How to Host a Virtual Baby Shower
A virtual baby shower is the safest way to honor a new mom in the Covid world. Yet hosting a virtual baby shower requires delicacy if you don’t want people to think you’re tacky or putting out a thinly-veiled request for gifts.
Remember, the purpose of a baby shower is to celebrate a joyous occasion and a new life. You can do this no matter where you and the other guests are located, and you don’t have to let social distancing stop you from having a lovely time.
Virtual Baby Shower Invitations
Make your guests feel special by starting with a pretty evite. Paperless Post has a number of invitations you can use. Yet sending a physical card can be a nice touch, reminding us that not every part of a virtual experience has to be low touch. After all, many of your guests might want to send gifts via snail mail.
Thank you notes should always be written on nice stationery and mailed via post. The flexibility that exists for invites doesn’t exist for thank yous.
Virtual Baby Shower Decorations
You may wish to use a Zoom background to simulate a themed decoration or create a background of your own by choosing a nice location to decorate inside your home. You might invite each of your attendees to create their own festive in-theme decorations so they can feel like they’re doing something special.
The host might want to encourage the guests to dress up, too!
Virtual Baby Shower Games
The best shower games keep everyone engaged! You might try using Zoom whiteboard to host a Pictionary game. You can create your own cards to make all the answers baby-themed, or you can play a more traditional game.
Jackbox Games are insanely popular right now. Only one person needs to own the game to play, and 8 people can play a game at once. Others can join in as audience members. There are trivia games, snarky humor games, and more. You won’t get baby-themed games here, but you’ll get a fun time.
Baby themed Hangman is another thing that would be fun to play on Zoom whiteboards.
You can also invest in a virtual murder mystery.
Sure, some of these games really aren’t traditional for baby showers, but how much were you looking forward to having your guests guess your measurements, or to sitting down for a game of “dirty diapers?”
Gift-Opening Etiquette
There are two schools of thought for how you should open your gifts at a virtual shower. The first says you should always open each of your gifts on camera, holding up each gift so everyone can see.
The other school of thought is that you can open your gifts privately, and leave the focus of the shower on spending time with the people who will be attending. This is probably the most sensitive and kindest way to go. You may have guests who are not financially able to send a gift.
One-on-One Baby Showers
The Chinese don’t schedule baby showers. They introduce the baby to family, friends, and members of the community on the 100th day after birth. You might choose to adopt a modified version of this tradition by scheduling one-on-one baby meetings
within your coronavirus “bubble,” or one-on-one 10-minute Zoom meetings to show off the baby and to catch up.
This can take a lot of pressure off of everyone and make people feel included without committing you to a full-on virtual baby shower.
However you do it, don’t despair. There will be plenty of opportunities to get together in person after a vaccine becomes available, and your baby’s bonds with the people in your life won’t be any weaker because you used the Internet to celebrate your baby’s arrival.
Come on down to Paper Plus for all of your virtual baby shower supplies. And, learn how we’re keeping our employees and customers safe during Covid-19.
