Social distancing putting a damper on your big day? A virtual baby shower is a great way to celebrate without ever leaving the comfort & safety of your living room.
There’s a lot to look forward to when you’re pregnant, but top of the list for a lot of people (besides the baby, obvi): the baby shower! Who doesn’t love a party thrown in their honor, right? With social distancing and quarantine orders in place all over the country, in-person shindigs are on the backburner indefinitely. Don’t worry - that doesn’t mean you have to cancel your shower. It just means you have to get creative and move your shower to the world wide web. Whether you’re taking on hosting duties for a friend or family member, or DIYing your own virtual shower, we’ve got some virtual baby shower ideas that will make it the best social distancing shower you could have imagined.
A virtual baby shower may be unusual, but oh mama, is it easy!
One of the best parts of throwing a virtual baby shower is how easy it is to plan. Sit back, put your swollen feet up, and fire up the ol’ laptop! Virtual meeting platforms are all the rage now, so pick one you are confident everyone will be able to use. We’re partial to a platform like Zoom or Google Hangouts, which allow for live video chat and even have session recording capabilities. Bonus points for using Zoom: you can actually create your own customized background to match your theme and then send it out to all your guests to use during the shower. Once you’ve picked your platform, you can use a service like Minted to Paperless Post to send out virtual baby shower invitations with the meeting code or clickable link to make it even easier.
There’s no limit to how creative you can get with your virtual baby shower.
Sure, you might be missing out on the amazing tablescapes and themed floral arrangements of a traditional shower. But you can still make it a memorable event, and you won’t even have to leave your house to do it. Consider a themed shower and ask attendees to coordinate their clothing, food, and choice of beverage. How amazing would a Pregnant in Pajamas shower be?! Everyone logs on in their favorite pj’s, noshes on their favorite BYO brunch food, and sips on MOMosas during the festivities (virgin for the guest of honor).
And don’t worry - you can definitely still play virtual baby shower games. Social distancing means no one is going to come around and steal your clothespin for crossing your legs, but you could show a jar of clothespins and have guests guess how many there are. Or, you can put together a basket of baby items, give everyone a good look, and have each guest write down how much they think everything cost.
You don’t even have to miss out on the “Oooohs” and “AWWWWs” of opening gifts in front of your guests.
Doing an online baby registry means guests can ship gifts directly to your home in advance of your virtual baby shower so you can open them during the event - most companies will even wrap the gift for a nominal fee (but no peeking!). Target and Amazon offer 2-day shipping on most registry purchases, so guests don’t even have to plan too far ahead to get their gift to you. Another option is for guests to open their gifts themselves during the virtual shower, before mailing them off to you. Don’t want to do the whole gift parade thing? Then don’t! It’s your shower and you can do what you want. But definitely take some time to thank everyone for their generosity and kindness at the end of the shower.
