Throwing A Virtual Shower

My brother's wife, Lindsey, is due with their first baby on May 1.  They live in Louisiana, we live in North Carolina, her parents live in Alabama, a lot of her family lives in Arkansas, my family is in Florida.... there was just no feasible way to get people together for a shower.  But we wanted so badly to spoil them and their new little one that I was determined to find a way!  

The waters were a little unchartered.  I looked for a while to see if anyone had a solid set of directions on how to throw a virtual shower but it was a lot of hodge podge and there was nothing concrete.  So, I took some of the suggestions and then ran with my own ideas.  

I decided on a Dr. Seuss theme because that's what they've done for his nursery.  Lindsey is an avid reader and it all just seemed very appropriate.  I could have sent out digital invitations, but I wanted it to feel a little more real so I had the invitations printed and sent them out to everyone.  Here's the final copy of the invitation:

There was a lot of info on how to do blog showers, but I wanted people to be able to participate so I set up a Facebook group and had all of the people invited to the shower added.  We kept John and Lindsey out of the group until the day of the shower.  This way, I could update everyone else on the progress of things without ruining the surprise for them.  Which I did!  I posted pictures as decorations were made, let them know where I was ordering things from, etc.

We played a couple of games.  The first was a diaper guess.  I made J & L a diaper cake as part of the shower decor and posted this picture on the group page asking people to guess how many diapers it took to make.  The guess closest to, without going over, the # won the game.  I kept the game open for about a week and closed it the day of the shower and announced the winner at the end of the festivities.  

The second game we played was a onesie design game.  People were tasked with coming up with cute phrases to put on a onesie for the baby.  We had almost 20 entries!  People voted for the one(s) that they liked most and when the votes were tallied, I pulled the top 4 and put them up for John and Lindsey to vote for.  Our final 4 were:

50% daddy + 50% mommy= 100% Alabama Fan

Still living at home.

How cute am I?!

and the winner was:

After they voted, we announced the winner.  The winners of the games will be receiving gift cards in the mail this week and John and Lindsey will be receiving the winning onesie design for baby Caleb!

To make the shower feel more real, I sent a box of decorations with a picture of how to set it all up for John.  He had someone take her out the morning of the shower so he could set it all up.  Lindsey only knew we had a group set up and that they'd be getting gifts from people but we kept her in the dark about all of the other details.  I think it was a nice surprise!

Here was the table setup:

They scored big on the gifts!  

I wanted to be practical with the decorations so that they didn't have a lot of leftover things that couldn't be used.  

The diaper cake had newborn diapers.  Caleb will be a cloth baby but I knew they needed some teeny dipes for the first week or two before he'll be able to get into cloth.  The hat and bow tie on the cake are actually newborn picture props that they'll be able to use for Caleb's first photo shoot.  Obviously, the boas won't be of much use to them, but those will probably end up in Logan's dress up box if I can convince them to put them back in the mail for us.

And what's a shower without cake?!  I couldn't find a local bakery to call in an order so I had cupcakes mailed to them from Georgetown Cupcakes in Washington DC.  It was a long overnight trip for them, but I think J & L will agree that they were 100% worth it!  Mike, the kids and I had some of their cupcakes last year when we visited D.C. and they were the best cupcakes we had ever tasted!  They also allowed me to send an assorted dozen catered to their tastes.  They got all kinds of chocolate, peanut butter and Boston creme pie goodness!

I think my favorite thing that we did was create a guestbook for them.  Along with the invitation, I also sent everyone a notecard with a return envelope and asked them to personalize a message for the family.  I got such a great response!   I think we got 23 messages back of the 30 invitations that we sent out.  Then I glued an envelope in the book "Oh The Places You Will Go" and put all of the notes in it.  

It was a surprise for both J&L!  I'm glad that we were able to provide a keepsake from the shower for them.

I invited the couple to the group the day of the shower.  John posted pictures as he set up and got everything ready for Lindsey and then he posted pictures as Lindsey opened each gift. We had set up a time for the shower so if guests wanted to be online while she was opening they could see her doing it in real time (since a huge video conference with 30 people was just unrealistic).  If they couldn't be there, the pictures were up when they were available to see them.

The last big thing that I had everyone do was send their favorite childhood book and/or their kids' favorite read alouds.  I asked that instead of shower cards people go ahead and write a personalized message in the book so we could start a little library for Caleb.  This way, instead of spending $4 on a card that may get tossed, they spent $4 on a book that could be kept in the family forever.  Again, people went above and beyond and the ended up with a ton of books!

John built a shelf for all of the books but he's going to need to build another one for all of the books that didn't fit!

I had so much fun planning and putting together this shower.  I'm so glad I was able to do something for them even though we couldn't be there.  It would have been nice to have been able to be all together, but I think this was a close second.  We can't wait to meet Caleb in a few weeks!