Gender-Reveal Parties?
 

When did Gender-Reveal Parties and photoshoots becoming trendy? Also, a gender-reveal party for your 2nd or 3rd child? Pregnancy photo shoots? With all of these parties for everything...including multiple baby showers, I can't keep with the trends. How do people afford all of this stuff (professional photos aren't cheap)?!? I'll go back to being a old geezer masked as a young male.

Got invited to a honeymoon shower the other day. Wtf is that?

Just saw this via Facebook from a girl I went to high school with. It's one thing to want to keep the gender a secret until later on, but posting teasers about the big gender reveal party for the entire week leading up to it like it's some summer blockbuster? Holy. Shit.

I suppose the nicest thing I could say about the whole ordeal is that at least it didn't look like she was making family members travel for just a gender reveal party since the wedding is later this week.

.

Honeymoon shower?!?!? Do you get to take the bride for "honeymoon stimulation?" Do you still get to have the bridal shower as well?

I had to Google that one

According to one wedding site, here's the basic about "honeymoon showers"

What it boils down to is the social media generation combined with women who want to be the center of attention.

I know that sounds chauvinistic, but...that's what it amounts to. For some, the bridal shower, wedding day, and baby shower aren't enough. So you get "gender-reveal parties" and "honeymoon showers" and I'm sure there will be others at some point down the road.

I'm not saying all, or even most, women are "like that."

But the proliferation of those events almost certainly boils down to women who enjoy being the center of attention looking for ways to make that happen again. And again.

And again.

Unfortunately no prima nocta.

For the record, it had some brief explanation on the back wtf it was, but I was left with more questions. It would be easier if they just said, paypal your gifts to this address cause that would be easier to do.

I don't know enough people for it to be a cultural trend, but I feel like this is heading in the opposite direction for males. Instead of a bachelor party being some production with a stripper, bar crawls, etc., just having a weekend of camping or even just hanging out at someone's house is becoming more of the norm.

Although this could just be due to the fact that at my age, an obnoxious attention-seeking female is way more likely to be getting married/starting a family than a similar male.

"Week of blood" parties are coming soon, women will begin gathering and synchronizing their cycles, then have flow contests. It'll be huge in hip hop circles.

Don't forget the first moon parties :D

I don't think I agree with this.

When we had our first my wife had 3 showers. Her Mom insisted on throwing the big one at home in NJ, then her girlfriends insisted on throwing her one in Seattle, then her work friends insisted on throwing one for the office.

When we had our second her girlfriends insisted on a sprinkle, a smaller shower with small gifts. My wife would only allow that as it was our second.

I know a girl getting married who had 4 showers, none of which she threw or really cared about.

I think it boils down to different groups of people in your life excited about the event and wanting to do thei own special thing for you.

I don't think it's about attention grabbing females at all, at least from what I have seen.

It seems like what you are saying about your wife is the complete opposite person that the rest of the people are describing having gender reveals, name reveals, honeymoon showers, move in showers... unless you aren't talking about your gender reveal party?

There are at most 4 people who really care (enough to have a party care) about the gender/name of the new baby. Then there are sisters, grandpas, etc who will be excited but not enough to have a party.

I work with a woman and also have a sister-in-law who are the definition of trendy so I catch all these before they come up with me and my wife...

couples shower, couples baby shower, gender reveal, name reveal, half marathons, some sort of ab wrap sales on facebook, watching Breaking Bad starting with the final season and then going around telling everyone how it is the greatest show ever...

Anyways there is nothing necessarily wrong with any of these things. Some groups of friends like a reason to get together and hang out. I just think the expectation of gifts is what might cause some people to notice that the attendance of their apartment warming party was quite a bit larger than their sprinkle for the 3rd kid. (Which was attended by grandma and sister)

We had a friend do one of those gender reveal parties. Everyone I spoke to when I said I was being drug to this stupid thing (even my wife acknowledged how ridiculous it was), had the same response: "WTF is a reveal party?"

We have been invited to one. It was thrown by our neighbors who lived two doors down. Like us, they enjoy throwing parties and having people over. They had three girls and plenty of people were wondering if #4 would be a boy. (It was a girl.) They insisted on no presents, planned great activities for the kids, and had good food for the adults. Overall, it was just a good excuse to get family and friends together to have a good time. Not sure why people would have an issue with that. *shurg*

We never had a gender reveal party. We actually didn't find out the gender of our first.

I am talking about baby showers in general.

I don't agree with the suggestion that women are attention grabbing with all these showers when in a lot of cases they are thrown by family members, close friends, coworkers, etc...and the mom to be goes along with it, begrudgingly at times.

I hink a lot of people assume women throw these with the ulterior motive of getting gifts, when that likely isn't the case in a lot of instances.

Me Too!

It would be kind of hard to get a gift for a gender reveal part anyway, wouldn't it?

I could certainly do without couples showers though.

It took me until post 16 to realize a gender reveal party was for an unborn child and not a tranny deciding on their life choice. Arghhh.

We went to one thrown by our close friends. It was their first baby and the color of the inside of the cake revealed the gender. Like yours, there were no presents allowed and it was just a fun social gathering. Great food, great music, great company.

Personally, I feel like the idea of having an excuse to get together is unnecessary. No excuse needed in my book. If we enjoy each others company, we should get together as often as possible anyway. No need to come up with new reasons to do so. "Gender reveal party" just seems like a term some hyper trendy women's magazine comes up with, and maybe that's what rubs people wrong. It's annoying like those Cosmopolitan "37 ways to make your man a monster in the sack" articles.

Me three (or four since Timmae went this route as well).

I actually could somewhat respect our confused version of this party a lot more than what appears to be the reality. You know how most people reveal their baby's gender? They birth the fucking child and send you an email or call you. Or you visit them and they show you. Jesus.

You're not alone - that actually makes a lot more sense then this thing.

Bunch of anti-social curmudgeons in this thread. ;)

(Seriously, I can't figure out why people seem to be so bothered by someone else having a good time...)

I don't think it's quite that easy. People have a lot of shit going on these days, whether it's justified stuff (work, kids, etc) or extremely stupid shit that we waste our time with. I had a buddy who was trying to get a big group of people together a couple weeks back for a dinner/random party at his place (his actual motive was to tell everyone that he and his wife were expecting their first kid, but we didn't know that at the time) and maybe 20% of the people invited showed up. My wife and I were among the 80%...we didn't have any specific reason not to go, but because it was a somewhat random event, we felt like it could be missed and we did something else.

This past weekend, basically the same group of friends ended up near the Jersey shore (no small feat when most live in NYC and need to rent cars/take ferries) for our friends' couples shower. That was a new one to me...first time having one of those despite pretty much all my friends being married, but I think the bride being from the midwest may have had something to do with it. Anyway, the guys especially weren't exactly looking forward to the whole thing but we felt like we should go, we went and had a pretty good time. But if the same couple said "let's get together at this random restaurant in Atlantic Highlands, NJ" it would be them alone there.

I think you are equating your neighbor no gift situation with all gender reveal parties and it seems like most of us commenting on here have been invited to gifts expected gender reveal parties and couple's showers.

Probably because some are operating under the assumptions that the people are throwing these things for selfish reasons like being the center of attention or just as an excuse for gifts. I'm sure some do, but just like pretty much everything else in life, it's not always that way.

I went to one of these gender reveal things and the couple probably spent $1,000 on food and booze, no gifts allowed. The "reveal" was about 5 mins of a 6 hour party.

I get what you are saying but let me throw the ball back in your court. Doesn't not attending the first event create the need for people to do pointless parties like couples showers and gender reveals?

I have a friend who was a big time goof off when we were kids and we were talking at a party last weekend about kids nowadays. And the first part of the conversation was about how we didn't have this or have to do that blah blah blah but then he then went on to justify why he has to sit at every one of his kid's practices because it's different nowadays. It's only different if he chooses to make it different.

When these are thrown as a theme just to get people together, I personally think it is pretty cool. We have been to a couple of "off the path" parties recently and in both cases it was no gifts and just hang out and have fun.

You could always just say come over and BBQ, but the added theme is a nice twist.

Now, we do know one couple that have thrown multiple baby shower parties (women only, couples and a third after they found out the gender) expecting gifts for all and even requesting cash on the last one. That was a bit much IMO and we declined the last one.

To play devil's advocate, sometime's it is easier to go see that person if they have an "event" planned, rather than because "it's been a while"

This.

It comes down to prioritizing. With 2 kids, friends, work, etc...our time is limited. If we know something is a planned event we were invited to we make an effort to go and work our schedule AROUND that event, an informal gathering we try and work INTO our schedule. Big difference.

I don't think there's a right or wrong way, or one leads to the other being necessary. I was just going back to the original point that was made, similar to what Shorty just said...in theory of course it's great to "just get together" but getting 20 people to "just get together" can be really difficult. "Events" tend to bring people together.

I haven't seen anyone mention that they've been invited to a "gifts expected" gender reveal party. In fact, my observation is that the people mocking/complaining against it the hardest made no indication that they've ever been invited to one. I'm sticking with "anti-social curmudgeons." :p

I'm not anti-social, I just think it's a stupid idea. I'd rather get invited to a Hawaiian shirt party or some other ridiculous theme than a 'gender reveal'. Here's a tip to people: get over yourselves. I care as much about the gender of someone's unborn child as I do about what socks they have on. Gifts or no gifts, a gender reveal is still a 'look at me' or 'talk about me' event. It's asking for more attention, as though pregnant women somehow lack attention.

Is this your first time on the internet? ;)

You should move to a warmer climate.

:D

I really can't argue this :)

Another one who thought this was some sort of strange party where everyone dressed in body suits and then stripped to reveal their gender.

I haven't had coffee yet.

Another trend I'm seeing is a double wedding. One of our tutors in our building met a guy online that was stationed in Korea. So she ends up flying out to see him and having a quickie wedding (this girl isn't quite all there). When she gets back she then decides she wants another wedding here with everyone involved (and the other tutors say to get free stuff and attention), so there's this whole build up of "We know you are already married but we are going to get excited about this pseudo-wedding". This isn't the first time I've heard of this.

I think the next trend will be a drop your kids off at the pool party.

Yes. I think of people like this lady.

The home water birth of our Rainbow Baby on July 17, 2013 - YouTube

Stumbled across her as part of some breastfeeding in public outrage (which was likely another way for her to gain attention). Somehow got youtube followers, then apparently strung them along on the sex of the baby and then the name.

I have seen gender-reveal photo shoots, along with "I'm Pregnant" photo shoots. The thing that I find strange about weddings is how insanely large wedding parties are these days. I counted, and my SIL had 9 (it might be more, I'm honestly trying to remember everyone I possibly can) people for each side.

+1

I had a "double wedding" of sorts.

Me and my wife got married in Brussels, where we were living at the time. We wanted to get married before moving back to the states for various reasons. Neither of us, however, wanted to invite a ton of people from the U.S. to come to the European wedding, because that shit ain't cheap. It'd cost a lot of money for people to fly over to Europe, get a hotel, stay a few nights, etc.

So, we ended up having a "ring ceremony" when we moved back to the states about 9 months later. We had all of our U.S. friends and family there. It was pretty relaxed. We did it all in my folks' backyard. My brother was the "master of ceremonies" for the event. We exchanged rings, had dinner and just sort of hung around.

It worked out well. We had the main wedding in Europe with our friends there and immediate family, which was great, and the second ceremony allowed us to share the same type of sentiment, though much less fancy, with everyone else.

A win-win.

As for gender reveal parties. A friend of mine went to one. The mother-to-be really, really, REALLY wanted a girl. She cut into the cake and it was blue inside. It was a boy. She put the knife down, burst into tears, ran to her bedroom, slammed the door and proceeded to cry for quite a while.

Note to gender reveal people: Make sure you're okay if it turns out to be either gender, especially the mother-to-be, given the hormones and all.

I had a double wedding too, but the first was for pure legal reasons. We got married in Mexico, and if you want to get legally married there, you need to be in the country for a certain number of days before, get blood tests, etc. So a lot of people end up getting married at City Hall before or after. A week before we went down, we had a ceremony in my wife's grandparents apartment. They are 90+ and couldn't make the trip, so it was the two of us, the two of them, one friend of mine as a witness (couldn't be anyone related) and a rabbi. It was really nice and personal, and it was great to have them involved.

That's hilarious and depressing. And also fascinating - I wonder how the guests segued from that display into eating the cake. I imagine one guy just breaking the ice and diving in.

That boy is going to love hearing that story when he's older.

I would of thought that parents who know the gender before the party and reveal to the rest of the guests...but I guess they can surprise themselves somehow.

My favorite is when my good friends had their first child, but decided to wait until the birth before knowing the gender (which I love). It's assuming how people I shared that couldn't understand why they would do that.