Tips You Need To Plan A Successful Baby Shower (Or any party!)
It’s been a busy month or two planning and executing a successful baby shower for my sister. I learned a lot while planning the baby shower for my sister and her little baby girl (who should be making her first appearance late summer). So I thought I’d take what I learned plus some tips and tricks to help anyone out there planning a baby shower or bridal shower, birthday party, graduation party etc.
Let’s get started shall we?
1) Make an initial guest list
Think of all the people that should be invited to your shower and add up the numbers. This will give you a great base for planning the rest of the shower/party. Whether or not this is your final list, it’s just a start. It will help you plan where and when you can throw the shower. As you continue through steps 2, 3 and 4, your list will become clearer.
2) Make Sure You Have A Solid Date and Time
Before you get into planning the finer details, you need to take care of a major detail—what day is your shower and what time will it be held? Picking out a day that works for the guest of honour and the main guests is really important to making the day a success. Ask around to see what people’s plans are on the dates you’re thinking of, and narrow it down from there.
If your guest of honour is being surprised, make sure they’re available for whatever day you pick, or you’ll be having a realllly awkward party.
3) Set a Budget And Stick To It
Whether you have unlimited amounts of money, or you’re sticking to a very modest budget, it’s important to stick to your numbers. Knowing your numbers and dividing your costs between them will save you from surprises as you continue to plan and purchase items for the baby shower or party. Of course, there may be a few things that you neeeed to splurge on, but try to stick as close to your purposed budget as possible.
4) Select the RIGHT Venue
Now that you’ve picked a date, time, and have a potential guest list, you can decide what venue makes the most sense. The key to having a party or shower is having the right venue for it. If you’re having a few people, finding a venue becomes a little easier. You can do it at someone’s house, or at a restaurant, or at a small private hall.
If you have a lot of people on your purposed guest list, you need to make sure you find a venue that works for your maximum numbers. My sister’s baby shower had a total of around 60 guests. The important part, was to pick a venue that held the maximum amount of guests comfortably.
If you have to book your venue, be sure to do it early! Places can fill up fast depending on the time of year so you may have to call around for a few different venues if you are booking one.
5) Send out your invites
Before you send out invites, you’ll need to take your initial guest list from step #1 and finalize it! Once you have the names and emails/phone numbers/addresses of the guests you’ll invite, then you can get to creating your invitations.
You can go about this in two ways—the traditional route of handing out card invites/mailing out invites. Or you can go for a faster and eco-friendly method, online invites.
I used Paperless Post to send out the Baby Shower invites via email (this is not sponsored, I just really enjoy using Paperless Post). What’s great is that they have options for all types of invitations. There are pre-designed ones that you just need to fill in details for, or you can upload your own images/ designs. I designed the baby shower invite in Photoshop, then uploaded the JPEG into a blank Paperless Post card (see above). You can choose to make the card as fancy and realistic to opening a real card as you like, or you can keep it plain and simple.
Paperless Post will also let you upload an excel sheet of people’s names and email addresses, making it incredibly easy to input all your guest details.
The best part? Paperless Post will track people’s responses to the invitation and you can print out a sheet with all the guests’ names after!
6) Plan Out Your Time
Whether you’re hosting the baby shower or party at a home, restaurant or hall, it’s important to have a timeline before the day and during the day. Be sure to have a few key times mapped out like:
- What day your payments should be complete (if you’re paying for catering, cakes, a venue, etc.)
- What time you need to be there to set up and decorate
- What time your guests will be arriving to the home/venue and when you need to be out of the home/venue
- What you’ll be doing during the baby shower—here’s where you’ll want to plan out enough games to pass the time, but not too many that your guests get bored. The one pictured above is of a “Baby Menu – Guess the food game”
- When you can pick up your catering or special ordered cakes/desserts, or when it will be delivered to you
- When you can go out and make necessary purchases for decor, baby shower favours, and any little items you may need like tape for hanging items. And don’t forget things like plates, cups and cutlery for the food and drinks!
Speaking of catering…
7) Plan Your Catering
Food is an essential to any party. When planning food for a baby shower, keep in mind that the pregnant guest of honour would like to eat…so pick pregnancy-friendly foods in addition to other foods the rest of the guests will enjoy.
Admittedly, I did have some help I this department (my dad just really likes to make sure we have the right food catered). But the main thing is, you need enough food to feed all your guests, and ideally have a little bit left over. It’s always better to have a little extra than to be short food and not be able to accommodate.
If you don’t have a budget for a lot of catering, you can always asks a few family and friends to help out by bringing a few dishes or by doing a potluck.
8) Plan Your Décor
This is probably my favourite part of showers and parties. Planning party décor is a lot of fun and you can get as creative as you want. Before you start buying décor, make sure you set out a budget for your décor.
Using this budget, you can decide what décor you can buy and what you can save money on and DIY. For my sister’s shower, I did a mix of purchased décor and DIY décor. There were some obvious things that I couldn’t make myself—like balloons, tablecloths and frames, but there were a lot of items that I could, and did, make myself.
Here’s what I made:
- A DIY paper and ribbon banner
- A floral letter Z (for the baby’s name). The Z was a wooden letter from Michaels and the flowers are paper stickers.
- Fresh flower arrangements for the tables
- Confetti bits for the tables
9) Plan Special Little Touches
When you want to make a baby shower or party extra memorable, make sure you have special little touches for your day. Let’s say your guest of honour really enjoys a certain colour—try to add that colour into the room somewhere. For this shower, my sister had a few things she hinted at wanting…like a professionally decorated cake (the rosette cake in the photos is from Matameise Bakery) and party straws. And there there were a few special items I added in myself, like notebooks for filling in messages for Mom, Dad and Baby.
And don’t forget, if you’re playing games at the shower or party, make sure to have small prizes to give out to your winners.
10) Make Sure You End Beautifully
Your guests have come to make your day special and have likely bought a thoughtful present for the baby and mom-to-be. Make sure you’re sending them off with a big thank you and a small baby shower favour to say thanks. You can go as traditional as little chocolate or almonds in a box, or you can get a little more creative.
For my sister’s shower, went with Hershey’s Kisses as well as loose leaf, Earl Grey tea in a small tin that says, “Baby’s still brewing! Thanks for coming.”
So there are my top tips for planning a baby shower or a party. Have you ever hosted a baby shower? Let me know your thoughts down below! And don’t forget to check out my other lifestyle posts.
