How to Host a Virtual Baby Shower (with free printable games)

Hey y’all, Tiffany here.  I’m currently pregnancy with baby #3, and he’s coming in a month!

A friend was going to hold a Baby Sprinkle for me, but due to COVID-19, we aren’t able to do it anymore.  I was disappointed, because I had hoped to play my favorite baby memory game that I played at showers for my other kids.

We have a lot of the big items that we need since it’s our second boy – clothes, swings, etc.  Since I am a couponer, diapers are one of the items that I get close to free, and I have been stocking up on them since we decided to start trying for another baby.

This sprinkle was more about gathering together with friends and getting in some last-minute socialization before c-section recovery.  I still wanted to have that, so we decided to have an online virtual baby shower instead!

How to Host a Virtual Baby Shower

So here are my tips on how to host a virtual baby shower for when your friends and family can’t gather with you.

And if you want more ideas than the ones I have below, check out this post with a bunch of Baby Shower Free Printables.

Communication

Obviously, the most difficult thing about not being able to gather together is, well, not being in the same place to play games and socialize and share yummy treats.

I looked into several options, such as Facebook Live and Google Hangouts, but those are meant for either small groups or where one person does a presentation of some kind to other people.

We decided to go with Facebook Events and Zoom for my virtual baby shower.  We created a Facebook event to sent out invitations to people, and then we put the Zoom link in the event.  Zoom will let us communicate easily back and forth between people, and having the Facebook event makes it easy to send any games or printables to people in advance if they want to print them.

Zoom is free for up to 100 people and for the first 40 minutes of any event.  You can also temporarily upgrade for one month.  I chose to do the upgrade because I wanted to go over the 40 minutes without having to worry.

However, if you don’t want to upgrade, then at 40 minutes the meeting will automatically end.  If that happens, you can restart the meeting and your guests will just have to click on the link to start again.

Gifts

Since this is my third baby, I really wasn’t anticipating many gifts.  And because I coupon a lot, I had a ton of diapers stockpiled.  I mostly just wanted friends to get together.

I did have a few things I needed to get, however, like breastmilk storage bags (after the trauma of trying to nurse my first kid, I now exclusively pump).  So I added those to an Amazon registry and a Target registry (mostly so I could get the 15% registry coupon as my due date neared).

Some friends asked where I was registered, so I put the links to the registries in the Facebook event, but I also made it extremely clear that none of the games or even the virtual shower itself would be about gifts or have gift-opening events.

If this is your first baby, or you want to do gifts, then you can let people in your event know that the gift should arrive a few days ahead of your virtual baby shower.  Amazon and Target make it very easy to have the gifts shipped directly to you when the guest orders.

You may also want to post a link for Meal Train, Grubhub, Door Dash, or any gift card service along with your email address so people can sign up to bring gifts or give gift cards for eating out to help after the baby is born.

Food

Another difficulty with long-distance showers is that the food is only in one location!  How you handle this depends on the nature of your virtuaal baby shower.

If you have a group gathered together with you, with only a few other people who are coming in digitally to participate, then you can choose to have a special treat delivered to their home on the day of.  This is a nice gesture, but it does also get expensive if you have a lot of people coming in digitally.

Since no one was going to be present with me except perhaps the hostess, I just let people know in the Facebook event that calories didn’t count during a baby shower, so they should bring their favorite treat to eat during our time together.

Games at a Virtual Baby Shower

One of the biggest questions I had when someone suggested we do a virtual baby shower to replace my sprinkle was, “What on earth are we going to do?!”

Surprisingly, my hostess and I were able to come up with several creative games that we could place with people digitially.  The key to success was to post the games into the Facebook event a few days in advance so that people could print or screenshot the images to use in advance.  We then used $5 Amazon and Starbucks gift cards as the prizes for each game.

You can download each game individually, or you can get all of them together in one PDF here.

Bingo

One popular baby shower (or bridal shower) game is to hand out blank bingo sheets and have guests fill them out with what gifts they think you’ll receive.  They then play the game as the mom-to-be opens her gifts.

Since we decided not to do gift-opening during the shower itself so that people didn’t feel obligated to send gifts, we switched it up a little bit.

Instead, we had people fill in the squares with words they thought would be discussed during the shower (i/e: baby, bottle, nap, nursing, labor, delivery, c-section, etc).  They then played the game throughout the virtual baby shower – whoever got Bingo (or blackout, depending on your crowd) first was the winner.

Just click on the game below or click here to be able to print it or save it as an image to share.  Feel free to fill in several different boards in advance of your shower if you’d like.

What’s in your Phone?

This is another simple game that can be done anywhere!  You’ll need to let people know that they’re on the honor system for this game since you might be posting it in advance if people will need to print it out in advance.

People go through the list and check how many items apply to their cell phone.  They then add up the points; whoever has the most points is the winner!

Just click on the game below or click here to be able to print it or save it as an image to share.

What do you know about Mom?

Find out how much your guests know about the mom-to-be!  This game is actually kind of two games in one.  This one you will need to plan in advance a bit.

The first page is to give to your guests for their answers, and the second and third pages are for the hostess to fill out in advance.

When the game begins during the virtual baby shower, first have the mom-to-be stand up in front of the camera and have people write down how big they think her bump is.  The person who guesses the closest is the winner!  (That’s the first game of this two-in-one set.)

The second game has six quiz questions.  The hostess reads the question chosen in advance, and lists the multiple choice options to the guests.  The guests fill in the blanks of the answers and circle the letter of the one that they choose.  The person to get the most questions right is the winner.

Just click on the page of the game below to be able to print it or save it as an image to share.  Or you can click here to get just the page for the guests.

Price is Right

This is one of my favorite games, and it’s so easy to do during virtual baby shower!  Just like the What’s in Your Phone game, this one will need to be on the honor system for your guests.

Have the guests write down their estimates for each of the items listed.  I’ve provided one already filled out and also a blank one in case you want to do more items or different items.

I recommend having the items on hand to show the camera, or at least have ideas of brand name and size of the item.  You should probably choose brand-name items (like Pampers or Desitin) since people far away will still know what they are and have an idea of what price they’d be.  Make sure to look up the prices in advance, and use a common store like Target to find the prices since grocery stores can vary so much by region.

Just click on the game below to print it or save it as an image to share.  Or you can get the filled-in page here or the blank page here.

Pin These Virtual Baby Shower Ideas!

I hope you have as much fun at your virtual baby shower as I did with mine!!  Have you done this yet, or are you planning on doing one?  Pin it!

And if this is your first child, you may also want to read these 20 parenting tips from a prophet.