Celebrating Baby Janitz with a Gender Reveal

As soon-to-be new parents, Andy and I have been doing all that we can to celebrate the journey and new life that will be joining our family this coming fall. While the baby shower is typically thrown for the expectant mother or couple, we thought it would be fun to throw our own shindig to reveal the gender of our baby.

Leading up to the event, our hometown was still very much in the midst of COVID-19, so having something positive to focus on was not only great fun for Andy and I, but gave our family members something to look forward to (yes, hygge was intended).

To make things safe, we decided to keep the guest list very small (immediate family only) and hold the event outside to mitigate risk. We spaced tables accordingly and had hand sanitizer and Clorox wipes available for our guests to use — we weren’t going to let the Coronavirus put a damper on all of our fun!

If you’re thinking about planning your own gender reveal party, but don’t know where to start, check out some of my tips (and inspirational ideas!) below:

Pick a Theme

Every great party starts with a theme! We decided to go the traditional route of pink and blue — not so much because we subscribe to this ideology (we painted our nursery off-white) but because it was really easy to put together and was also a bright, fun color pallet, perfect for a summer get-together.

We did pink and blue cutlery, decorations and even coordinated our outfits to be pink and blue! Other popular themes include pirates and mermaids or ‘staches and lashes.

Plan Your Refreshments

For our backyard summer get-together, we kept it simple with pulled pork, coleslaw, chips (individually packaged because, ya know, COVID…) and cupcakes. In sticking with my theme, I used gel-based food coloring to dye my buttercream frosting pink and blue before piping it onto the cupcakes. If you decide to color frosting for this project or any other future baking endeavors, I highly recommend gel-based food coloring – it yields a brighter color and a little goes a long way!

If you’re not one for cooking or baking, you can also consider having a caterer provide your party food. A menu of pizza, salad and garlic knots from our local pizzeria was our second choice!

Get Crafty with the Decor

Before you know it, you’ll have little hands who will be learning how to craft and DIY in daycare and nursery school – you might as well start flexing those creative muscles now! I’ll admit that making the decorations for our party was probably my favorite part of preparation.

Here are a few simple ideas that can add a fun, DIY-flair to your event:

Gender Guess Pins

Using plain wooden clothespins and acrylic paint, paint clothespins for your guests to wear and display their guess. This is a great way to get your guests talking to one another about their guess and also serves as a fun memento for them to hold onto once the event is over.

Tissue Paper Flowers

I had so much fun making these! They are so cheap and simple to make and go a long way in adding color and festivity to your party. I tied them to chairs, tables and various ornaments around the yard. To watch my video tutorial on how to make tissue paper flowers, click here.

Themed Chocolate Bars

Make little sleeves for Hershey Bars and hand them out as party favors! Some people also use pink and blue markers to color in the letters but if I’m being honest, I didn’t have any luck with this approach – the marker kept rubbing off. That being said, I really loved how the sleeves came out and actually prefer the way they look!

Plan Your Big Reveal

There are so many creative ways to make your big announcement! Bake colored candies into your favorite cake, light up pink or blue string lights, throw darts at balloons filled with paint – the possibilities are endless! Andy and I opted for the fairly traditional confetti canon route because we loved how visible the reveal would be to our guests and thought it would be well-suited for our outdoor party. We weren’t disappointed!

I really loved these canons that we purchased on Amazon! They were well-labeled without being obvious to our guests and yielded a highly-visible amount of confetti. I also loved that the confetti is biodegradable. I will say that if you’re planning on having children involved with the canons, they may be a little hard to twist, but are definitely manageable for teens and adults.

Keep Your Guests Entertained

Aside from the big reveal, Andy and I also held a raffle. All guests were prompted to write down their gender guess and following the reveal we pulled a name from the correct guesses. For the prize I kept it simple with a couple of raffle tickets and the Hershey bars featured above.

We also thought it would be fun to do a photobooth. I bought a polaroid camera for our wedding guest book a couple of years ago and have had a lot of fun reusing it at family get-togethers and events! I set the camera out with some props I found online and encouraged the guests to take their photo home as a party favor. Tip: Order more film than you think you will need! You’re guests might get carried away with the snapshots and you wouldn’t want to run out mid-party.

Keep it True to You!

Whatever you decide to do for your gender reveal, remember that the most important thing is that it’s an enjoyable experience for you, the expectant parent! Don’t worry about doing things “perfectly” or stress if your crafts and ideas don’t look exactly like the images you saved on Pinterest. Make the experience unique to you and your partner and have fun with it!

Shoppable Links

Here are links to some of the products featured in this post!

Planning a Gender Reveal Party: Tips and Inspiration!

Celebrating Baby Janitz with a Gender Reveal

Pick a Theme

Plan Your Refreshments