When people ask if the first half of pregnancy has gone by quickly, I am mixed on how to respond. The first few weeks felt long because all I wanted to do is shout from the rooftops our amazing news. Once family and friends were told the good news, it seems time went by quickly until the morning sickness hit. Every day was a battle with throwing up and feeling nauseous.
After morning sickness passed and I had energy, I took off on planning our gender reveal party. I had a blast planning our reveal party and want to share some tips I learned along the way. Gender reveal parties are a fairly new concept, but one question I had along the way was who hosts a gender reveal party? Usually, it is up to the parents-to-be to host the gender reveal party. This is your time as parents to rally everyone together and celebrate.
Why Have One?
I feel like I should put a quick disclaimer and say that, gender reveal parties are not for everyone and that is okay! Some people find it ridiculous to have an entire party for finding out the sex of the baby. If that is your opinion, you don’t need to go or host one.
A few things that led us to our decision to have the party:
Both sides of our family will be first time grandparents and aunts/uncles. We felt there was a very genuine interest to celebrate this milestone.
It’s a perfect opportunity for men and children to celebrate with you. Most baby showers will only have women attending. We have guy friends and family members who we knew would enjoy celebrating with us. A gender reveal party encourages everyone to get together.
Who to Invite
We invited our immediate family and close friends, about 25 people. For close friends and family who could not attend in person due to being far away, we made accommodations to Facetime with them. We decided not to invite aunts, uncles, and cousins mainly because it would involve an hour of travel for them and would’ve been more expensive for food and beverages.
When to Host Your Party
We celebrated 5 days after our 20-week ultrasound, on a Sunday. Sunday seemed to work well for people’s schedules. One thing I would suggest is possibly waiting a week or two after your ultrasound to plan your party. Luckily, our little girl (yes, there I spoiled it!), was VERY active during the ultrasound. It was pretty easy for the tech to see her lady parts. However, I did read online about some couples who experienced issues finding the sex and had to reschedule an appointment. To be on the safe side, you may want to wait a few more days than we did.
The Schedule of Events
Our party started at 2 p.m. We did this so we could avoid serving a full meal for our guests since a full meal was beyond our budget. We had plenty of treats and refreshments though for guests to enjoy. We waited until 3 to do the actual reveal. This way, people could mingle for an hour beforehand. I fear if we had done it right away at 2, people would take off right after. This would stink given I put a lot of energy and time into preparing the party and food! We also had a game midway through to break-up the visiting.
The Reveal
I purchased confetti cannons from this website. It came with 2 girl and 2 boy cannons. We had all blood relatives (parents and siblings), shoot off cannons with us. My brother-in-law (sister’s husband) and youngest sister’s boyfriend did not shoot off a canon. We did this not to be exclusive but more so because it would have meant buying one more pack, which was a little above our budget. Plus, we wanted some family available to film the event! If you are planning a reveal, I’d suggest either involving everyone or not involving anyone other than the two of you.
As I mentioned, we waited until the very end of the party to do the reveal. We only had a handful of people show up at the end. We understood but again, if you’re putting effort and money into planning a larger get-together, you may want to allow time to mingle either before or after. We were happy to have people hang out both before and after!
Hire a Photographer
We hired a photographer, which may sound a little over-the-top, but I am so glad we did! When you’re running around talking to friends and family, you don’t have time to take candids or remember to pose people. Also, with all the time and energy that went into decorating, it was nice to have someone to go around and take detailed shots of everything before the party started. I think it is special to have photos from this very special family moment.
Decorating Tips
Most couples choose a blue and pink theme. There are great ideas on Pinterest that are not just your traditional baby-blue and baby-pink. I enjoyed playing with the color scheme. We used a light mint and teal for the boy color and a muted pink for the girl. Don’t forget to add in some neutrals (gold, white, blacks, etc.)
I created our invite using InDesign and exported it as a PDF. It was much cheaper to go to Office Max to have them printed and cut vs. purchasing invites online. Once I had the invite down, I used the colors as a basis to plan the rest of the party decor.
I customized a lot of our decorations which in the long run was cheaper than buying bulk gender reveal party favors. However, it was more time-consuming. I highly recommend creating some of your own touches if you can! It is more personable and saves you money.
I created the backdrop by selecting three fabric colors from JOANN Fabrics. I cut long strands using a rotary cutter and then tied it to a rope. I purchased this backdrop from Amazon to help stabilize the backdrop.
I ordered my balloon bouquets through Etsy in order to better customize the colors we wanted for each side as well as the entry.
My mom and I selected paper from Hobby Lobby and gold letter stickers. This is what she used to create the boy or girl banner we used at the main table.
Creating the “team boy” and “team girl” signs was very easy! I found these cute cardboard onsie cutouts and JOANN Fabrics. I painted them pink and blue and then applied the raised letters.
Centerpieces do not need to cost an arm and a leg. I found simple $1 frames at the dollar store or Walmart and put our baby pictures inside. The ball jars were purchased from a thrift store and then painted. Finally, we purchased bulk carnations from our local grocery store and added some baby’s breath. We used chargers leftover from our wedding as a base. I recommend checking with your venue if they have something on hand. The church we used had chargers we could have used as well, free of charge.
We had a little fun with our candy jars. We added these fun little “nuts” and “no nut” signs. I found these adorable chalkboard easels at JOANN Fabrics. The chalkboard portion didn’t work great to write on, so I ended up painting over it. I used a fabric marker to write over the paint once it had dried.
Food Tips
Food was probably the trickiest part of planning. I wanted to avoid high prices from using a bakery, so my sisters and I ended up baking and making a lot of things on our own.
We made quite a few batches of rice crispies and then topped it with almond bark and sprinkles. The tricky part was the almond bark. I purchased some colored almond bark from JOANN Fabrics and needless to say, they did not work out well. We could not get it to melt no matter what method we tried. We ended up just going to the grocery store to purchase regular white almond bark and then just used food dye to get the color we wanted. In the end, it worked out fine but was a little more of a headache than I would have liked.
I ordered two dozen white plain cupcakes from a grocery store. This was a really nice cheap and easy method. I created my own little toppers to add some color. I simply cut and glued cardstock paper to a toothpick and added these adorable little bows that I found in the sticker aisle at Hobby Lobby.
Since we hosted the party in the middle of the afternoon, we did not provide a meal. We had a lot of treat options, but in the end, I think we could have got by with a third of what we planned. We ended up taking a lot of treats home.
There are a lot of amazing ideas out there for gender reveal parties. Although it is not everyone’s cup of tea, I suggest doing what is personable to you and your partner. If it feels right to have a party, do it! If you want to keep it small, you can do that too! Whatever you chose, I suggest making it personable and fun for you to plan. Add your own touches and enjoy celebrating this wonderful milestone in your pregnancy.