Our Gender Reveal Party #2

Posted in: Gender Reveals, Story of Us

In case you missed our announcement last month, Baby Mason is a boy!!! We are so excited to add a baby boy to our family!

We kept our guest list super small because of COVID and half of our guests suddenly weren’t able to come the day before the party – most because of COVID. None of my brothers were able to come because they were in different states at the time – Virginia, Colorado, and Oklahoma. The party wasn’t anything like what we planned and it seemed like everything that could go wrong was going wrong.

Weston’s dad tested positive for COVID the day before the gender reveal party. That prevented his mom, both his brothers, and his sister-in-law from coming. It absolutely broke my heart that Weston’s family wasn’t going to be there. His parents and youngest brother had a great idea to drive into our backyard and stay in their cars the whole time. They still got to see the confetti, but I’m sad we couldn’t take pictures with them and they couldn’t really join us in the celebration.

The worst part of his dad having COVID is that he ended up in the hospital the following week and passed away three weeks later. I was kicking myself for not doing the gender reveal party sooner so that Weston’s family could have been part of it and we could have more recent photos of him. The day of the funeral, our sweet and thoughtful photographer sent this picture of him and a text that said, “Thinking of y’all today.” I immediately started sobbing because I didn’t think we had any recent photos of him. We will always treasure the ones she captured that day!

Something else that went wrong that day was the backdrop I had planned for pictures. I love everything light and bright and since our backyard didn’t have any naturally light and bright areas, I decided to have a white backdrop with a balloon garland. I already had the white backdrop and I secured it with bricks on each side so it would stay in place. After spending over an hour blowing up balloons (with a balloon pump) and adding them to the backdrop, I was almost finished. I went inside to grab the last few balloons and I heard the most devastating sound. There was a huge gust of wind that knocked over the backdrop and the moment the balloons hit the pine straw-covered ground, all but a few balloons popped simultaneously. I was so over everything at that point that I gave up on the backdrop and started getting ready for the party. What a waste of time and energy!

Our theme this time was Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. I wanted to keep the decorations as minimal as possible, but still convey the theme. I found a banner that said “twinkle twinkle little star, how we wonder what you are” that I split onto two walls. The balloon garland kit I ordered had some gold foil star and moon balloons that we added to the walls. The only other theme-related items were the star, moon, cloud, and rainbow cookies. We also had the most perfect chocolate covered strawberries in pink, blue, and white along with pink lemonade and blue Gatorade before the reveal.

For Camryn’s gender reveal party, we had a pink outfit and a blue outfit because we had no clue if we were having a boy or a girl. We thought we were having a boy, but wanted to wear all pink for photos after the reveal if the confetti was pink. This time, we did the same thing. All three of us thought we were having a girl, but we planned a blue outfit just in case. I was pretty much banking on being wrong again because I decided to wear blue for the reveal instead of pink. Weston wore a pink shirt and changed into a blue one. I got creative with Camryn’s outfit and found a pink and blue gingham dress that came with a pink sash. I ordered a blue sash just in case and I’m glad I did since our guess was wrong. It made for a quick change and we were able to get all the pictures we wanted in all blue!

After we took plenty of pictures, we ate dinner with our guests. Chicken swirls were a must again and we had macaroni and cheese, chicken fingers, and salad to go with it. We rented tables, tablecloths, and chairs for everyone to sit outside and eat together. I made the small, simple flower arrangements that were on each table. The sun was shining. Everything was perfect until we all brought our food outside. I have literally never seen so many flies in one place at one time. It’s like one fly saw that we had food and called every single one of his buddies to join us. It was so bad that we all had to come back inside to eat in peace. I even had to make another plate because mine was COVERED in flies when I got up to get a fan for outside.

Even though so many things went horribly wrong for this party, I’m thankful we had a gender reveal party for baby boy. After losing two of our babies (read about it here and here), we are even more adamant about celebrating the ones we have. Some people may think we’re “extra” and some don’t see the point of a gender reveal party. We can’t control what people think, but we will continue to celebrate our little miracles any way we can.

Thank you to all of our family and friends that came to our gender reveal party (and the ones that wanted to be there, but couldn’t)! I also want to thank Deborah Michelle Photography for capturing so many wonderful photos and Aly Hughes Photography for creating a film that makes me cry every time I watch it – AGAIN! I am so grateful for both of you and that you were the ones to preserve this moment for us!