5 Tips for Organising a Quick & Easy Baby Shower on a Budget

I helped my friend organise a bit of a last minute baby shower this weekend for another friend who has frankly had a bit of a tough year. Not that we need much of an excuse to have a laugh and eat cake.

baby shower cake topper


 We organised pretty much the whole thing in under half an hour sitting in a cafe using two smartphones, spent hardly any money and had a thoroughly fabulous time on the day so I thought I'd share our tips for a fast, fun baby shower on a budget.

Invite Guests

We set up a private Facebook group and used our friend's scan picture as the header although a ready done header is available.

Obviously your guests need to be Facebook users to be able to add them. Most of ours were and we were able to invite the few that weren't, personally or via text/email.

There are other online invitation sites which use your email list to invite people - just click on the people you want to add to your event. I have used Evite in the past which has worked very well and even allows you to see who has seen their invitation but not replied yet.

Arrange Catering

As we are time and cash poor we asked guests to bring their favourite dessert. This resulted in a  vast and wonderful array of cakes including Brownies, cupcakes, large sponges and fresh baked scones.

scones

We ordered rice paper cup cake toppers and a large paper cake topper along with chairs covers, table cloths, table confetti and napkins from an online store.

We pooled our supplies of teapots, cake stands, cups and saucers and vintage plates and bought soft drinks and Pimms.

cups and saucers with baby shower confetti

Games

Amazon and Ebay came to our rescue again and we were able to order a few games for very little outlay. We had a game which asked what we had in our handbags with points for each item you could tick off. We also had a game where you were blindfolded and had to stick a dummy sticker on a paper baby's face then a slightly more cheeky game of stick the sperm to the egg.

My favourite game was a poster with scan pictures on - the back of the handbag game sheet had questions asking us to identify the baby part, gender or number of babies in each scan picture. Not easy but lots of fun!

Search "baby shower games" and pick the ones you fancy.

We also bought some cheap baby bottles and filled them with Pimms then ran a competition to see which guest could drain the bottle quickest. It sounds easy but actually is really difficult. It took me a while to get the hang of sucking then releasing the teat to let air in.

Gifts

You can register with stores if you want to be really organised. We discovered Mothercare operates a baby shower wish list but our mum-to-be was happy for guests to bring vouchers or personal gifts. She did end up with a lot of sleep suits and some duplicates however.

A couple of people made up gift baskets with toiletries, nappies, wipes and other essentials but this could be tricky if your mum-to-be has strong feelings about brands. If in doubt give cash or gift cards or include a gift receipt - Next offers these.

Ask the mum-to-be beforehand  if she's happy to open gifts in front of people or would prefer to do it privately at home. Some people hate public gift unwrapping although most guests like to see their (hopefully happy) reactions.

The Details

Decide beforehand what kind of event this will be. My friend was hosting at her house and didn't want a huge group or lots of small children running about so we specifically quite a small group and only invited certain VIP children including the baby's big sister to be. That meant of course the games and conversations had to be suitable for them to overhear/participate in.

We ordered "baby shower" balloons in pink, blue and white and sashes online for the mum-to-be and her daughter (Big Sister). You can get them for most relatives including Aunties and Nanny/Granny/Grandma.

baby shower balloons

To drink or not to drink? We offered tea and coffee and soft drinks and Pimms. This was not a big boozy event. If you want to offer alcohol make sure there are interesting non-alcoholic alternatives for the pregnant guests and drivers.

Some Shower invites include men but we decided to make ours girls only. We gave a two hour window from 3pm-5pm on Saturday afternoon allowing for the event to run over slightly. Everyone had gone by 5.45pm