One of the most exciting aspects of getting ready for your new bundle of joy to arrive is hosting a baby shower to share the fun with friends and family. Unfortunately, due to the coronavirus pandemic, gathering in person for a traditional baby shower isn’t the best idea. Instead, many are turning towards ‘virtual baby showers’ or hosting baby showers through the mail. That’s what we did, and here are a few things we learned along the way.
Virtual Baby Shower or Offline?
One option is to host a traditional baby shower, but instead do it virtually through Zoom. If you’re the type of person or have friends and family who would enjoy this type of celebration, including opening gifts virtually or playing games over video, go right ahead!
Another option is to do everything offline instead. Many expecting parents have different circles of friends and family, which usually leads to multiple baby showers. When we were considering multiple virtual baby showers, we decided going the offline route would be easier for everyone.
Getting The Word Out
It’s generally considered proper etiquette for someone outside the expecting parents to “host” the baby shower on behalf of the parents-to-be. If you have friends or family who have expressed interest in hosting a shower for you, go ahead and let them know your preference beforehand so that they can communicate the correct details to everyone.
Traditionally, the host would send a baby shower invitation through the mail, but more folks are leaning towards digital options these days. For ours, our best friend sent out an email invitation, and another hosted a Facebook invite with the details. As we thought of additional friends to include, this worked well because it made it easier for our hosts to send additional invitations quickly.
Gifts Through The Mail
Typical baby showers include fun and games and share a moment where expecting parents open gifts from friends and family who share their love. If you choose to go the gift route, you’ll want to make sure your baby registry has your updated mailing address, so any gifts sent to you will arrive on time and where you expect them.
When Should Gifts Arrive?
If you’re going entirely virtual for your baby shower, you’ll want to make sure your invite includes an “arrival” date for gifts that is several days before your Zoom call. It’s not a very fun virtual shower if everyone is excited for you to open your presents, and nothing has arrived yet.
Conversely, if you’re choosing to go completely offline with your shower and only receive gifts through the mail, you’ll want to do things a little differently. Since with this option, there’s no virtual shower where everyone is gathering together; there’s no “date” that your shower centers around. In this case, you’ll want to include a conclusion date on the invite to give clarity. In this case, we recommend sending invites out with a conclusion date no more than three weeks away, if possible. That’s a comfortable amount of time for folks to review your registry and choose a gift, but not too far away so that folks forget about it.
Track Your Gifts!
One of the most exciting aspects of a baby shower through the mail is opening your door and finding different surprise gifts from your friends. Along with that, it’s incredibly important to keep track of all the gifts you receive and their packing slips and invoices too! We used a simple plastic box to keep every single packing slip, which made it much easier to track gifts in case we needed to do any exchanges. Plus, many of them also had mailing addresses for our friends, which was useful when we sent thank you cards. (But, you’ll want to double-check those addresses, to be safe!)
Additionally, we found it helpful to use a spreadsheet to keep track of each gift, the giver, their address, and a checkbox if the gift arrived, and another for when we sent a thank you note.
Keep Your Registry in Sync
A baby registry can make your virtual baby shower experience almost seamless. But, inevitably, folks will sometimes go rogue from the registry or commit to specific gifts but choose something else later, leaving your registry out of sync. With Babylist, we could get notifications when someone reserved a gift, and we’d mark that on the spreadsheet. But if something else happens and the friend chooses a different gift, it’s helpful to track that and ensure your registry stays in sync.
Don’t Forget to Send Thank You Notes or a Personal Touch
After your ‘shower date’ has passed, don’t forget to follow up with a personal touch and a thank you note. Again, our tracking spreadsheet helped make this a breeze as we could mark off each thank you note we sent.
If you’re not doing a virtual shower and instead opting to do a shower through the mail, consider a personal touch as well. Since we went offline for our shower, we plan to do something more personal and individual through Zoom after the baby comes along.
And there you have it! In the age of coronavirus, you can still enjoy a baby shower and all the support and love from your friends and family.
