gender reveal party black and white themed in Bend, Oregon

Gender Reveal Party // Bend, Oregon // March 2014

I recently had the joy of planning a super special gender reveal party, a party for my sister and brother-in-law, Cali & Auz {CAUZ for short… see their wedding here}. Everyone has their own journey and story with how they start a family. For those close to Cali & Auz, you know their story and how exciting it is to share in their joy of them becoming pregnant and getting to journey to parenthood.

Cali’s never been the “follow tradition” type. When planning her wedding it was No Flowers, No Bouquet Toss, No Garter Toss… Why not do things a little different. So when it came to planning this party there were again rules. No cutting a cake, No balloons flying out of a box, no baby pink and baby blue.. something unique and different.

I came up with the idea of doing a black and white theme, a color scheme, that has the same meaning of pink and blue for gender, different. The party was planned for 3:30 on a Saturday afternoon, 1. kid friendly time 2. after lunch, before dinner 3. early enough for travelers that were coming over the pass {Willamette Valley to Bend} to get back home. The theme was a black and white dessert bar: ice cream, toppings, milk & cookies. It was so fun to carry out. I used metal buckets with ice to keep the ice cream cold, we had vanilla bean, oreo and chocolate chip. Some black and white toppings were chocolate chips, yogurt covered raisins, dark chocolate peanut butter cups, white chocolate covered gummy bears, marshmallows, dark chocolate covered pretzels and black licorice. I also made mini white cupcakes. On the beverage bar I had vintage milk bottles filled with white and chocolate milk in metal buckets with ice. We had oreos and chocolate chip cookies offered to dip in the milk. The dessert bar was self serve, I think everyone enjoyed choosing their themed treats before the reveal.

Another part of the party details was guests were asked to wear black and white. I was amazed that literally everyone in attendance did. Even if some of the men admitted it was a happy accident they had a black shirt on that day..

The reveal itself took place outside. My other sister, Jesi, and I planned this together. She has two kids already so she came up with the idea of involving them. Cali and Auz’s wedding colors were purple and turquoise, and they are kinda obsessed with these colors. Jesi had the brilliant idea of getting a tricycle and painting it purple and turquoise and having one of her boys ride it through the party with balloons. Cali loves bikes, so adding touches of bikes and trikes was perfect! We also came up with the idea of having baby bottles pulled behind the bike with tissue paper in the correct gender color. We had this plan of having all the guests facing where the bike would come riding out of and Cali and Auz would have their backs to it. We came up with a silly idea of having them read a letter to their guests, including things like “My sisters are making me read this, hey GIRL” and “BOY OH BOY are we happy to have friends like you!” The last part of the letter was “BOY, GIRL, BOY, GIRL, What will we add to this world?!” That they were to read together, at this point my nephew would come riding the trike out to reveal. Well, Merik’s little 3 year old legs were faster than we anticipated so he came riding out only after they had gotten a couple sentences in, but it was still revealed, BABY C is a BOY!

This event was so much fun and I am so happy to be having another little nephew. Now on to planning the baby shower!