It's a GIRL!
/So a couple of weeks ago, we had the exciting opportunity to find out the gender of our baby! We debated over exactly HOW we wanted to find out, but decided in the end to throw a gender reveal party where everyone (including us!!) found out together. And we were overjoyed to learn that we are having a LITTLE GIRL!
So how did we do it?
We preordered a little cake from Kroger (for only 10.99 WHAT?), and told them that our ultrasound tech would be giving them a call with the baby's gender! They would then put the appropriate color on the inside of the cake. We would then cut the cake in the presence of family and friends and find out together.
The only down side of doing it this way is that we had to turn our heads for parts of the ultrasound. It was kind of a bummer while we were there, but after the party was over we decided it was totally worth it! Plus our tech saved tons of pictures to a DVD for us and printed them all out too.
For Emerson, our firstborn, we found out the gender AT the ultrasound place and threw a gender reveal party for everyone else later that week. This was still super fun, but not near as fun as being a part of the surprise in my opinion! Maybe I'll blog the details of that party later on this week ;)
Party Details
-We decided to do a dessert party in the late evening. Trice is a food guru, so he helped plan the dessert menu for the evening. We decided on cream puffs, brownies, flavored milk, marshmallows, coffee punch, fruit dip and of course the cake. I am super cheesy and love to label everything, so we named our food things like "Sugar Mommies," "Puff Daddies," "Gender Mallows," and of course "He/She Brownies (with or without nuts)." We provided strawberry milk for the "She" milk and whipped up some vanilla milk and dyed it blue for the "He" milk. I'll include pictures of everything below!
-We asked everyone to wear either blue or pink, depending on what their guess was... Although apparently nobody got that memo! Ha :)
-We also made cute little bows and bowties for everyone to wear for pictures.
-One super fun thing is to have a VOTE LOG . We took votes on Facebook and Instagram and also had our friends and families vote. We had 34 guesses for girl and 16 guesses for boy! I decided to be on TEAM PINK and got my nails painted pink and wore a pink shirt. Emerson and Trice guessed boy.
-Being that we live OUT OF TOWN from so much of our family, we set up iPhones with FaceTime and computers with Skype so that our family could be a part. We also videoed it so we could send it to friends, family and social media.
Budget
One thing that is a big deal for us in party planning is BUDGET. We had a budget of about 30 buckaroos or less for the entire evening, and I thought it came out super cute on a budget. Why buy a $50 cake when you can buy one for $11? I think sometimes in the era of Pinterest and multiple party planning blogs we can put such a pressure on ourselves to have this expensive, elaborate picture perfect party. But we did ours for CHEAP and it was so cute and so fun and so PICTURE PERFECT for us.
For $10.99 Kroger did a GREAT job, and they were so delighted to be a part of the experience! I am so glad we went with them instead of a baking company because for one, they could do it same day, and for two, PRICE! And it brightened their day to be a part of our fun party! It wasn't the BEST tasting cake I've had, but it served its purpose well :) And we had so many other yummies to go along with the cake anyway!
(If you are planning a gender reveal party of your own, be sure to keep in mind that many places require 24-hour advance notice of all the cake details. So you may have to have your gender reveal party a day after getting your ultrasound. This was one reason we went with Kroger.)
We made all the other desserts ourselves. This saves a ton of money in the long run!
We also made all the decorations by hand. My fabulous sisters-in-law and friend Danielle had a girls' night and helped make our bows and bowties and bunting banner.
I made all the food labels by hand, and all the decor we used were things from around the house.
Pictures
Here are some fun pictures from the evening. I will also post the video so that you can see just how much fun a gender reveal party is!
What a FUN FUN night! Thank you for letting me share all of our party details with you!! I hope you enjoyed the pictures and video :) Next on our to do list is PICKING OUT A NAME for baby girl!