Since learning the gender of your baby is one of the most important milestones, you’ll want to throw a perfect gender reveal party. You’ve wavered between wanting to know and not wanting to know for months, and finally decided to reveal the secret. Now that you know, how do you share this exciting news with your closest friends and family? Gender reveal parties have been growing in popularity, and are one of the hottest ways to celebrate your growing family. Let the Baby Shower favor experts help you with the most complete guide to planning the best event.

Step One: Choose a theme.

There are so many ideas out there, it’s hard to go wrong. Here are some of our favorites that might spark your imagination:

1. Fill your party with colors! Boy-style blue and girly pink are obvious gender picks, but what about mixing it up? Nothing says “modern” like choosing to announce your baby girl with a beautiful mint green party theme, for example.

1. Animal Party! What is a cuter way to introduce your new baby girl than with tiger decorations? Or a zebra to announce that you’re having a baby boy?

1. Celebrity Party! Announce your baby’s gender red carpet style. What better way to celebrate your upcoming star?

1. Super Heros! As soon as your friends walk into your Wonder Woman themed party, there will be no doubt what kind of blessing you are expecting. And what better hero to welcome your baby boy than Ironman?

1. Under the sea! Celebrate your merbaby with adorable ocean decorations!

Step Two: Send out the invitations.

It’s time for the big question: Who are you going to invite? You want your gender reveal party to be an intimate event. This is not your wedding, no one is forcing your to invite your great aunt’s boyfriend’s kid. But still, you don’t want to create drama in your friend group. Here are some tips to hosting a guilt-free party.

1. Decide on how many people you want to invite, and don’t increase the number. Creating a set number of invitations can help you identify the people you really want to be there, versus the people you think you have to invite. It’s also a great excuse: “Oh Karen, I would have loved for you to be there, but being pregnant is exhausting, I could really only handle eight people, you know?”
2. Family comes first. Pick which family members you want to be there before thinking about your friends. Your friends will get it if you can’t invite them, but your mother-in-law probably won’t be as understanding.
3. Who knows who? If you are planning an intimate gender reveal party, remember that it could be awkward to invite someone that doesn’t know the other people at the event very well. To keep the vibe, try to invite a group of people who are all connected in some way.

Step Three: Entertainment for your party.

So the party has begun, everyone has arrived, and are admiring your beautiful themed decorations. How are you going to keep everyone entertained? You can’t pull out the wine like you used to, so now what? Here are ten of our favorite baby shower games that anyone can play.

1)Blind-folded Diaper Relay

Level of difficulty: EASY

Materials: Baby dolls, Diapers, blindfolds

How to Play:

• Create two teams and line up on two sides of a table.
• One person from each team starts with a baby doll and a diaper.
• Each person has to put the diaper on the baby doll and take it off as quickly as possible while blindfolded.
• The team that finishes first, WINS!

2) Egg roulette

Level of difficulty: MESSY

Materials: Hard Boiled Eggs, One Raw Egg

How to Play:

• This game is probably best to play in the summer and outside.
• Buy one egg for each person that will be at the party.
• Boil all except one.
• Dye half of the eggs blue, and half of the eggs pink.
• Dye the egg that is raw blue if you are expecting a boy, and pink if you are expecting a girl.
• Each person picks an egg and cracks it over their head/ over the head of the mother to be (both are funny)
• Keep going until the raw egg is revealed, along with the gender of your baby!

3) Feed the Baby

Level of difficulty: Medium

Materials: Apple Sauce, Bibs, Blindfolds, Stopwatch

How to Play:

• Everyone pairs up, one person puts on a bib, the other person puts on a blindfold.
• The person with the blindfold tries to feed their partner applesauce as fast as possible.
• Winner wins
• BONUS: prank one of the couples by putting hot sauce in their apple sauce!

4) Baby Cakes

Level of difficulty: Boss

Materials: Freshly baked cupcakes without icing, small plastic baby, Icing, Sprinkles, M&Ms… any other cupcake decorating materials you can think of

How to Play:

Before baking the cupcakes, put the plastic baby inside one of them

1$ to enter the baby cake competition: all entry money goes into the jackpot

Have the party people decorate the cupcakes

The most beautiful cupcake wins the jackpot!

Tell the guests that one cupcake has a hidden baby inside, and whoever finds the baby in their cupcake will be the next one to have a baby!

5) Guess the Mother’s Measurements!

Level of difficulty: Extreme

Materials: String, Scissors, Balls of Steel

How to Play:

• Tell the guests to cut a piece of string they think will fit around the honoree’s belly perfectly
• Whoever cuts the most accurate string wins
• Whoever cuts the shortest piece of string loves the momma to be the most

6) Bobbing for Nipples

Level of difficulty: Hard

Materials: Baby Bottle Nipples, Buckets of Water

How to Play:

• Set up large buckets of water and put the baby bottle nipples in
• Each contestant gets down on hands and knees and tries to collect as many nipples as they can with their mouths for 2 minutes
• The person with the most nipples wins!

7) Which Baby is Which?

Level of difficulty: Advanced

Materials: Photos of your friends and family as babies, some sort of prize

How to Play:

• Have everyone bring a photo of themselves as a baby
• Display all the photos on a board, and number them
• Have each guest write which picture corresponds to each guest
• The one with the most correct wins a prize

8) Diaper Fashion Show

Level of difficulty: Easy

Materials: Roll of Toilet Paper

How to Play:

• Divide your party into teams
• Give each team a roll of toilet paper
• Each team has 5 minutes to dress one member up in a make-shift diaper made of toilet paper
• At the end of the 5 minutes, the “diaper models” parade down the catwalk to show off what each team has created

9) Onsie Decorating

Level of difficulty: Moderate

Materials: blank baby onesies, craft materials (glitter, paint, markers, fluff balls)

How to Play:

• Give each party goer a baby onesie to decorate.
• That’s it! Easy peasy.

10) Pin the Diaper on the Baby

Level of difficulty: Easy

Materials: print out of a baby, tape, cut out paper diapers, pins (or double sided tape), blindfolds

How to Play:

• Print out a poster with a picture of a baby and tape it to the wall
• Cut out pieces of paper in the shape of diapers and stick a pin into it OR a piece of double sided tape on the back (depending on if you want to stick the pins into your walls or not)
• Each participant puts on a blindfold. Turn them around 3 times and have them try to stick the diaper in the right place on the picture of the baby
• The one who is the closest to pinning it in the right place wins!

Step Four: Party Favors for everyone!

As you might have noticed, many of the games above involve prizes. You’ll probably want to give your guests party favors- something to commemorate this huge step in your life. We’ve put together a short list: You can combine them all in a gift bag or basket if you like, or just choose one or two depending on your budget/ timeline.

1. Custom Baby shower Coolies. You can print them with any design to fit your party theme! Even though the momma to be is taking a break from drinking beers, your friends will surely enjoy keeping their beer cold with can Coolies.

1. Personal Neoprene Pint Glass Coolies. A cute baby shower themed pint glasses are a great gift for anyone. These are a super thoughtful gift that your friends will like, no matter who they are.

1. Slim can Coolies. Did you know that these are not only awesome for redbull and limaritas, they also function perfectly for keeping baby bottles warm. If you order these for your baby shower favors, make sure not to give them all away! Keep some for yourself, and your baby will thank you later.

1. Personalized plastic cups. If any of your friends have their own children, they will love this gift. Plastic cups are kid-proof and extremely useful.

1. Baby Shower Patches. Maybe you’re a military family, or were involved in Boy/Girl Scouts. Commemorative patches are a cute way to share your happy news with friends and family

The party favors above are all available to order through coolienation.com! All you have to do is click on the image above each idea to get started with a free art proof. It’s so easy!

If you want more ideas for your baby shower, you check out our pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/thecoolienation.

Thanks for reading, and good luck with your gender reveal party!

Get your free art proof for your baby shower favors by clicking here: https://www.coolienation.com/gender-reveal-koozies/