Among all of the ‘fun’ things that I have gotten to experience during this pandemic pregnancy, the lack of your traditional baby shower was a big one. Especially being a first baby, I think everyone imagines being celebrated with friends and family gathered all together, playing games, enjoying snacks, opening gifts, and the cute decorations. Since my family is mainly up in Seattle, as soon as I found out I was pregnant, I pictured a baby shower at my Mom’s house with friends and family by the lake – a beautiful summer gathering. This would of course involve travel for me, so I knew that it would need to be an earlier than normal shower. Once COVID hit, I assumed it would last for a month or two and then be a thought of the past. Boy was I wrong. Here we are in August, and I would not even think about hopping on a plane at this point. Needless to say, this idea was out the window.
Anyway, a few months back, my mom mentioned the idea of having a virtual shower. At first, I hated the idea. I thought it felt like a desperate ask for gifts, but she was pretty adamant about having a celebration of some sort however it had to look. If you know my mom, once she has an idea, she doesn’t let it go, so I began to research ideas online of fun things we could incorporate. Suddenly this idea didn’t sound so bad after all.
I wrote down a number of different ideas I had seen and liked to play off some family members and ultimately came up with the outline that I’ve included below. I also got lucky that my brother and his girlfriend had just attended a virtual baby shower so they were able to help tell us what worked well and suggestions to make it more inclusive and interactive for guests, which was a huge help!
Virtual Baby Shower Outline
- Arrival (wait on any stragglers) Make sure everyone has their beverage ready (see toast below). Explain key parts of Zoom for those who may be unfamiliar (chat box, mute, etc.)
- Welcome from Host
- Introductions – go around and un-mute/spotlight guests one at a time to say hello, how they know the parents-to-be. This way guests will know who others are.
- Toast (at end of introductions) go back to host to make toast. **In invitation, we recommended that everyone make a ‘MOM-osa’ to their liking (or another fun cocktail) so we could all toast together as if we were all in one place.
- Games
- Name that Tune (used as more of an ice breaker)
- Create playlist of songs either with baby in the title or about babies
- Play song from beginning
- Have guests type answer into chat box – whoever submits correct answer first gets a point
- DIY Diaper Challenge
- Ask each guest to find something in their house that can be used as a baby, a cloth diaper, and two things to hold the diaper in place. (can’t be a real baby, a person, or a baby doll, real diaper, pins, etc).
- Give guests 4 minutes to run around and find their objects and come back. Play fun song over Zoom while guests are on the hunt.
- Guests must then put their cloth diaper on their fake baby and hold it up to the camera. Again, going around and un-muting/spotlighting guests to share their baby.
- Award points for completing the task and creativity.
- Select categories for prizes – we selected best (most practical/solid), nice try (biggest fail), and most creative.
- When it came down to it, everyone’s turned out great so I didn’t want to pick a ‘bad’ one so I changed the last category to honorable mention instead of biggest fail
- Parents to be will select their favorites of each category and winners will get prizes (e-gift-card)
- Guess Who
- Compile a list of ‘who is more likely to…’ questions and have the couple hold up a prop for who they think will do this task more
- Examples: who will change more diapers, who will the baby look more like, who will spoil the baby more, etc.
- We also sent a Google Form to guests via email prior to the shower so they could answer who they think. Once the parents reveal their answer, host will share what the guests thought.
- Baby Guesses
- Also included on the Google Form are some guesses for baby: name, arrival date, height/weight, etc. Guest answers can be shared using word cloud for popular guesses
- Open Gifts & Bingo
- A bingo card was sent out via email for guests to print (can also create their own if they don’t have access to a printer). You fill in the boxes with gifts you think the parents-to-be will receive and cross them off as gifts are opened.
- Prizes will be awarded for first bingo and first blackout. This way guests have something to do while gifts are being opened
- Nursery Tour – show off the nursery
- Diaper Raffle
- We put this on the invitation as optional for anyone who wanted to send diapers or wipes.
- I will admit this part is a little bit trickier for a virtual shower because you can’t physically hand out raffle tickets as guests arrive with their diapers/wipes.
- This is for our grand prize – a larger Amazon gift card.
- We asked guests on the Google Form to tell us how many packs they sent, and I will also be able to see who purchased them directly off of the registry, but for anyone who ordered from elsewhere we will need to know in advance.
- This way we can put the names into a jar to draw for the prize!
- Advice for Parents
- Collected via Google Form – host will select a few to read off and send the remainder to the parents-to-be so they can read them all
- Thank You & Good Bye
In planning I had no idea how long this would actually take, but imagined it would be right around an hour or so. It turned out to go about an hour and 15 minutes or so, which seemed great – not too long or too short.
My mom and Aunt were the official hosts, but my brother quickly jumped in with his large personality to help run the show. I am so grateful for all of their help in making this such a special day in an unprecedented time.
This virtual shower was a HUGE success and I feel so lucky to have such great friends and family in my corner. Baby Stoops is already so loved (and very spoiled) and we cannot wait for her arrival. 😍
I didn’t really take any pictures unfortunately, though we did record the Zoom. Below is the little decorations I put behind where Mike and I were sitting.
Laugh Often – Rachel
Simply Stoops 