Since planning my wedding, I have been obsessed with event/party planning. Pinterest didn’t blow up until after my wedding in 2011, so I didn’t have that to reference but I still had a ton of small, intricate, original details. The whole year of planning made me want to get in to the wedding planning business and I still hope someday I’ll be able to do it.
I’ve thrown quite a few parties since my wedding and am currently planning a New Year’s Eve party and my daughter’s first birthday party. (I started planning her party before I was off maternity leave … that’s how obsessed I am with that one.)
To-date, my favorite party I’ve planned was our gender reveal party. If you’re not familiar, it’s a semi-new concept in the world of baby-making. When you go to your sonogram to find out what you’re having, you ask the tech to scribble the gender down and put it in a sealed envelope. Then a few days later you find out the gender of your new baby together with all of your friends and family.
This party was totally Pinterest-inspired, with a few details thought up on my own.
I chose to go with a “Whoo will it be” theme, complete with pink and blue owls. I decided on the theme based on these invites I found on Etsy.
(TIP: A lot of graphic artists sell their designs on Etsy. You pay for the design, they send it to your email and then you print as you please. For less than $20 you can get an awesome design. I always send them to be printed at a professional printer and then glue the invite to coordinating card stock to add a more handmade/fancy feel)
I handmade all of the decorations: this included several pink/blue owls out of construction paper and a bunting banner that I hung above the dessert table.
The dessert table included pink/blue owl cupcakes, pink/blue Kool Aid (with mason jars and pink/blue stripped straws with straw flags), Hershey bars (with HE and SHE colored), Sour patch kids, homemade pink/blue thumbprints (by my mom) and pink/blue chocolate covered pretzels everyone got as a favor for coming.
(TIP: I made the pretzels using molds from Joann Fabrics. If I can do it, so you can you. They make molds for everything!)
Additionally, I asked everyone who was coming to wear pink or blue to indicate what they thought we were having. I also had everyone pose with a “team pink” or “team blue” sign when they got there. We had close to 50 people at the party and it was split down the middle! Here’s a pic of my adorable nieces casting their vote!
I opted for balloons in a box for the reveal. This took some planning with the balloon people (and a lot of explaining to the old ladies who didn’t quite understand at first.) A friend of mine had another friend use the same approach at her party a few weeks prior, so she gave me her reveal box. I had planned on making mine, but this one was adorable so I saved myself the time!
The day of the party we took the box to our local grocery store’s floral department. (We had spoken to them a few days prior so they knew what to expect). We gave them the box and our sealed envelope. The lovely workers then put 6 weighted and as many other un-weighted balloons that could fit inside. We roamed around the store until they paged us back to tell us it was ready.
(TIP: Tell your sonogram tech to wrap the paper with the gender in another piece of paper before putting it in the envelope. My husband actually saw through the envelope and knew what we were having THE DAY OF THE SONAGRAM but he kept it a secret from me for an entire week!)
After everyone arrived we congregated outside and ripped open the box. Here’s our (my) reaction:
Additional details included “Blue” Moon beer and “Pink” champagne punch (for those of us who weren’t pregnant). Handmade tissue poms hung throughout our garage/house and $1 store pink/blue table clothes to cover up the nasty garage ceiling (it made it look like a circus tent!) Plus, Christmas lights and streamers hung in the garage to give it a more cozy feeling. (We have a fabulous finished basement but used the garage for the food so there would be enough room for everyone).
Mrs. Waldo's World 