Whether it’s your first pregnancy or your last, you always want your baby shower to be a joyous celebration of love and life. However, the time of tacky games with pacifiers and diapers has passed; instead of smearing your guests in baby food, you want to honor their presence in your new child’s life with a refined and stylish event everyone will enjoy.
It is easy to fall into old baby shower traditions, which is why pulling off a high-class baby celebration requires commitment and planning. Here are five steps to crafting a chic shower for the new life in your life.
1. Pick a Theme and Colors
Probably, every baby shower you’ve ever attended has been utterly suffuse with bright pastels — baby pink and baby blue prime among them — and guided by a juvenile theme, like “safari” or “princesses.” At typical showers, decorations tend to be stuffed animals or other children’s toys, with a bouquet or two thrown in for good measure. Even worse, some mothers-to-be find decorations made from baby products to be utterly adorable. Suffice it to say that these are not suitable for a high-class baby shower.
This isn’t to say that to have a sophisticated baby celebration you must select adult subjects, like burlesque. On the contrary, many child-related themes can work for upscale events, but the tired pastels and infantile decorations must go. Using more a more adult palette and expensive-looking ornaments, you can manipulate any childish topic into a grown-up atmosphere.
2. Consider the Time and Place
Most baby showers take place at home during brunch or lunch, when the sun is high in the sky and baby pastels absolutely pop. While this time and place may be comfortable, it doesn’t scream high class. Generally, the earlier an event is during the day, the less formal guests expect it to be, and hosting your shower in your own space makes you responsible for decorating and cleaning up, which is a monumental chore even for those not carrying around seven months of baby weight.
Alternatively, a nighttime event hosted at an upscale venue is automatically chic. You can easily find a place that offers just as much comfortable seating as your own living room while also providing a refined atmosphere perfect for an adult event.
3. Get a Caterer
While most adults appreciate a good sweet treat every now and again, a party that only offers candies and cupcakes is likely to leave most grown-up guests wanting more. Unfortunately, sweet eats are the typical fare for most baby showers, which is why so many baby showers lack sophistication.
Instead, you should hire a caterer to craft a menu for your shower, like Anoush in Glendale. Adult taste buds are usually more attracted to any of the other four tastes perceived by the human tongue — bitter, sour, salty, and savory — so rotating trays of hors d’oeuvres that aren’t filled with sugar is a must for elevating the style of your shower.
4. Avoid Clichés
As mentioned before, the baby shower has for the most part become synonymous with cheap, tactless activities and décor that only bring down the event’s tone and style. If you want your guests to remember your baby shower for its elegance and excitement rather than its silly games and prizes, be sure to avoid the following shower clichés at all costs:
- Music featuring the word “baby.”
- Sweet colorful snacks, like Jordon almonds.
- Diaper decorations, including diaper bikes and diaper cakes.
- Pets dressed in baby clothing.
- Baby food tasting.
5. Invite Men
For millennia, childbirth was a distinctly female endeavor, and only other women were expected to provide support to a pregnant woman. Thus, the standard 20th century baby shower was usually a female-bonding ritual. However, in the 21st century, dads are called upon more and more to be present from start to finish in their children’s lives, which means men and their male friends should be invited to the baby shower.
This might seem like a small and unimportant step, but the co-ed nature of the party will allow it to have a more adult ambiance, which is what a sophisticated shower host should aim for.