A Gender-Neutral Baby Shower

Bonjour!

I recently had the pleasure and good fortune of seeing a small group of friends and family at my bébé shower. After two-plus years of COVID and feeling like I’ve been pregnant forever (okay, eight months), it was my first real party, and I was so excited and thankful to bring people together and celebrate.

Keeping all guests – not just me and the bébé – safe and healthy was paramount. Part of the party planning included a COVID protocol; we asked all attendees to have vaccines and a negative test and ran air purifiers in the event space.

Because L’Husband and I decided to wait to find out our baby’s sex (yes, it’s sex, not gender, though a “sex-reveal party” has a deliciously risqué ring to it, n’est pas?), I needed to pick a neutral but fun party theme.

Once again, my research showed me just how gendered and heteronormative our society still is – not unlike when I looked for l’inspiration for a nursery or baby clothes for either sex. Most ideas and merchandise related to babies and childrearing en général are divided along the boy/girl, blue/pink binary (le sigh). Merci, Big Maternity.

But no matter. My dear friend, Sarah, party planner extraordinaire, graciously opened her beautiful home to hostess the baby shower. (She really needs to rethink her day job as a residential mortgage loan underwriter!) Sarah embraced my gender-neutral vision and totally outdid herself with decorations, food, and games.

Les Decorations

For a spring baby shower with a bright and cheerful theme that was also gender neutral, I landed on honeybees – très mignon! My favorite color is yellow and I love flowers and honey, so it was a great fit.

Sarah found all sorts of cute honey and bee decorations and rounded out the look with flowers, candles, and other bee-themed accoutrements. She even found buttons for moi and les grand-mères to wear that said “Mommy to Bee” and “Grandma to Bee”!

Le Food

Part of the baby shower was an afternoon luncheon with punch, sandwiches, salads, cookies, and a honey tasting bar with biscuits (a particular favorite of this Southern maman-to-be!). Sarah arranged all of the food and did most of the cooking herself; I just showed up and ate!

Les grand-mères supplied the cookies for dessert. Part of traditional Greek celebrations is a cookie table, whether at a wedding, shower, or christening (le yum!). L’Husband and I had a Greek cookie table at our wedding reception in Chicago, lo these many years ago, so I thought it would be fun to have a small pastry assortment at the baby shower.

My maman, the nana to be, brought sugar cookies decorated like honeybees and white flowers. L’Husband’s mother, the yiayia to be, brought baklava and melamokarona. Needless to say, all were très délicieux!

Les Games

Not unlike her touch with the décor and menu, Sarah also came up with fun and easy baby shower games to delight and entertain the guests. The games could work for any type of baby shower and prizes were the flower arrangements.

Party game ideas:

• Baby word scramble
• Children’s book emoji Pictionary
• Baby A-to-Z word race
• Guess the number of honeycombs and lemon candies (adapt to your party theme)
• Baby sock hunt
• Pacifier hunt

Another fun activity to complement the games was a diaper duty motivation station. Guests wrote messages on newborn diapers to share encouragement with bleary new parents during a midnight diaper change.

Some gems:

• “We have to stop meeting like this!”
• “Good luck with this one…”
• “Poo Poo Platter”
• “Bottoms up!”

Merci beaucoup, Aunt Sarah!!

What celebrations are you looking forward to this year?

Merci for reading and please subscribe and share!

À votre santé,

Katie