Well if that wasn’t one of the craziest sentences I’ve ever had to type, it wouldn’t be 2020 now would it? This week, we found out the gender of our little baby Franco and celebrated by having a very intimate gender reveal picnic with our family.

We went back and forth about whether or not we should throw a get together for probably 2 full months before the date and the week leading up to it, were still going back and forth on whether or not it was the “right” thing to do.

At the same time, we wanted to celebrate this special moment with our family and felt comfortable doing so as long as we could ensure we would indeed follow all the recommended guidelines. So, this is what we did and how we made it happen literally a week before the date we decided to host. Shoutout to my parents, Joey’s parents, my sister, and best friend Natalie for all the help!

+ Invite only family – This ensures that you don’t have a huge guest list and will also make sure that friends don’t feel left out of the festivities. Also, let’s be honest, do we all know what our friends are doing on a daily basis and if they’re doing things to keep themselves safe? It’s not worth the extra stress; invite family you can trust.

+ Keep the event outdoors – Super important to allow proper social distancing and makes sure people aren’t crammed into a single space. We held our reveal at an outdoor public park with a TON of open space.

+ Make it BYOE– we called this “Bring Your Own Everything” and literally put that on the invitation. We wanted to make sure that no-one shared food or touched a bunch of stuff like you would if you catered food for the event. So, we asked our family to bring their own food, drinks, and lawn chairs/blankets to sit on.

+ Tell the fam-bam to Mask up– Also on the invite,  we asked our family to bring a mask and get ready for a lot of air hugs! It’s not that we didn’t want to see their smiling faces or quite literally squeeze them all to bits, but again, we wanted to be responsible for everyone’s sake. And masks can easily be removed for a quick photo and slipped back on! My girlfriend even found cute blue/pink masks and brought them for everyone to pick what gender they thought the baby was!

+  Limit/forego the games – As much fun as games are for any event- bridal shower, engagement party, gender reveal, baby shower, etc, during a pandemic, the last thing you want is to play a bunch of games that involve being super close and interactive. So for the sake of safety, we skipped all the games. My mom did bring blue/pink bubble tubes ready for our family to grab when they arrived to show off what gender they thought baby was in addition to the masks though, so that was fun!

+ Offer the event virtually – With our grandparents and other family members that we knew should definitely stay home, we let them know that we would set up a Zoom call when we were ready to do the reveal so that they could still be apart of the moment. We also put that information on the invite so anyone who would rather attend virtually, could do so without feeling obligated to show up physically. Again, it’s all about keeping you safe as well as your guests!

Well, those are my tips for throwing an event during a never ending pandemic!

Hope you enjoyed!