If Your Baby Shower Is The Size Of A Large Wedding, You Will Look Like A Shameless Gift-Grabber

One must be very careful when planning a baby shower lest it start to look like a giant, tacky gift-grab. One fast way to look like a great big gift grubber is to invite well over 100 people, because nothing says “intimate get-together” like hosting a wedding reception for your fetus.

One Reddit user says she’s in a bit of a pickle because her boyfriend is insisting on inviting 120 people to their baby shower. Two friends are hosting the shower, but when the friends asked the pregnant lady and her partner for a guest list the boyfriend searched his Facebook friends and came back with 120 people, all of whom he insists are dear, close friends who would be crushed if they were not invited. She says she wanted to invite maybe 10 people, but her boyfriend is adamant.

“When I explained to him that we needed to cut the list down, he got extremely upset. He said it’s not fair, and that he wants to share this with everybody.

Dear, dear boyfriend. It’s really awkward to get an invitation to a baby shower if you haven’t talked to someone much in the past year, let alone have never met your pregnant girlfriend.

I can’t find a way to compromise with him. He’s so distraught about cutting down the guest list that he said we might as well not invite anybody. He thinks that if he cuts the list down, people will feel rejected and hurt that they didn’t get invited.”

She says she’s capitulating because she “wants to see him smile,” so it sounds like 120 people are about to receive invitations to an extremely awkward baby shower. I hope she has a big registry.

I want to know how the friends who are hosting this shindig reacted to the guest list. Offering to host a baby shower for a friend is not the same thing as offering to host a giant event for 120 people. How would you react if you were throwing a shower and the guest of honor handed you a 120-person guest list? Personally, I would be scouring the Internet for answers to, “How do I get out of hosting a baby shower?”

Also, a 120-person baby shower sounds like it would be the worst party in the world. Big weddings are fun, because there is music and dancing and Champagne, and nobody sits down and opens all the wedding gifts in the middle of the festivities. But people usually do open gifts at the shower, which means these guests are being invited to watch a pregnant woman they haven’t met open presents for well over an hour, at the minimum. I don’t know about you, but I would sooner attend a wedding in Game of Thrones.

It sounds like this woman’s boyfriend has no idea what a baby shower is and she has been incapable of explaining it to him, or she’s secretly looking forward to the giant present haul. My more cynical side suspects the latter. What better way to exculpate oneself than by blaming a stubborn significant other?

Next time I don’t want to do something, I’m going to have to try that. I can’t write thank-you notes for all these baby gifts because my recalcitrant partner thinks they’re killing trees. Sorry! (Not sorry.)

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