Hosting a Cheap Baby Shower

CookieMonsta

My bestest friend in the world is due to give birth at the end of September and has asked me to throw a baby shower for her in August.

Has anyone else thrown a MSE baby shower?

Please help me with Money Saving :money: ideas for games, prizes, food, etc

I'm very excited :j but baby stuff can be so expensive!

Edit: there are going to be 10-15 guests and my budget is £30

murie

Tissue paper pom poms are 'in' at the moment-look on youtube for tutorials-easy and cheap decorations.

lika_86

If she asked you to throw her one then I hope she's paying!

Personally I find the idea of baby showers horrendous, very American and a bit too chicken counting for my liking. It's also essentially asking people to buy you presents, not very classy.

scotsh

I have never been to one but some games I have heard of include-
guess how many jelly babies are in the jar
ask guests to bring a baby picture of themselves and then see if you can work out who everyone is
if you google baby showers you will get some different ideas. hth

nw_mum

My sister was thrown one by her friends nearly two years ago. I didn't enjoy, sorry to say I think a ten guests maximum is ideal. They organised way too many games they had looked up on Internet :cool:

I helped my cousin's partner organise for her three years ago I made two dishes to share and so did his sisters we invited twelve people , which was hard as both families big, but they live far. So close family couldn't make the trip till the birth.

I found best game is , "piece of string" everyone cuts a piece and the winner cuts the correct piece that measures mum to be's bump

It helps if your friend has an aunt, sister or great family member to help you

Jessycat

I threw a surprise one for my best friend. She's been the first of our friendship group to have a baby and was having a bit of a rough time, so it cheered her up.

We tasted different flavours of baby food which I'd bought from Poundland and covered the labels with sticky labels so people had to guess the flavour. That was lots of fun.

lauzt1987

I attended a one a few months ago. There's a few games you can create for free. We made a celebrity baby name quiz. We also made another game 'finish mummy's sentence.' Basically everyone had a sheet with sentences such as 'my baby will be the best in the world at' 'the best thing about being pregnant is' etc etc. We all answered what we thought our friend would say and then all compared to her answers. Quite fun.

Ask everyone who's coming to bring something for a buffet. Ours was in the afternoon so we just had lots of cakes!

I got some pretty cheap decorations from ebay. Balloons, baby confetti, banners etc

springdreams

My sister and I are throwing a baby shower in 4 weeks time for our SIL who is expecting twins in August.

We have each made her a nappy cake, following the very informative information on the nappy cake and new nappy cake threads of this forum. These will be her gifts from us, but will also be used as decorations at the shower.

We have bought packs of baby bottles from the Pound shop and Wilkinsons in packs of 2 for £1 and have filled them with mini packs of Haribo - roughly 5 packs to a bottle. These will be the party favours and also used for decorative purposes.

We have also bought a spare set of bottles and filled one with loose sweets to be used as a game - guests are to guess how many sweets there are and the winner keeps the bottle as their prize. The mum to be will be using the other bottle for her drinks during the shower.

We are also using the idea of guessing the baby food for a game (jars of Heinz baby food range from 27p to 44p in Aldi), and guess the size of mum to be's bump using curling ribbon left over from making the nappy cakes.

We have made our own charts - one for each baby - so that guests can guess their birth weights. The winners will receive something from our stash of Boots sale goodies.

We asked each guest (19) to bring a plate of eats. In addition my sister and I will also be making platters of mini ham sandwiches and mini cheese sandwiches. 2 loaves of bread, a tub of marg, a pack of ham and a block of cheese will suffice for these.

My sister and I are providing the soft drinks. Tesco has 2L bottles of fizz on special at the moment at £1, so we have bought 6 bottles each, as we have allowed at least half a bottle of fizz per guest. You could buy the cheaper fizz. We have asked guests to bring their own alcohol if they wish to drink that instead of fizz.

We're getting helium filled "It's a boy" balloons from Asda, who are offering 3 for £5 filled in store.

And we bought a pack of 10 "It's a boy" blue balloons from Card Factory for 99p.

We have bought paper plates, napkins and paper cups in blue from Poundland.

Spendless

I've never been to one either and the only game I've heard of is using some cheap nappies/dolls nappies (or a cut up old white towel to resemble them) give one to each guest. Inside one of the nappies smear some mustard. The person who opens the 'dirty' nappy wins a prize.