BlogginMomma.com

I know, I know you aren’t supposed to throw your own but I participated to the point where it would have been easier to do it myself. That’s what I get for trying to please everyone. Lesson learned. But really in the end all that mattered was my family loves me enough to throw me a wonderful baby shower.
A lot of these suggestions are stuff that we did, heard about, etc. Feel free to add any you may have!

Ok here goes…

Invitation

1. If you are creative and have the time – make your own! Here are a few links to get you started ABC Invitation Baby Shoes Choo Choo Train
2. Want to save on postage? Make the invitation a postcard!
3. Declare if children and men are allowed to come on the invitation and address the envelopes accordingly
4. If you are registering at multiple places, be sure to include that too
5. Keep a list of people that are invited w/ phone numbers and mark them off as they RSVP.
6. Make people RSVP even if they aren’t coming. A good rule of thumb is to ask for their RSVP one week before the party. This will allow you time to finalize the amount of food, etc.
7. Don’t be afraid to try services like evite.com or email. Just think of the demographic that will be there and if they will be able to respond or if a paper invite is best for them.
8. Carry the theme through out the shower from the invitations to the decorations. You can even do what we did and based our invitations and theme off from the nursery theme!

Food/Menu

1. Pick a diverse menu that all of your guests will eat, including non-meat items! (Hope they’ll make extra so you can freeze it for after the baby is born)
2. Make sure to get a picture of the baby cake or cupcakes! Then invite everyone to dig in
3. Have a permanent marker handy for people to write their names on their cups. Waste not, want not afterall

Decorating/Getting Ready

1. Don’t hang streamers from your ceiling fans – the result is annoying, loud and a pain to get off
2. Finish cleaning the night before – never rely on having enough time the day of

Running Smoothly

1. Too many games can potentially annoy the guests. Don’t forget the prizes
2. Have a clearly defined start and end time. Allow plently of time for opening of gifts, gossiping, etc but don’t make it drag out either. It’s a very fine line to walk, but I have every confidence you can do it!
3. Have disposable cameras around so guests take plently of pictures, or if you have multiple digital cameras have some spare AA batteries around. Yea, we had trouble with ours dying half way through the gifts
4. A designated note taker will make sending Thank you cards much easier. We left space on the RSVP list to list out the gifts and it made it super easy for me to send thank you cards since the address was right there too!