Hosting a Baby Shower

One of my favorite things to do is host a party! A baby shower, bridal shower, birthday dinner…you name it. I love doing it all! I’m sharing some of my tips to party planning, and the details around my sister in law’s baby shower this past weekend!

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When hosting a party or event, there are a few key things to think about first. The venue, the amount of people you’ll be inviting and the theme. I love coming up with themes for various showers. After we found out that my sister in law was having a little girl, my mother in law and I started brainstorming themes and colors. We loved the idea of having light pink, gold, white and greenery. From there we made our vision come to life with fun details that created our own theme.

We decided to host the shower at a local restaurant on the water in Jupiter, Florida, which is where my husband is from, and where my in laws live. Sandpiper Cover Restaurant & Bar is a great spot that we have dined at before. It’s right on the marina with wonderful views. We loved that there were so many windows in the private dining area, so everyone could enjoy looking out over the water.

My mother in law, Laurie, is an AMAZING party planner as well. She threw me an incredible Lilly Pulitzer inspired Bridal Shower, and an adorable Elephant themed Baby Shower before Remy was born. We’ve never been able to host a party together, so this was a real treat! Since she lives near the restaurant, she handled some of the larger items like the menu, flowers and getting the cake. She worked with Stephanie Marion from Emme Events to help with some of the heavy lifting.

I usually start any party or event planning with creating a Pinterest Board. Pinterest is a great place to get ideas, and arrange your thoughts/vision. You can set your board to ‘secret’ if you are hosting an event for someone who uses Pinterest as well. You can also invite someone to be a collaborator, so that they can also add ideas to the board. This is where we found our inspiration for the flowers and the cake! We knew that we wanted a simple white cake with flowers & greenery, and the flowers to match.

Once you have a vision and/or a theme for the party, it’s time to start invitation shopping. Minted is my favorite place for invites! They have TONS of invites to choose from, always have sales, and you can easily put all of your addresses into a template, and upload it to have your envelopes addressed for you. It makes the invites look so nice, and hello, saves a ton of time addressing them yourself by hand! Another thing I love about Minted is their adorable stamps. You can find a stamp to match any theme. Just another nice touch, that saves you time later! Linking the invites that we used for the shower here.

There are a couple of trademarks to all of my events. I always have cookie favors from my favorite cookie lady! She is down in Florida, but she makes the BEST cookies, is so reasonable and will ship them individually wrapped anywhere. Nancy Duralia is her name. You can find her on Instagram @nancy_duralia! Or, you can email her at njduralia@gmail.com. Please let her know that I sent you!

The second thing I ALWAYS have are custom napkins. I’ve been using Rubi and Lib for years. You can easily shop them, or reach out to them for a custom design on Etsy. They are so sweet, and make such beautiful designs. I think that the custom napkins really go a long way. For this design I actually had them mimic the flowers from the invitation. In the past I’ve used monograms, event dates, pulled from the shower theme with a hot air balloon, etc. Please also let them know that I sent you!

Most of the items that we used at the shower: the games, the signs, the cookie tags, etc. were all purchased online and printed out at a local FedEx.

Lastly, another thing that I think is fun to have, at a baby shower especially, is a candy bar! You can get all of the candy off Amazon, and find different size jars and cylinders to put it all in. I love the dimension that a candy bar creates on a table with different size jars, and is a nice little treat for everyone to take home with them!

It was such a great event, and my sister in law was absolutely glowing!

Please reach out with any questions on vendors, where to find certain items, etc. Happy to help!

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Photos by Andrea Graeve