Hosting a Perfect Baby Shower

Have you been nominated to throw a baby shower? First off, congratulations! Now that the novelty of the idea has worn off though, it's time to get down to business.

Planning a baby shower is easy when you break the event down into it's components. Baby showers - like bridal showers and bachelorette parties - are becoming open to new ideas, concepts, themes, games, and changes in etiquette.

Showers have become more common in the past few decades, as families have become smaller and each child gets more individual attention. Traditionally, baby showers are held at a home, restaurant or church. Baby shower themes can be as general as Noah 's Ark, teddy bears, or storks. Baby shower favors are a wonderful way to let guests remember the special celebration. You can even find some great deals at dollar stores!

Pre-printed invitations can be purchased at stationary stores, card shops, on the internet and can even be found at discount stores. If you are the creative type, you can make the invitations yourself. Before any invitations are sent out (or any phone calls or emails made or sent), be sure to run the guest list by the mother-to-be. Don't forget to include the father's side of the family!

Invitations are sent out by the organizers (the hostess) on behalf of the Mother. While paper invitations are often still used, there are services popping up on the internet that will either for free or a fee, send invitations to your list of invitees. Invitations should be sent 2-3 weeks prior to the shower, to ensure the guests have plenty of time to plan on attending, but also not too long that they forget.

After the invitations are sent out, it's a good idea to keep an R.S.V.P list. This will help you in planning for other things, such as favors, food and drink menu, and how many seats you should plan for.

Food doesn't have to be overboard. Finger foods and appetizers are perfect for baby showers. Make sure when you plan the shower, you don't plan it for a time that should require a full meal - for example, don't plan the shower at 6:00 (which is a prime dinner time) unless you're planning on serving the guests a full dinner.

Drinks should also be served, but they don't need to be too fancy either. Iced tea, lemonade, water, coffee and punch are all perfect for a baby shower. Pick 2 or 3 drinks to serve and call it good.

Baby shower favors are a great way to say thank you to your guests for coming. A great and cheap favor idea is little candies wrapped in cute mesh wrapping.

You may want to consider having games to play for your guests at a baby shower. Games allow for guests to enjoy themselves, as well as offering them a way to avoid awkward "stranger moments". Many of your guests may not know each other. By playing baby shower games, they can become acquainted with each other.

If you decide to play games, make sure you remember to get prizes for the winners. There is nothing worse than having everything planned out and perfect only to find out you forgot one minute detail!

Prizes don't have to be extravagant. Something little goes a long way. You can keep the prizes with the theme of the shower, or you can give out prizes to match the game you play. For example, if you play "Guess the Baby Bottle" (fill up a bottle full of small candies, such as M&M's or jelly beans and have the guests guess how may candies there are), the prize can be the baby bottle.

Below are some other quick games you could incorporate into the shower:

My Water Broke

Fill up ice cube trays with water and stick little plastic babies in each cube. Each guest gets a frozen baby and the one who's melts first and water "breaks" is the winner.

Guess the Picture

Have the guests each bring a picture of themselves as a baby. The guests then must guest who each picture is. This is a great one to play because it also serves as an ice breaker - it gets the guests to socialize with each other if they are complete strangers.

No matter how stressful it feels, just remember that the baby shower is for the mother-to-be. A baby shower is marking a day with a celebration of new life. She will appreciate it for many years to come, and ultimately that's what it's all about.

Traditionally this celebration is during the third trimester of pregnancy, but showers can also be held after the baby is born, as a homecoming celebration. A shower is generally only held for the first baby, but the modern view is that they can be held for subsequent babies as every baby's birth is a cause for celebration. It is absolutely appropriate to throw a shower in celebration of a second baby.

Hosting a baby shower can be a lot of work, but it can also be very rewarding after seeing how much joy it brings the new parents. It doesn't have to be too hard though. You can find great ways to throw an easy gathering, and keep the budget down.

For more baby shower planning ideas, you can visit http://www.getfreebabyshowergames.com/. You'll find a lot of unique and easy ideas for planning the perfect shower!