Our Gender Reveal (and the party!)

This last Friday was a day I have been looking forward to for an entire month. It was the day we would finally find out if August would bring us a little dude or a little dudette!

Where do I head first? Pinterest, of course. Gender reveal parties are so super trendy right now, so I had no problem getting some party inspo. Jon and I struck a compromise between the super casual cookout that he wanted and the cutesy baby feel that I wanted.

We weren't sure if we were going to find out the sex of the baby at first, but decided to find out for a few reasons.
1) I'm a planner, and not finding out sounded a little stressful (lol at being a new parent and second-guessing every decision ever)
2) It would be a great opportunity to invite people to be a part of this baby's life before it was even born! While you can totally do this without knowing what "it" is, we have just recently tapped into a new and awesome community in our church, and we were/are super excited to involve them in our lives in new ways.
3) We wanted an excuse to celebrate this pregnancy, and already surround this little kiddo with celebration!

So, with that, we planned our reveal party!

The Food...

Like I said, we were not going Pinterest-y but ultra, backyard casual. So what do we make? BBQ, of course! Jon smoked three pork butts Thursday night, and let me tell you, he smokes 'em good! Everyone else was bringing a side, so he made sure that the meat was the best meat he had ever made.

Party Favors/Dessert

Ok, now this was Pinterest... but I couldn't resist! How cute are these Hershey bars?? Unfortunately, they were a little bit hidden in their placement Friday night and not many were taken home, which means most of them are still in my house 😳

Two of my little siblings also baked a ton of cupcakes all Friday afternoon! 

Shots!

Jon had the great idea of having blue/pink Jell-O shots for everyone to take with the reveal! The idea was to choose the color that you thought would be revealed. And yes, we made non-alcoholic for the kids (but mostly for the pregnant ladies, duh)

And the Reveal...

Thursday afternoon we had the ultra sound, but we didn't let the tech show us whether or not it was a girl or a boy! She wrote it down, and we took it to a Party City, instructing them to wait until we left to fill a box with blue/pink balloons. They were fantastic, and enjoyed giggling about the fact that we didn't know what was in it when we picked up the box later that night!

The box sat in our house for a whole 24 hours, and it was driving us crazy! But the hour finally came when we could open it up and see what was inside!!!

(Lol at the giant "Penske" label on the box😂)

It's a boy!!!

The pictures don't even do it justice... we were so surprised!!! I think both of us were kind of expecting a girl!

(Check out the video HERE!!)

It feels SO SO good to finally know that we have a HE coming in August! The best part, I think is that I can stop calling him "it" 😂
We had so many people come out to our party, and it was so humbling and joyful to start this little dude's life with celebration and fellowship. I loved every minute of it.

Have you ever had a reveal party? How did you reveal the gender of your baby?

P.S. Did you miss our beautiful baby announcement pictures?? See them here!)

Linking up with some awesome parties here!