As much fun as it is to play hostess, it’s a challenging task to plan a party from start to finish. It’s a good thing that I love to do it! My most recent opportunity to throw a party was for my sister-in-law Sarah who is expecting their first child — who also happens to be the first grandbaby for our generation in my family.

Most of you reading things, either newlyweds or just women in general, you will probably be asked to throw a shower or other party. So I thought I would share the process we went through to plan a fun baby shower. The “we” in this case was mostly my mom and me, but I don’t want to discount Megan who was also a huge help that day.

Me, Megan and Sarah (pre-baby) at a friend's wedding.

Decide a theme or style

Sometimes you want to be fun and themey, other times you want to stay low on the cheese-factor scale. Either way, you’ll want to have something to start with. Once you have a foundation, you have a basis in making your decisions. Keep in mind colors, level of formality, how these elements could be used in decorating, etc. Ideally, you would start this 2 to 4 months in advance on this.

Create a menu

When I hosted a shower for Megan, we had a friend with a catering company help out. We planned out the basic elements like having a salad, a couple types of sandwiches and punch, and how to incorporate a theme or style into the food if we wanted. Working with a caterer or ordering from a restaurant is good for someone planning by themselves and/or who wants to be more involved in the party during the day.

If you’re up for it, you can make food yourself (and also bribe people into making a dish or two or five is possible, too). This go around, we decided to make our own food and planning the menu came about pretty simply. We chose foods based on what we knew we could make, what could be easy, having dishes offer a variety of flavors, that could be easily served and, of course, what would taste good! Another way to decide what to serve and how much is by imagining what your plate would look like at a buffet-style party. If you start offering too many dishes, some of them aren’t going to get eaten, unless you provide your guests with platters to fill up instead of plates.

While the menu may change as time goes on, having some basic decisions made on what you’ll be serving makes for a less-stressful party planning experience.

Come up with a guest list

Is your party celebrating a particular person? Don’t forget to ask them who they would want to invite. Sarah lives in Southern California and we wanted to be sure that any friends or family living up in Northern California would have the opportunity to attend.

It’s best to keep track of the guest list — including checks that invitations have been sent and who has RSVP’d — on a spreadsheet. Keeping track of guest addresses is helpful, too, in case you may want to host a similar party again.

Once you have the list finalized (or close to it), start thinking about invitations. You’ll want to have the guest list done about 2 months in advance, in time to make or order the invites and mail them out at least a month in advance. This may be too long of notice for some, but considering you’ll want people to RSVP about a week before the party, it’s really only three weeks notice.

That’s it for my first installment of how to host a baby shower — or most any party for that matter. Do you host parties very often? What are your tips?