colors if you didn’t want to do pink/blue.
We went with bright, fun and very simple and easy: blue and pink table cloths, cups, plates, and forks and balloons. We also hung a few “It’s a Boy” and “Baby Girl” garlands. None of the hosts are really into elaborate decorations and food. For us it was more about enjoying the event so we concentrated on the games (see below).
Gifts
As I mentioned above, if you’re throwing a gender reveal party in addition to a baby shower, it might be in good taste not to receive gifts (or maybe to ask for donations for a local charity). But since this party was a shower, we wanted her to be able to get a few gifts. We also had the issue of her living out of town and any gift would have to go home on the airplane. On the invite we asked specifically for gift cards or that gifts to be mailed to her home. And I helped her create a registry that didn’t give away the gender– it really wasn’t difficult! She’s also planning to cloth diaper, so she set up a registry at Sweetbottoms. It’s perfect because people won’t have to pay for shipping when they send her gift!
Wear your Vote
The majority of ideas we saw for gender reveal parties involved guests ‘voting’ on whether they thought it was a boy or girl. We thought this would be fun and help people get into the spirit of things. We got a set of pink and blue beads (the Mardi Gras kind) and asked guests to pick one at the door. It also added to the fun because some guests were trying to figure out if some people already knew and asking why they chose their color.
The hosts chose to wear pink and blue but we did not ask the guests to. We also didn’t use the vote to determine teams or give out special prizes. We wanted to keep things simple and lighthearted. We gave out door prizes throughout the party for things like “Mother of the Most Children” and “Oldest Mom” and “Mother of Youngest Child” etc.
Games
We played a game using Old Wives Tales to determine baby gender. We got it from a blog and for us, it was a little dry. (We were also rolling our eyes at how most of the bad stuff was for girls.) So I’ll go into more detail about the other two games.
#1 What is that?
This game required a little bit of prep, but it wasn’t difficult at all. Since I have both a boy and girl, I grabbed ten items from my house and put each one in an old gift bag with tissue paper on top. Each bag had a number on it. Guests numbered their paper 1-10 and as the bags were passed around they had to feel inside (no looking) and write down what it was and whether it was meant for a boy, girl, or both. Once everyone was finished, we pulled out the items and everyone saw how they did. It was interesting to see all the different reactions as people stuck their hands in the bag! Some guests had no children, others had school-aged kids or babies and others were grandmas, so it was fun to see how they responded to everything through their own experiences.
These are the items I chose: hat with ruffles, show with bow, socks with bow, kufi (cap for a boy), football jersey, Nose Frida, teething tablets, prefold, thermometer, board book.
#2 Charades
If you have a fun crowd, charades is a perfect game for parties. We chose charades over Pictionary because with a larger audience (20+) it’s easier to see. There’s very little preparation needed. I just wrote the words on slips of paper and guests drew them out of an old wipes container. We split the room into two teams. Each team had 90 seconds to get as many as possible. As soon as the clue was yelled out, someone had to be ready to start acting out the next one. This makes it a little more fast-paced and exciting. We used the following baby-themed words:
The BIG Reveal
The party hosts have to build this up and make it really exciting. This is key. We planned the party’s events to build up the anticipation: eating/mingling, a low-key game, a more active game, a really active game, then the reveal. While everyone was still excited and laughing from the lively charades game, we announced that it was time to find out if the baby is a boy or girl. We quickly passed out cupcakes with strict instructions not to touch them. On the count of three, we peeled the wrapper. Everyone was giggling. We made it silly. After another count of three, everyone could bite and…
It’s a boy!
There are many different options to announce the big reveal and filled cupcakes probably isn’t the most creative. However, we thought it was important to do something that everyone gets to participate in. That makes it more fun. Plus people are always happy anyway when they have a cupcake in their hand.
I hope you found this post useful if you’re planning a gender reveal of your own! If you have experience with one (throwing or attending), what’s your advice?
