Baby showers are a great way to not only celebrate a pregnancy but have a final baby free girly get together.  I don’t know how we did it but we managed to surprise our sister, who is expecting her first child and the most difficult person to keep a surprise from, with a surprise baby shower.  Here’s step by step of how we did it.   

1.  Friends and family: Luckily we still had our list of friends our sister invited to her Hen party so it was pretty easy to invite those she potentially would want to be there.
2. Save the date: Our sister travels a lot for both work and pleasure and as well as having  a busy social life it was hard to find out when she was free in the weeks preceding her due date.  We needed our brother-in-laws help with this.  About 4 months before her due date we sent out a poll of 2-3 dates for guests to inform us of their availability.  It’s a good idea to plan the baby shower for between 4-8 weeks before the due date.  With a week to RSVP we then sent out a save the date for the most popular. It’s a good idea not to leave it too long before confirming the date as we all know how annoying it can be to keep proposed dates free when we are all so busy.  
3. Location Location Location: With numbers confirmed we went about looking for suitable venues bearing in mind the different groups of friends living in mainly two places including London and our home town in Kent.  We wanted something relaxed serving good food in a nice location with availability on that date.  After we found the perfect venue we reserved an area for our party and placed a deposit.
4. Fake date: With my sister’s best friend’s help who managed to ‘book’ our sister to make sure she was free and planned to go to the venue for lunch.
5. Gift list: Prepare a gift list of anything that mum-to-be has mentioned she still needs. Make sure there’s a variety of more and less expensive guests to cater for all budgets.  
6. Confirm the venue: About a week before the baby shower
7. Have your cake and eat it: No baby shower is complete without the essential baby themed cake. With lack of time we bought our cake decorations on line and made fresh cupcakes the day before.
8. Guess the name: Keep the party light hearted with a few baby themed games, we had guess the name, weight, length, date of birth, hair and eye colour that we printed using a personalised logo; and the really popular personalise a baby vest using coloured fabric pens and plain white baby vests.
9. Keep it personal: We also printed out a personalised sheet for guests to write a message to our sister to read after her birth to remind her how fabulous she is!
10. Pre-order meal: for a party of our size we had to pre-order our menu. This was actually really helpful in hindsight.  Using an online survey we emailed everyone the menu with a couple of days to choose.  The online survey easily tracks how many of each dish were requested and also who ordered what.  Send this over to the venue the day before. 
11. Cups, plates and balloons: Even though we were having the baby shower at a pub they kindly let us decorate the area with balloons. We made use of
12. Arrive earlier rather than later: Allow at least 45 minutes to set things up especially if you have balloons to blow up and remember to ask your guests to arrive 15 minutes earlier than when the guest of honor arrives.
13. Have fun: Our sister definitely had baby brain.  Even though we had a huge sign with ‘Diana’s baby shower’ posted on entering – she still did not realise it was for her until she saw her friends! Achievement J
14. Cheese: don’t forget to take pictures through the day as a memory for guest of honour.
15. Car ride: Make sure the guest of honour has a car ride home as after a long day the last thing she will want to do is lug all her gifts home.

Even if I do say so myself, I think we did ourselves proud, with great planning, team work and great group of friends, our sister was most definitely surprised and had a great time.