Baby Shower Tips

I've hosted lots of baby showers

but never was the guest of honor until recently.

I was so fortunate to have great friends/family throw my showers

and, while each one was different, I LOVED them all!!

After having several showers,

I feel like I came up with a great list of tips for future shower hosts/moms-to-be.

All tips are meant to make life easier on new moms and hosts.

1. Always include a (gift) receipt - I loved all the gifts that I got but I got some duplicates (one outfit was so popular that I got 5 of them!!) and you don't get treated like a thief at stores when you have a receipt.  Target and Wal-Mart will only let you return 3 times without receipts before they lock you out of their system for 6 months.  Luckily, you could split up the returns between you and your hubby or combine them to be returned all at once.  Babies R Us is much friendly with returns if you have a registry with them. 

2. Do your mom-to-be a GIGANTIC favor and tape the receipt to the actual gift.  It was tricky to keep gift receipts organized when they were included in the cards.  Most stores don't list the item on the gift receipt.  It's just a bar code that is impossible to match to the items.  I had a few people think of this idea and it was genius!  I also had some friends write in their cards where their gifts were from just in case they needed to be exchanged.

3. RSVP to showers when you are invited.  I could go on and on about this one but it's REALLY helpful to the host(s) and helps them to budget/plan appropriately for their event.  Even RSVPing a maybe is better than not RSVPing at all.

4. Have all the guests fill out their addresses on a thank you card envelope because it will save the mom-to-be lots of time.  It's tricky to make sure that everyone participates but if you pass it out at the beginning of the event and then refer back to it you should be able to include everyone.

5. I am often guilty of not buying items off of registries.  However, it's really helpful when you are trying to set up shop for your first baby.  I appreciated all of my gifts but it was nice to get lots of the basics from people who shopped off of my registry.

6. Buy larger sized clothing for the baby.  Of course, every baby needs newborn things but I loved getting things for months or even a year in advance.  It's nice to spread out the wealth of all the shower goodies for the whole first year.  I had to do a bit of exchanging because 0-3 month clothing was the HOT size to buy.  I loved many of the outfits so I just bought bigger sizes.

7. Pay attention to sizing and how old the baby will be during certain seasons.  I got several outfits that I LOVED but they were summer outfits for 6-9 months.  Olive will be sporting winter gear at the time of year so I had to do some exchanging.

8. Make your mom-to-be eat first and visit later.  It was so hard for me to do this and at several of my showers, I ended up shoving food down or eating after the shower.  It's a tricky balance when you want to greet all of your guests and be social during the shower.  You'll have to insist that they go through the food line first because the last thing you want is a grumpy/hungry pregnant lady :)

9. If you ship your gift, because they live out of town, be sure to write that in a card to give to the mom-to-be at the shower.  Many stores just include a packing receipt and don't let the recipient know who sent the gift.  Plus, she'll want to recognize you at the shower for giving said gift.

10. Offer the mom-to-be drinks during the shower, take lots of pictures for her and give her a cd of pictures from the event and hand her the gifts to open during that portion of the shower.  Fortunately, I was very pampered and REALLY appreciated it. It's funny how your lap shrinks so that it's tricky to open gifts.  You are always HOT so it's nice to be waited on and it's hard to think of all these things in the moment.