Last weekend, my husband and I threw a Ba-By-Q to celebrate the news of our pregnancy with our Texas friends & family.  Never heard of a “Ba-By-Q”?  –Think co-ed baby shower meets afternoon barbecue.  Since it was too soon to call it a baby shower, we deemed it a combo Diaper Party and Gender Reveal.  A Diapers & Dudes / Burgers, Beers & Baby kinda thing.  –I have Pinterest to thank for the idea, of course!  (If you’re on Pinterest too, I’d love to swap ideas…follow me here.)  It was just our luck that my in-laws rented out a casita at the UT Golf Club as their lodging for the occasion and they agreed to allow us to host the party out there.  The space was the perfect place to gather and we loved our weekend out in the hill country.

Since we would be revealing the sex of Baby Wiese to both our parents during the event, I wanted to create a comfortable atmosphere for guys and girls alike.  I feel like gender reveal parties can easily get a bit of a vanilla-sweet ladies lunch vibe, so I kept the day casual by serving sliders, hot dogs & cold beers.  But, it all had a tie-in with the theme:  the beer chest had a chalkboard “Huggies and Chuggies” sign and the white wine was labeled “Pampers and Pinot.”  Oh, and I couldn’t resist these Barefoot wines with their tiny baby foot imprints on pink & blue labels!

Although it was a grill-out, we kept it upscale by serving all organic foods & sodas, i.e. sliders were made of grass-fed, pasture-raised organic lean beef and the hot dogs were humanely raised uncured beef, made with no antibiotics or preservatives.  A rainbow of organic chopped fruit was served kabob-style and rather than a traditional sheet cake, dessert was comprised of mini bundt cakes (cupcake size) in a variety of flavors.  Have y’all tried Nothing Bundt Cakes?  –OMG, so good and moist!  I opted for three dozen of their little “Bundtinis” in chocolate/chocolate chip, red velvet (everyone’s favorite), white chocolate raspberry, and lemon.

Now, for the highlight of the evening:  the big reveal!  We had our friends “Cast Your Vote and Wear It’ by signing a black foam board w/ chalk markers and don a boy or girl lanyard made of a cute little pink or blue lucite charm strung with matching baker’s twine.  Additionally, I drew up a board of clues to help everyone narrow it down…

So…any guesses?!?  The “Old Wive’s Tales” where the responses would indicate boy are written in blue, and girl are obviously in pink.  As you can see, that gaggle of ol’ wives would predict we’re having a BOY.  To keep things interesting, I came up with a way for our voters to get some skin in the game:  I knew that after the reveal we’d be doing a champagne toast, so those who guessed correctly got to cheers with Moet & Chandon champagne from France…those who guessed wrong got Korbel sparking white wine from Cali. 😉

As to how the actual reveal would be done, I definitely did my research to find something new.  I’ve seen the cake-batter reveal (kinda anti-climactic, honestly) and the whole ‘releasing a box of balloons’ thing can easily go haywire (the balloons don’t always cooperate the way you hope ’em to), so I settled on the balloon-pop idea.  Each set of Grandparents-to-Be got one opaque black balloon filled with either pink or blue confetti.  This way, each of our parents found out at the exact same time and the popping of the balloon visually revealed baby’s gender in a nice ‘Surprise!’ way to our guests.  Gotta say, it went over so well…our dads held the balloon steady while our mothers popped it with a toothpick on the count of three, and the silk rose petals I had placed inside flew into the air and fluttered slowly to the ground.  It was a complete shock to our parents and so much fun to see the excitement on their faces when they found out their future grandchild is a… 

GIRL!!!

Big thanks to those who flew in from out of state, who drove in from Houston, and to all who came out to Steiner Ranch for the party.  It was such a memorable day for our family and I am thankful to share it with each of you.