Organising a Baby Shower For Expecting Mums

If you are organizing a Baby Shower Party for your pregnant friend or sister, most certainly you wish to make it as much fun and enjoyable. Planning such a party can sometimes be stressful, but in the end, it is all worth it. Before starting the actual planning, you should put together a planning checklist, in order to have all your ideas written down and remembered.

On top of your list should be creating the list of guests which are to attend the baby shower. Creating the guest list helps you approximate the budget which you will need for the party. The guest list should be finalized at least two months before the baby shower. Make sure each guest receives an invitation. In order to make a nice impression and "advertise" your shower, baby shower invitations are very important.

Make sure their aspect is interesting and that it matches your party theme. The location, the date and your phone number should be written on the invitations. It would be very nice and helpful to consider including a map to the location at which the baby shower is going to take place. Usually, invitations are sent about six weeks before the shower.

Don't forget to choose a date for the baby shower. It should be set in the weekend, on a Saturday or Sunday. In choosing the date for the party, you should take into consideration the baby's due date, as the shower must not take place too early or too late. Usually such parties are held one or two months before the baby is due to come to the world.

Determining the budget should be made early in the planning process. Based on it, you are going to choose the party decorations, the location, the menu, the entertainment elements and much more. Food, drinks and location are the biggest costs.

If there are a small number of guests, you can have the baby shower at your home or at the mother's home. If you do that, you will manage to save a great amount of the money and focus most of the budget on food and entertainment. But if you want to have the baby shower at a restaurant, you should begin the search for the perfect location very early.

For this, you should talk to the managers or owners; visit the locations and check to see if they have enough space to accommodate your guests. You should also check the food served in the chosen location, as you do not wish to have any surprises or bad reviews in the day of the event. Make sure to take into consideration the theme of the shower when you choose a location. Discuss the possibility of decorating the location in order to better suit the baby shower.

Decorations are the most fun elements of a baby shower. Make an adorable wreath made out of diapers and hang it on the front door or give it to the mom as a present. Balloons are indispensable at any type of party. Helium filled balloons shaped as baby-heads, animals or hearts can be tied to tables, chairs or toys.

Colourful streamers can be hung anywhere in the room. Tie large bows on the curtains, on the furniture, at the windows and doors or even put them on the table cloth. Serve drinks in an original manner, using baby bottles. You can also use baby bottles as flower or candy containers. Flowers can be put in wonderful arrangements, to freshen up the room and create a welcoming and natural atmosphere for the baby to come.

You can choose a theme for your baby shower, by colours, animals, cartoons and so on and so forth. A good theme would be baby books. Each participant is going to bring his or her favourite baby book. Books create wonderful conversation topics. Guests will share their childhood memories about the books and the future mother will receive a nice collection of books for the lithe son or daughter.

A cartoon-based theme baby shower would be the most fun! Guests can come wearing costumes of amusing cartoon characters and, of course, so would the mommy. Each guest can choose their favourite cartoon character they grew up with and bring the baby something with that character on it: a book, a picture, a toy, a plastic cup.

You can have cartoon decorations on the walls and all through the room, using pictures, cartoon character shaped balloons, table cloths, napkins and cushions. In the background, play some cartoon theme music. Guests can even amuse themselves by watching cartoons on a television. Everyone can play a theme-related game if mime: a participant imitates a cartoon characters while the others try to guess it.

Speaking of games, a great activity at a baby shower would be to play interactive games. Everyone lets their problems go, relaxes and has fun playing games. One fun game is naming as much baby items as possible. Each woman writes as many baby products as she can think of in three or five minutes: pacifier, baby bottle, teddy-bear, diaper, and blanket. It seems very easy, but in the last minutes each woman will rack their brains in order to find more. The one who names the most baby products gets a prize!

Another amusing game is placing the baby on the mother to be. This is the baby-shower version of Pin the Tail. Each guest to the party is blindfolded. They receive a baby made out of paper then they are asked to get closer to the mom and put the baby as close to the mother's tummy as possible. As you can see, you can have fun both organizing the baby shower as well as participating in it!