This post on The Cutest Fall Gender Reveal is sponsored by Oriental Trading although all thoughts and opinions are my own.
This pregnancy is just flying by! I can’t believe I’m already over halfway through it and our sweet baby will be here in 18 weeks or less! A few weekends ago we had about 30 of our closest friends and family over to our home and had the cutest fall gender reveal you’ve ever seen. It was so wonderful and I’m still replaying our amazing time in my mind. We had family and friends travel from 3, 4, and 6 hours away- even friends that happened to have flown into town the night before come to our little fall gender reveal. Ah, it was great!
Because we had our little fall pregnancy announcement at the Dallas Arboretum with tons of pumpkins in the pictures, we thought it would be fun to continue on with our pumpkin theme for our fall gender reveal. I wasn’t sure where to even begin, except that I wanted pumpkins in it. I remembered that Oriental Trading had awesome decorations at affordable prices so I set out to work on our fall decor for the party. Immediately I noticed ideas for trunk or treats on their website and one stuck out to me that was orange and teal. I knew we wouldn’t be going the traditional route like our big gender reveal party during my pregnancy with Addie, and this was perfect!
Lucky for me, all the products used in the photo were actually listed at the bottom of the page so it made it incredibly easy for me to get everything I needed. I ordered tassel garland, a plastic table cloth, pom pom decorations, paper plates, napkins, cups, forks, straws, honeycomb tissue balls, mini hanging lanterns, the cutest chevron table runner, and a semi fanburst garland, all from Oriental Trading and it arrived super fast. I don’t know why I expected it to take a while to arrive to me, but everything I ordered was at my house in a matter of days. Not only that, all the decorations for our entire party cost less than $100! Talk about staying within budget! Woo!
Everything was incredibly easy to set it up. I actually set up most of the party a couple days before because usually it can be so tedious. However, I was mostly done within 20 minutes except for the things that needed to be hung at the top of the curtain rod and of course outside where the actual reveal would be held. Since we have a square table, I folded the tablecloth in half and I loved how it made it more opaque. I also cut the chevron table runner and both the turquoise and silver tassel garlands in half so one half was on the table and the other was at the drink station. It worked out perfectly and was twice the decorations for half the price! Winning!
I will say, I had visions of putting the fruit and veggie dips into hollowed out pumpkins filled with bowls, but since it’s almost Thanksgiving, all the pumpkins are gone from the stores. I had some from my porch, but I didn’t want to take the chance of cutting one open and it being yucky. I kept them for outside and was ok with that. Still, I kept the food simple for budget purposes and so people could have a snack before going and grabbing lunch after the party. We had fruit with a cream cheese and whipped cream dip (with 2 drops of Orange Vitality essential oil- so delish!), a veggie tray with homemade ranch dip, the cutest little pumpkin deviled eggs (made by my awesome mother-in-law), and yummy puff pastry filled with sausage, cream cheese, and jalapenos (also made by my mother-in-law). Of course, no party is complete without cake, so we got assorted cupcakes and had a delicious punch to go along with it all.
We had our entry way set up with a fun chalkboard and our small end table, and I had a foam pumpkin for people to sign with paint pens with well-wishes for the baby, along with stickers I’d made with the pumpkins from the invitations and our name choices for each gender. We chose Amelia if our baby was a girl, and Lawson if our baby was a boy. I mimicked the chalkboard I’d made for Addie’s big gender reveal party and it was fun to see the differences between the two pregnancies so far!
I also bought some gorgeous flowers at H-E-B (shout out to the ladies in Floral who always do an incredible job) and they were beautiful on our coffee table. When I was getting groceries for the party, I got stopped so many times with people loving the flowers. Made me happy!
After everyone had their fill of snacks, the anticipation was so thick, so we went outside for our gender reveal. A sweet friend lent me a couple bales of hay, and I ended up using the semi fanburst garland, pom pom decorations, and our leftover Halloween pumpkins for the reveal spot! It was pretty windy but Mathew was smart enough to staple gun the decorations to the fence and it was perfect!
With Addie in tow (and without her vent, might I add!), we gathered everyone outside for the big fall gender reveal! I can not even begin to tell you the bundle of nerves that swept over me once we started walking outside. With Addie’s big gender reveal party we knew she was a girl before the party. We wanted to know during our anatomy scan so we could have the moment with just the two of us, and then we surprised everyone else at the gender reveal. This time, we had no idea.
All pregnancy long I “knew” it was a boy. Things were just SO different this time around and it was so easy for us to choose a boy name. The girl name? Not so easy. Once we’d picked a girl name we struggled (even until gender reveal day) to pick a middle name. When I was pregnant with Addie, I “knew” it was a girl and we easily picked a girl name. We struggled so hard until the day of the ultrasound to choose a boy name. Interestingly enough though, I thought our baby was a boy up until 18 weeks. I had an appointment with our doctor and we did a quick sonogram to ease my mind. Since we’d found Addie’s SCT at 18 weeks, I was a bit worried. The doctor and I looked at the baby together and he initially called the baby a “he”. But then, I mentioned how the ankles were crossed and I remarked that I slept that way and Addie does too so maybe it was a girl. Then, the doctor called it a “she”. It was likely by accident just because I was talking about girls, but I took it as a slip up and “swore” the baby was a girl.
When we went in at 19.5 weeks for our big anatomy scan, I had the tech tell my sister in secret the sex of the baby. She ordered confetti poppers for me and had them shipped straight to the house. Once we walked outside for the reveal, they were handed to us and I was shaking. Here’s how it all went down:
I can’t even believe it- can you? Our sweet baby is a BOY! We can’t wait to bring sweet Lawson Avery into the world in April 2018. I never would have imagined that I would be a boy mom, but I’m excited for this whole new world. Since Addie’s newborn stage was so atypical, I’m interested to see how we handle parenting a newborn AND Addie together. It should be a fun ride! Mathew and I were in SHOCK that the confetti was blue, and I won’t lie- I shed some tears. The good tears, of course! I can’t wait to see how this journey of ours unfolds!
