Baby Shower–BaByQ Theme & Invitations

When we started planning the baby shower, I knew I wanted to make it coed, as we have lots of “couple” friends and I didn’t want to exclude the guys.  Plus, I wanted more of a party atmosphere rather than a traditional shower.  One of our friends had a “BaByQ” last fall for her shower and it was great, because the guys felt comfortable being there since it was very low-key, and it was easy for the hosts to throw together the typical BBQ menu and foods.  When I was searching for locations that would fit our crowd, one of the first places that came to mind was a local BBQ restaurant that’s on the other side of our town.  Luckily their buffet prices were very reasonable per person, and the best part was they didn’t charge a room or any kind of service fees.  Basically you just show up and pay for the food!

I love designing invitations and digital art pieces, so I begged my sister to let me create the invitations.  I told her that she could do whatever she wanted for the actual shower with games, favors, cake, decorations, etc. as long as I could work on the paper goods.  Here’s what I came up with for the invite:

Obviously I blurred out some personal info, but hopefully you get the idea.  Apparently it came out cute, because when I listed a similar version at my Etsy shop, it started selling like crazy!  Instead of printing at home and cutting them all, I printed them at Vistaprint.com – highly recommend them.  I think with a coupon code and sale, I received 70 invitations with envelopes (they were similar to a 5x7 size) for less than $30.

Other than the invitations and the place/date/time, I was kept completely out of the loop for all the other details of the shower.  Another post to come with actual pictures from the day of :)