HOSTING A VIRTUAL GENDER REVEAL PARTY

Many states will be easing quarantine guidelines in the coming days, but it is still unclear when groups of people will be able to get together again. Although I’m fully supportive of social distancing and thankful for the lives it has saved, admittedly, it has left a little void in my heart because of all of the special events and milestones I have missed with my friends.

After cancelling my 30th birthday party, and having three of my best friends cancel their birthday parties, a glimmer of hope emerged when my friend announced she had decided to do a virtual gender reveal party for her baby. My friend Erica, who is the best party planner, hosted and planned the party for our friend and I have asked her to share her tips with all of you!

“My friend contemplated not having a gender reveal for her second child,” Erica recalls. “However, feeling we all could use something to celebrate living through a pandemic, she asked for my help. Mission accepted! Here are my steps for throwing a memorable and interactive virtual gender reveal.”

Table of Contents

Erica’s Six Steps for Hosting an Unforgettable Virtual Gender Reveal Party:

Create the digital invite

The first thing I recommend is creating an invite in the theme you choose. My pregnant friend wanted it to be a simple pink and blue theme with a confetti cannon reveal. I designed a free invite on canva.com. You can create a free account on their website or app.

My Canva design for the invite:

Set-up a private Facebook group

Next, have the expectant mother or father create a private Facebook group for the event. I recommend setting it up through the soon-to-be parents account to easily invite people they’d like to include in the private group. It has to be a FB group for live streaming capabilities; just creating a Facebook event won’t allow you to go live. Get creative and give your group a fun name. Yes, we went for a more traditional name because we were newbies at this. Then upload your invite as the cover photo and be sure to post it to the feed.

Make it interactive for your guests

A fun interactive feature is to add a Facebook poll and pin it to the announcements tab. Remind everyone to vote ahead of time. We were shocked with how many people actually took part in the poll. So fun and the comments were hilarious! This is a must do. We decided to call it Team Lashes or Team Staches. After posting the invite and the poll you’ll want to invite group members.

On the day of the big reveal ask guests to post a picture or video of themselves watching from home. They can post their photo in the comments section.

Decorate your space

You will be saving $$$ not hosting an actual party so be sure to spend a little decorating your backdrop for the virtual event. Believe me not only will your guests appreciate the aesthetics but you’ll have cute pictures to look back on. We bought a few items on Amazon and used things we already had to decorate the space.

We used this as our backdrop. SO CUTE!

Prepare an agenda

Your virtual gender reveal won’t last long so prepare an agenda to keep you on track and get the most out of the event. Here’s the agenda I created. Give yourself time to review and practice before going live.

Welcome and assign one parent to respond to live comments throughout.
Complete the “Old Wives Tale” chalkboard sign.
Reveal results of Facebook poll.
Explain poppers and do a countdown before popping.
The big reveal–celebrate and respond to live comments.
Open a “special gift” from a special person that couldn’t be there.
Cut the cake and thank everyone for joining today.

To make your guests feel like they are part of the reveal, assign one expectant parent to be in charge of reading some of the comments and responding throughout the live streaming. My friend’s sister is very close to her and lives out of state. To make it special she sent a gift and message that she opened after the reveal while still streaming live.

Go Facebook Live

Be on time and go live. Guests simply open to the Facebook group page and the live stream can be viewed on the feed. They can click on the video to open the live stream to a bigger screen and view the live comments. Before ending you can download an HD recording of the stream and Facebook automatically records your live stream to the group feed for others to view later.