Our Virtual Baby Shower

Yesterday afternoon, Brentley and I hosted our baby shower over Zoom. We had a big turnout of approximately forty attendees (many of which were couples or families of two or more people!). To be honest, we weren’t sure what to expect since we’d never hosted a video call of this size, and personally didn’t know anyone who had yet. Overall, it was a great time and we were so happy to see so many of our favourite faces on our computer screen!

The Planning

The thought of hosting a virtual baby shower made me raise an eyebrow at first, and I was still determined to keep our original party that we’d scheduled for mid-June. But as days and weeks went by with no sign of social distancing being lifted (let alone for the gathering of over sixty guests we’d be expecting), a virtual baby shower became our only option.

We decided to move the date up to the end of May since we’ll be spending the majority of June and July with all the final baby preparations and didn’t want to add a social event to our list of to-dos. Because we were inviting a lot of people and didn’t want our shower to be limited to a forty-minute meeting with a basic Zoom account, I upgraded to a premium. We sent out our invitations via a Paperless Post flyer and included the baby registry we had set up on Babylist (highly recommend if you’re interested in items from several different retailers!).

Itinerary

There are only so many things you could do with a large group of people over a video call. We knew we wanted to host a few raffles for guests who sent us gifts from our registry, but we also wanted to play a few games to add more interactive fun to the meeting. The size of our party made game planning a challenge, but ultimately we decided that creating some fun quizzes online would do the trick.

I searched the internet high and low to find a quiz hosting platform that: 1) Was free, 2) Offered a multiple choice format, 3) Showed a leaderboard after each question and 4) Prevented tied results. I finally found myquiz.org, which met all the criteria. We hosted three different quizzes: “Mommy or Daddy” (questions about me and Brentley as babies and kids), “Match the Kids to their Parents” (matching famous TV/movie children to their on-screen parents) and “Baby Bautista Trivia” (questions about our pregnancy experience and plans for our baby boy).

Pros and Cons

For us, one of the biggest benefits of having a virtual baby shower vs. a normal, in-person one was we were able to invite everyone⁠—and by that, I mean both women and men. Our original shower was going to be a female-only event to avoid what would feel like a second wedding (with men, our total guest count would have been well over a hundred). And with no venue rental, catering or decorations needed, we not only saved a ton of money but we also saved ourselves from the stress of ensuring everything was perfect. All we had to do was tidy up the room we were hosting from and set up our Zoom station at our dining table in front of the window (good lighting was key!). We also made sure we looked decent for the meeting, which basically meant being freshly showered, styling our hair, doing my makeup and dressing in clothes outside of our signature quarantine sweats. We wanted to keep things casual, so Brentley wore a Frank And Oak t-shirt while I opted for a roomy babydoll dress from Kotn.

Like with any social event, it’s nearly impossible not to encounter a few hiccups along the way. Our virtual shower went quite smoothly for the most part, but if we had to change one thing it would’ve been shortening the meeting. We had it booked for two hours, and planned to alternate the quizzes and raffles, while having some casual conversation with guests in between. We didn’t expect the latter to be lacking (half of our guests were on mute almost the entire time, while the other half were engaged in overlapping conversations with each other).

We didn’t know what we were in for as we began planning a large Zoom party for the first time. In a sense we felt like guinea pigs in an experiment, but since we really had no one to turn to for advice and inspiration, that kind of gave us the freedom to do whatever we wanted. We also couldn’t have predicted the number of people who have shown their love and support by attending yesterday’s shower and/or sending gifts over the last few weeks, despite how unconventional our celebration was. We’re so humbled and truly have the best family and friends we could ever hope for.

Once our baby boy arrives, we’re crossing our fingers that we’ll be able to host some form of an in-person gathering to meet him. But in case quarantining is extended into the late summer or fall, we’ll at least have the experience from this baby shower to plan a virtual welcome party!