July 31, 2013

What Will It Bee?

As week 20 of my pregnancy rapidly approached, Parker and I grew more and more anxious to discover the gender of our little one. We planned a gender reveal party to celebrate and share the exciting news with friends. The ultrasound took place on a Monday and the party on a Friday, which made for an especially long week filled with speculation and conjecture between the two of us. Our dear friends, Lela and Rachelle (to whom we immediately handed off the ultrasound results), did a fabulous job of keeping mum the word until the big day.

I wanted to keep the party as simple as possible, so I did my best to use any décor I had on hand (using the same paper flowers I made for my pregnancy announcement) or that was easy to assemble. I tailored the menu to represent a few of my favorites—serving up Margarita flatbread pizzas, watermelon + feta cheese bites, mini Cobb salads, and mixed berry cobbler + vanilla ice cream.






Lela offered her beautifully manicured backyard as the venue, which was the perfect spot for the What Will It Bee? + flower garden-themed soiree.





In true fashion, my dear and talented friend, Rachelle, brought out the big guns with her stork and cherub drawings which she scattered throughout the garden atmosphere. And, as the highlight of the party, she constructed the actual “gender reveal” even more brilliantly than I had imagined, with paint-filled balloons dangling over a white canvas just waiting to be popped.


Prior to the reveal, we had everyone cast their votes of the gender by adding a drop of food coloring to their sparking lemonade. I attended a friend's gender reveal party a few months ago where they did this and I loved it!



We seemed to have a pretty even split among guests’ votes—with about half siding with Parker on blue and the other half siding with me on pink.



Then, Parker and I stood firm on our votes and counted to 3 before throwing our darts at the balloons to reveal the news.



Parker’s dart was a miss, but mine happened to strike dead center of the truest pink, paint-filled balloon there was on the board. I jumped with delight then hugged Parker snugly. We both laughed with surprise and excitement at the news that our little cherub is in fact A LITTLE GIRL!!!!




Our guests then took turns popping the remaining balloons and painting the canvas to be hung in our little girl's nursery.


We finished off the night with sparklers and great conversation around the fire. And, Lela gave me my first gift for baby girl. The entire evening was perfect—better than I had even envisioned.


When we returned home that evening I asked Parker about his thoughts on the baby’s gender (having sensed a hint of trepidation in his facial expression at the reveal).


He expressed his utter happiness followed by a natural barrage of fatherly concern, like: “What am I going to do when she starts dating?” and “You will have to be the strict parent because I could never say no to a little girl.” which had me giggling for days to follow. (I wish desperately that I had the whole conversation on video to show our little girl when she grows up.) I can already tell his love for her is deep.




We are extremely grateful to all of our wonderful friends who came to share in this special moment with us and for the love and support of those special friends (Rachelle, Lela, Mandy, and Meg) who helped us create a memorable experience by lending a hand and sharing their home and talents with us. Thank you! We love you all!

10 comments:

  1. You're amazing!!! Such a beautiful party and super fun to boot! Congrats again! So excited about baby girl Smith!!!

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  2. Oh my goodness, that is the most adorable party ever. So happy for you both and I'm so glad you're having a girl. She is going to have Parker wrapped around her finger for sure. XO

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  3. LOVE LOVE LOVE


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    ___ / \ llllllllllll\
    \ | @ @ | llllllllllll\
    \-----oOO---Ooo-------------/
    \lllllllllllllllllllllllll/
    \lllllllllllllllllllllll/
    \lllllllllllllllllllll/
    // \\
    || ||
    OO OO

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  4. What a gorgeous, fun party!! I so wish we could have been there, but hearing the stories and seeing all the pictures makes me feel less far away. :) I absolutely love the looks on yours and Parker's faces when you threw your darts, and oh, how cute is it that you now have that cool painting to hang in your baby's room?! She's going to love the story behind that painting, and it's super chic, too. :) Thanks for sharing all the details!! I loved it all! And congratulations on becoming the parents to a baby GIRL! Oh, what fun you'll have . . . what with the shoes and bows and dresses and Disney princesses!! And the way she's going to look at her daddy, oh gosh, just you brace yourself, Steph, because your heart is going to melt every single time! :) Love you guys!

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  5. So I'm SUPER excited for you and also SUPER sad that we're not around down there anymore! You guys all together makes me miss it so much! But also makes me so happy that there are such good friends that can get together for such a special fun occasion

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  6. Congrats! What a fun party! I am so, so happy for you guys!! :)

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  7. I came over from Meg's blog to send my heartfelt congrats. I just cried again reading all this. I know the struggle and I am just elated that you two have over come. Prayers for a happy and healthy pregnancy and baby!

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    1. Hi Charity! Thanks for stopping by and thank you for your prayers! I hope you'll stay a while. ;-)

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  8. Hello! I love the idea if the canvas! I just found out I was pregnant and ever since I saw this post a few months ago, I've wanted to do it! What kind of paint (watered down), best way to attach balloons, who did the canvases with the correct colors (did you have two ready or did you trust someone to do the balloons to the color, best way to fill the balloons? Thank you! This is the cutest post!

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  9. Hello! I found this post before I got pregnant and knew I wanted to do this for my reveal one day. Well, I found out I was pregnant a few weeks later! We are doing our reveal on Nobember 20th and plan to do the canvas idea. I have some questions. Could you tell me how soon in advance you filled the balloons, how full you filled them and what type of paint you used? I love how the canvas turned out so any hints to make it come out well would be appreciated! Thanks so much! I love is unique idea! Julie. Julesb1122@yahoo.com

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