Planning the perfect baby shower!

I’ve SO been looking forward to writing this blog post! Last weekend It was my beautiful sisters baby shower! I had been planning this day since July so I was super excited for it to finally happen!

One of my favourite things to do is to plan events or parties because it brings out my creativity side! So now I have my own blog I want to share with you, how I created the perfect baby shower!

THE PLANNING

Find a venue- The baby shower was hosted at the Salix yurts in Wigginton based in York. An utterly stunning venue with real character and ambience. We chose this type of venue as it allowed for flexibility & freedom in terms of how we could decorate it & I knew that it wouldn’t need absolutely loads of décor because the interior itself creates a real ambience & country feel meaning we wouldn’t have to go mad on spending money on balloons and banners etc.

Invite people- Get a list of guests from the mummy to be, set up a facebook event and get them all invited! This saves costs massively on invites and postage costs and allows for a platform to regularly update the guests with information regarding the day.

Decide on a theme- This will probably wholey depend on the sex of the baby which you might not actually know at the time of the shower. Luckily, I knew my sister was having a little boy so not surprisingly I themed the day blue with a cosey, rustic country style feel.

Decide what will happen during the day- Whether this includes entertainment, games, maybe even speeches? WHO KNOWS! Its important to make sure you organise the content of the day so that there is some structure to it and guests don’t get bored and mummy to be doesn’t fall asleep lolzzz

BUY THE SHIT FOR IT! – so this is the part that always easier said than done because it all comes down to budget! Set yourself a budget so you know what you’re working with and plan décor and food choices accordingly. Always a good idea to split the costs with other family members who are willing to contribute. In our case we split the costs between myself, my mum (granny) and my sisters mother in law (granny).

So, here’s what we did….

THE DECOR

All the décor was blue/white to keep with the colour scheme of the day- all bought from home bargains, hobby craft & the range so really affordable prices! I think its really important to not splurge too much money in the area of décor because they are the type of things that will most probably be disposed of after the actual day. We opted for some baby themed balloons but also some more plain décor to balance it out a bit.

THE TABLES

The tables featured place names so that everyone knew where they were sitting. This were done totally DIY. Made the design via Microsoft word and then just printed onto small bits of folded card. Easy peasy. Each guest had their own drinking glass themed blue and these were also a bargain at £1 each on a 3 for 2 offer in hobby craft so worked out at such a good price!. Each guest also had their own quiz about mummy to be and baby predictions card to fill out for mummy to be which I thought was such a lovely idea and a nice keepsake for my sister to have!

The food & drink

Afternoon tea was our chosen cuisine for the day as it fit in really nicely with the venues country feel and also something really easy to achieve. We ordered the food from morrisons which provided the guests with a choice of sandwiches, scones & macaroons. This was really good value for money as we had a lot left over which we were able to take home and scoff all night long! YUM.

For drinks, we did tea and coffee to pair with the afternoon tea but also opted to created two different cocktails- one being blue to tie in with the colour scheme of the day.. I know.. im good. & the other was a pink one. I know that people reading this are probably thinking.. ‘’cocktails at a baby shower?!’’ erm, HELL YESSSSS, I’m all about that vibe and I deserve a damn drink after planning this day lolz. Jokes aside, I did realise it was a baby shower and the most important person there was of course mummy to be therefore we made sure we provided a soft drink option of pink lemonade which is my sisters favourite drink!

Here are the recipes for both of the cocktails :)

Gin Fizz Recipe – pink gin, prosecco & lemonade

Blue Lagoon Recipe – vodka, lemonade and blue Curacao

Now we all know, that there are many cake makers out there who create amazing baby shower cakes decorated to perfection, but it can be a little bit pricey! It can be a very short-lived expense considering it will all be eaten by the end of the day! Luckily my sister’s lovely mother in law (to be) is top dollar at baking and offered to make the cupcakes herself. This was a great way to be able to stick to budget & also a lovely way to give the shower a more personalised feel as it was family doing the baking which is something that my sister absolutely loved. For the cupcake toppers, they were bought off amazon for £10 each and they were simply placed on top of each cupcake into the icing! They went down an absolute treat and tasted so damn good!

THE GAMES

Everyone loves a good game at a baby shower right? So we decided to do three games in total as we wanted enough to create some fun and memories for my sister but not too many that it would become quite draining for the guests.

The first game we did was pin the dummy on the baby, which was a cute little ice breaker for the guests. Bought this game from pound stretcher for SO cheap.

The second game was ‘’guess the baby food’’. We basically put baby food into nappies to make it look like baby poop and then get the guests to try the food and guess what it was- Yummy?. Absolutely minging but really fun!

The last game was ‘’the cracker game’’. This is not a traditional baby shower game what so ever but very famous within my family and always a laugh. Usually you play this game with cream crackers but for the baby shower we played it with Farleys Rusks…. Now I had no idea what these were, apparently (so my mum says) they are very dry biscuits which you put with milk to give to your baby/toddler, so it only seemed right to use these so that the game had some type of relevance to the day lolzzz Turns out my mum was right and they were so freakin dry. Basically, the aim of the game is to be the first one to finish eating 2 crackers without a drink. Honestly if you haven’t played this game before, you need to because I really can’t give it the justice in deserves when I say its absolutely hilarious to watch and PROPER hard to play, your mouth gets deathly dry and you start spraying crumbs everywhere, it’s a hot mess but entertainment at its best!

So overall, we had a fabulous day. Lots of laugh’s, cake, cocktails and memories. My sister was showered with the most gorgeous gifts- this baby will literally have enough clothes for 3 outfit changes a day- DIVA BABY ALERT lolz and most of all, all her friends and family were in one place celebrating this fabulous milestone within her life, we are all so proud of her & cannot wait for him to arrive!

I can’t wait to meet you little man!

Auntie Zo x