Simple Black and White Gender Reveal Party

Summer is coming to an end here, and I’m not ready! As I try to steel myself for a busy fall and winter season, I’ve been trying to get better organized. One of the tasks I am tackling is organizing all my photos from various shoots and events. I came across the folder of photos from the simple black and white gender reveal we hosted last August and really wanted to share the details of this party with you!

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Party Highlights

• Gender reveal onesie sugar cookies
• Individually boxed meals 
• Hand drawn old wives’ tales chalkboard sign 
• Black and white striped bow ties and white crepe flowers for gender guesses 

This gender reveal party happened after the second wave of COVID-19 cases subsided in our province. In the weeks leading up to this event, I was brainstorming and prepping for celebration box drop-offs, similar to these.  It really came down to the wire regarding the decision to gather everyone or to drop off themed party boxes at each family’s doorstep.

Luckily for us, the local situation improved enough to allow us to host up to 15 people gathered in an outdoor setting.

So I set off to do another handmade and simple gender reveal event for our immediate family to attend!

Like the first time around, we found out baby’s gender/sex at the ultrasound. There was no question that we would do something to surprise our family members, as I love involving my loved ones in these big life moments!

Gender Guesses

Upon arriving at the party, our guests were greeted with a chalkboard sign that I hand drew using chalkboard markers. These markers are my new favourite thing!! I can’t even begin to describe the satisfying feeling I get when I’m drawing with these. Like BUTTAH!!

This Old Wives’ Tales sign is one of my favourite quick projects to date! I am so in love with how it turned out. 

The sign listed all gender guesses based on my symptoms. As you can see, basically all signs were pointing to GIRL!

And girl is what practically everyone guessed!

I hand-tied black and white striped grosgrain ribbon into little bows and attached pins to their backs for boy guesses. And crafted white crepe paper anemones for girl guesses. Guests would pick one or the other to wear based on their guesses at baby’s gender. I’ll have to put together a DIY tutorial for the flowers for you guys soon!

There were no crepe flowers left once everyone made their selections! Everyone was THAT confident.

The Dining Table

The dining table was dressed very simply in white with a black and white gingham fabric table runner down the centre. I opted to not have any flowers this time and instead, we created small arrangements of eucalyptus, lambs ear and olive branches in mason jars to place throughout the space.

The organic and ethereal look of these simple hand-tied greens can’t be beat! I am still riding the love train for eucalyptus! Such a versatile greenery.

Individually Boxed Servings of Food

Because of COVID-19, I wanted to be as careful as possible with how food was handled and served.

I kept the menu super simple for this reason. It consisted of:

• Hamburgers on brioche buns
• Sweet potato fries
• Coleslaw
• Grilled shrimp

The burgers were placed in individual boxes along with a side of lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, onion and cheese. Doing this eliminated the need for a shared toppings bar, and each guest could put together their own burger to their liking.

Condiments were separated into small mason jars and I had enough for each cohort/family to take one jar of each condiment to use.

The sides of sweet potato fries and coleslaw were served in individual portions.

Sweets Table and the Reveal

The sweets table was kept simple and small. I’m finding myself preferring this type of set-up for sweets lately. Epic and large dessert displays look really great, but there’s a lot of wastage as people don’t eat all the options that are generally presented.

Our cake table included a single tier rustic semi-naked vanilla cake and a dozen white onesie sugar cookies. Both elements stuck to the simple black and white theme.

I’m a little obsessed with these gender reveal sugar cookies by my go-to artisan – Pam at Sugar Shimmer. These white onesie cookies look so simple, but the craftsmanship is pure perfection!

Our guests snapped the cookies in half or bit into them to reveal that we were having another boy!

This was such a huge shock for everyone. Everyone was so convinced that it was a girl this time around…I think mostly because my pregnancy was almost completely opposite of what it was like when I was pregnant with Lincoln. Just goes to show you that every baby is different and every pregnancy is different!

There must always be cake at a party. So I quickly put together this simple vanilla cake and covered it with light frosting. Kind of going for that semi-naked cake look.

For the cake “reveal” I opted to do blue icing between each cake layer. For our first gender reveal party, I tinted the cake batter blue and it was VERY difficult to do! And took LOTS of blue gel food colouring.

This time, I thought I would spare myself the stress and just use blue frosting.

And because the cake was so plain jane, I knew I needed some kind of topper. Using two wood coffee stir sticks, some baker’s twine, black construction paper and a white chalk marker, I quickly threw together the “Oh Baby Baby” sign. It lent the perfect finishing touch to the cake and the overall display.

Ready for 3 to become 4!

We feel so fortunate that we were able to gather our family together and surprise them in person with the gender reveal. 2020 was a strange year for the entire world. Being able to have something like anticipating a new baby was a nice distraction for all of us. It was a bit surreal! But very lovely to know that we would be growing our family.

All in all, this was a very low key event. I think I’ve mentioned it before, but as each year passes, I’m favouring more intimate parties with thoughtful and beautiful details.  This simple black and white gender reveal fit that bill perfectly. 

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