How We Threw a Chic Virtual Baby Shower

We couldn't believe it... but people were saying during and after....

This virtual baby shower was the most fun on Zoom I have had yet!

Hands down, best way to play baby shower games.. virtually!

Well, when my dear friend Georgiana was to have her baby shower in late April of 2020 we never imagined that we would all be in a stay home, stay safe mode. We had daydreamed of the warm sun on our friend Erna's gorgeous deck in Shelburne, Vermont. We Pinterested for months, we schemed, we themed and talked about all the must haves. We were going to craft our little hearts away and make it a boho backyard dream.

As you know...everything changed and it changed quickly in March! We really didn't know what was going to happen and as time went on we realized an in person party was not going to be possible. I was able to convince Georgiana that we could still make it fun and something to remember. By this time.. everyone had been in Zoom calls, Google Hangouts and FaceTime for weeks so we had to think of some really fun and interactive ways to make this virtual party different for everyone and especially make it special for Georgiana.

Photo Above: This is a capture of our opening slide in our Virtual Baby Shower PowerPoint template. Keep reading on how to get the template for your event!

So how did we get ready to move from in person to virtual in just 4 weeks? Here's a master list of prep work we did just to get organized before the party:

1.

Decided on an email invite platform to update guests that we were moving to virtual. (They had already received paper invites in the mail. And they were adorbs.)

2.

Talked about whether we would keep the same date and time. We ended up keeping it since everyone had already marked their calendars. Why not making it easy right?!

3.

Decided which virtual platform we would use. We landed on Zoom for a couple of reasons. First, we knew most people had started using Zoom recently to connect with friends and family. We had a wide range of guest ages to accommodate and felt it would be easiest to pull off technically. Second, we knew that there would be virtual games so the polling feature on Zoom was a perfect tool.

4.

We came up with a plan on how we would get everyone excited and oriented to how this was going to work. We knew a welcome email had to follow the email invites with the Zoom meeting details and include some key information. So we built a Welcome PowerPoint with an Agenda!

5.

We decided on games that could be prepped ahead of time. Georgiana had wanted to do some Baby MadLibs, Trivia about the couple and being a strong woman herself, a guessing game for guessing the photo of women in her and her partner's family. We also added the "Who's gonna Do It" game. The next step was figuring out how to get answers ahead of time so that the flow wasn't off in the virtual setting. I go into how we pulled this off below!

DETAILS & INSPIRATION

The Invites:

One really great thing about virtual parties... mostly everyone can come! There were friends and family that are from out of state that were not originally able to partake but because we shifted to virtual nearly everyone could attend! We decided to use Paperless Post for the email invites. It was a very similar look and feel from the original invite to keep right on theme!. It was easy to track the attendees, share her registry link and send reminders. Only downfall is there's a bit of a fee.

Original Invite Email Invite

Georgiana's Virtual Baby Shower Kits:

Georgiana is also one crafty lady so she hit the ground running making all kinds of goodies. She really wanted to be a huge part of the planning process and crafting all the little details. She is a super earth mama who wanted everything to be special for each guest. It started with homemade bath salts she magically whipped up. If they were a local person they were in these cute mason jars and if they were being shipped away she tied them up into cute bags.

If you are interested in the bath salt mixture let me know and maybe I can get G to give it up ;)

Sourcing local is very important to both Georgiana and her beau Mike. She made a point of finding local companies to add special touches. These gorgeous cookies were made by a local baker Patti Cakes. Every person received a flower and a onsie cookie! Not only were they delicious, they were so pretty.

You can find Patti Cakes on Instagram @patticakesvt.

The second fabulous local item was truly a special treat. Barr HIll Gin, a local distillery here in Vermont, in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic has switched their production to hand sanitizer. We were all fortunate to also receive one of these adorable bears in our bags!

Please check them out on Instagram @barrhillgin

Now this wouldn't be Vermont if there weren't CBD gummies in our baby shower gift bags right?! lol. And while this virtual baby shower seems easy peasy, I have to admit I was a bit nervous the morning of so I made sure to sneak into my gift bag to grab a couple that morning!

Each person had 6 little gummies ready for whenever they needed them. It didn't sound like the virtual shower stressed them out too much so that's great!

The full baby shower kit included: A mini bottle of champagne with a customer sticker, 2 custom made cookies, CBD gummy pack, handmade bath salts, chocolates and of course a paddle with Mom's initial and Dad's initial on the other side to the play the game "Who's gonna Do It".

Another special touch that Georgiana really wanted to do for some of her closest girlfriends locally was to drop off handmade flower crowns to wear during the call. She worked tirelessly on them for each person! She made a total of 6 flower crowns that were dropped with the kits the night before.

Here's the beautiful boho baby mama below glowing in her flower crown on the morning of the shower.

The Games & Game Prep

In order to pull off the games we had to do a bit of work ahead of time! Georgiana pulled together a Google Form link to help capture the trivia questions and the MadLibs nouns, adjectives and verbs. This was simply a fill in form that was sent in our prep email asking the guests to fill out. We gave them a due date so that we had time to sort through the answers and find the best of! Essentially, we didn't want people sitting around on a Zoom call filling in MadLibs and then having to read all 30. So this is how we decided to give game prizes away! Whoever was closest to the most correct on trivia one a prize. Then we present the polls in Zoom so people could vote. For MadLibs we picked the top 6 funniest that came through. Set the poll for the question, Which MadLibs did you think was the funniest? #1, #2, #3... and so on!

One of the big hits of the entire party was when we used our paddles to play the "Who's Gonna Do it" game. It was really fun and interactive. Check out the pic of one of the Zoom screens during the game!

Here are a couple screen shots to share how we prepped the games in the email what the guests saw when they clicked the link to the Google form!

We included a our welcome PowerPoint and flower Images for a virtual background if anyone wanted to get fancy in their Zoom theme! Here are a few slide examples of our PowerPoint we sent to everyone with the Agenda and Zoom Tips and Tricks!

Would you like access to the full PPT for your event?

Or do you want help hosting your next virtual baby shower?

Send me a note!

You can also find me on Instagram @livingmyhostlife