How to Combine Baby Shower and a Gender Reveal Together?

Gender reveal parties all but replaced baby showers in the past few years, but whoever said you can’t do both at the same time?

Your friends might be excited to attend one baby shower, but an additional gender reveal party (presumably not too long after the baby shower) won’t likely get as many attendees.

A gender reveal baby shower takes care of two tasks at once, and mitigates your spending. For a budget-friendly experience that doesn’t take up two separate days on the calendar, combining these can be an excellent idea.

What is the Difference Between a Gender Reveal and Baby Shower?

The main difference between a gender reveal party and a baby shower is the intent: one is to celebrate the expecting mother, one is to celebrate gender, whichever gender that may be. A baby shower is focused on supporting the expecting mom. A gender reveal can be part of it, or a separate event, but it’s generally a smaller affair.

That’s pretty basic, so let’s delve into some other concepts that really separate these two types of events.

• Presents: Typically, you don’t receive presents/gifts from a registry during a gender reveal party. These are just designed to reveal the gender around friends, family, and hopefully some food that you provide. These are designed to be atypical because there’s no party-like scene; they’re unique experiences that don’t always take place in a home or a rented hall.

• Organizers: While we try to distance ourselves and not plan the actual shower ourselves, there’s always some level of involvement by the parents. Sometimes the parents are even the ones who throw it, though tradition usually dictates that a family member or close friend throws the baby shower instead. A gender reveal party is almost exclusively organized by the soon-to-be parents.

• Timing: Baby showers are usually six to eight weeks before the expected date of delivery, but a gender reveal party typically happens very shortly after you’re able to discover the biological gender of your baby. The typical time to do this is around twenty weeks. The average time to know your baby’s biological gender is 18-21 weeks, around the five-month mark, and you typically don’t want to wait until the third trimester to have a gender reveal.

While gender reveals have been the go-to celebration for years now, it’s popularity is in decline.

The concept was more fun when it was new and we were seeing more unique ways for parents to reveal their baby’s biological gender, but it’s being seen more as a trend than a tradition.

Gender Reveal vs Baby Shower

You don’t have to choose, you can combine, but first, you need to consider a few things.

Do you feel like a gender reveal party would take away from the baby shower portion of the event?

The main reason people still host separate parties is because a baby shower can be more of an emotional event where you’re celebrating new life—regardless of biological gender—and surrounded by friends and family.

Gender reveal parties are more relaxed, and while they’re designed to be fun and adventurous, they don’t hit home the same way that a baby shower does.

Are you someone who loves to stick to a schedule? If that sounds like you, then you’re probably already excited at the thought of fulfilling two tasks in one go. There’s nothing wrong or shameful about being excited about efficiency, so if that would serve that need to be on time and have everything wrapped up nicely, then by all means, make it happen.

Do you already have children? When there’s a large gap of time between pregnancies, we revisit the idea of baby showers to usher in a new era.

Children don’t typically have anything to do at a baby shower except play with one another, but with a gender reveal party they’ll be able to partake in whatever creative method of delivering the news you’ve decided on. Get them involved and make the event fun and exciting for them as well.

Benefits of Combining Gender Reveals With Baby Showers

Combining both of these parties can provide some excellent, time-saving benefits for yourself and the guests involved. With a combined party, certain things are just easier.

1. Time-Saver

It’s not only less planning for you, but less time that your guests have to spend as well. Gender reveal parties are usually thrown around the five-month mark, while baby showers are roughly about six to ten weeks after that.

Those are two separate engagements, and after attending a gender reveal, your guests might not want to return for a separate engagement. After all, they’ve delivered the presents already, and they might just want to enjoy their weekend. You have to think about people taking the time to come to the event and be respectful of that.

2. Lower Budget/Expenses

Planning one party is pricey enough. Attendees don’t realize how much money and time you have to put into this, because some people get stuck in the mindset of buying a gift and imagining how many you’re going to receive during the festivities.

It gets expensive, but when you combine both of them, you effectively lower the total cost. You don’t have two sets of invitations, two cakes, or two hall rentals: it’s a money-saver all around.

Depending on how you plan, you could either save a hundred dollars by combining these events, or upwards of a thousand—it all depends on how grand you want them to be.

If you decide on a virtual event with WebBabyShower you can eliminate of the costs mentioned and easy make it a gender reveal!

3. Focusing on the Birth

Gender reveals are usually thrown during the second trimester. That’s when many women report feeling their best during pregnancies, but during a baby shower, you’re further along.

It’s a lot more physically demanding to set up for a party (growing humans takes up energy!).

Combining the parties takes less time than planning for each party separately. While this combined party will take place about six weeks before you’re expecting just like a normal baby shower would, it’s less effort in the second trimester with all the additional party setup time. You get to focus on the birth without an extra event in the middle of the way.

Drawbacks of Combining a Reveal and Baby Shower

While there are obvious benefits to combining the two events, not everyone will be on board. We want to discuss some of the negatives that might come out of this if you decide to go through with a combined event.

1. Some Guests Might Be Confused

Gender reveals are pretty new, and they typically don’t come with an expectation of gifts from the attendees. Everyone knows that when you go to a baby shower, you have to visit the gift registry and do what you can to get a present. It’s not always so clear with a combined event.

Your guests might be confused if they should bring a present or not, and let’s be honest: people are bad at asking questions even when they don’t understand something. You’ll have people shrugging saying “I thought it was just a gender reveal party” or that they “Didn’t know I had to bring anything.”

2. Gender Politics

Many people are choosing to skip gender reveals altogether because of the current climate of gender politics. We all have our own opinions, and the generally hostile environment where we discuss them isn’t something that we should welcome at a baby shower.

Many people identify differently than their biological sex, and as a result, gender reveal parties are like celebrating something that to them doesn’t even exist. It could spark stress during this event (remember a combined event is six weeks out from the predicted birth date) that a mother-to-be really doesn’t need in her life. It’s best to keep things simple and as stress-free as possible.

3. They’re Overdone

Many people have a general disdain for gender reveal parties, and including this on your invitations or mentioning that it’s a combined party might actually result in a lower turnout.

We’re all allowed to do what we want and celebrate gender if that’s what we really want to do, and if you proceed regardless, there’s nothing wrong with that. Just note that some people view gender reveal parties as frivolous and unnecessary, while a baby shower serves a purpose.

Baby showers give the parents an opportunity to receive essentials for their child, and to some extent, everyone realizes this and accepts it (which is why they come with a gift). Combining the event could shorten the guest list or be off-putting to some people. This might come as a blessing in disguise since you’ll know where people stand.

How to Combine a Baby Shower with a Gender Reveal

When mixing these events, there’s usually a 70/30 split: 70% devoted to the baby shower, and 30% for the gender reveal.

Gender reveal celebrations tend to be a focal point of the shower, but not the main attraction. This is how you combine them effectively.

• Send Out Single Invitations: When you send out invitations, don’t do a separate one for the gender reveal. It could confuse your guests. Instead, feature it in the body of your baby shower invitation as a focal point for the event. This way people know what is expected.

• Plan for a Longer Event: While there’s no specific length of time you should aim for when you plan either event, you also don’t want to take away from either of the festivities. Put a time range on your invitations so that your guests know what to expect.

• Reveal the Gender Midway: Gender reveals can be exciting, but they have to happen at the right point in the event. It’s best to do a gender reveal towards the middle of your baby shower before you sit down and accept gifts.

• Focus on One Thing at a Time: Don’t worry about cramming it all in at once. You should have a plan of what you want to achieve without the event taking too long, so make a list of when you want to do certain shower games, when you want to do the gender reveal, etc. It’s important to note that you might not be able to fit everything you want into one event, so be willing to cut a few things out (specific games, for example).

Think of it as one event with two parts. A baby shower will dominate most of the event, while the gender reveal will simply be a feature of it towards the end. Many gender reveals are often intricate and extensive or include a very grand display, but when combining these two events, think about your own sanity during planning.

Is it worth making a huge deal of the gender reveal, or will a cake/box of balloons do?

Yes, these are more simple ideas, but they could help you save time and money, Combining these events could be slightly more stressful than a one-off party, so cut yourself some slack and don’t make it too difficult or straining.

WebBabyShower make it easy to combine these events on the platform; with features such as a guest book, video and photo albums, games and more, planning will be a breeze!

Gender Reveal Baby Shower Ideas

There are plenty of cute ideas out there to reveal the baby’s gender without taking away from your baby shower. We’ve listed our top 3 favorites from totallypromotional.com below:

• Balloons in a box– Get a pretty gift box and fill it with helium balloons in either pink or blue. When it’s time, go ahead and release them.
• Gender reveal Puzzle – This get’s our approval because it works great for a virtual shower and gender reveal, a simple maze puzzle (similar to the ones you find on the back of children’s cereal boxes) you can give to guests that reveals the gender. They just need to follow the maze until they “win” and get to the pink or blue end of the maze.
• Color changing cups – These can easily be sent out to guests so this would also work virtually! Have everyone pour a cold beverage in them and it will turn pink or blue. You could make sure everyone does this at the same time on a video call to make things extra fun and to really get your guests involved.

Two for the Price of One

Combining your gender reveal party and baby shower handles multiple costs all wrapped up into one finite expense.

It’s easier to track, simpler to plan for, and less stressful for everyone involved in planning.

We offer fantastic customizable invitation options with an unlimited number of sends, open email tracking, gift registry pages and more.

Find out how you can save time with a combined event, and save money in the process with our monthly plans. WIth a seven-day money-back guarantee, we’re committed to being the best virtual baby shower experience you could ever hope for.