Baby Shower Games Guests Actually Enjoy Playing

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Three games is the whole plan: one that runs while people arrive, one big one everybody plays sitting down, and one the parents take home.

The best baby showers have three games and a relaxed hostess. The worst have nine, a printed schedule, and a room of women checking the time. Games are not the point of a shower, and a shower with none stalls into two hours of small talk by the food table. You want enough structure that nobody is stranded, and not one game more.

Every game below says how it works and who it suits, because what lands with six college friends can die on its feet with thirty guests and two grandmothers in the room.

The three-game formula (one opener, one group game, one keepsake)

A two hour shower holds twenty minutes of arrivals, thirty of food, thirty of gifts, then photos and goodbyes. That leaves half an hour for games. Two fit comfortably, and the keepsake station costs no time at all because people drift to it between other things. Five do not fit, and the fifth is always the one people escape to the bathroom during.

• The opener runs on its own from the moment the first guest walks in. No announcement, no gathering, just something for early arrivals to do.
• The group game is the one real event, played after food and before gifts. Fifteen minutes, one rule sheet, one winner.
• The keepsake is a station, not a game. Guests drift over during the party and the parents leave with something signed by everyone there.

If you would rather not assemble any of it, a printable baby shower games bundle gives you the sheets, answer keys and signs in one download, usually in several palettes so the paper matches your table. The rest of the plan lives in the baby shower collection.

Games for while people arrive

The first twenty minutes are the awkward ones. People arrive in twos, half of them strangers, and the mom-to-be is busy being hugged. Pick one of these, prop a card beside it with the rules in two lines, and let it run.

• Don’t Say Baby. Every guest gets a clothespin at the door. Say the word “baby” and whoever catches you takes your pin; most pins at gift time wins. Ribbon-tied wooden clothespins cost a few dollars. Best for large groups, because catching people out forces strangers to talk.
• The prediction board. A poster where guests write their guesses: birth date, time of day, weight, length, hair color. The parents keep it and check it after delivery. Any crowd, any size, and it doubles as a keepsake.
• Baby picture match. Ask on the invitation for a baby photo of each guest, number them on a board, and let people write down who is who. Wonderful at family showers, where the resemblances are startling.
• How many in the bottle. Fill a bottle with jelly beans and collect guesses on slips of paper. Closest number takes it home. The lowest-effort game here, playable from an armchair by the guest who arrived early and knows nobody.

Pick one. Two at once means neither gets played properly, and the clothespins are the one people remember.

The one big group game

This is the one you announce. Plates are down and you have the room for a quarter of an hour. Games where guests perform one at a time are lovely with eight people, endless with thirty.

• Baby shower bingo. Guests fill cards with gifts they expect to be opened, then mark them off during the gift round, which turns the quietest stretch of the party into something people watch. A pack of bingo cards saves the writing. The best pick for a big shower.
• The price is right. Line up six real items on a tray: wipes, a bottle, a pacifier, a swaddle, nipple cream, newborn diapers. Guests write price guesses, closest total wins, the mom-to-be keeps the tray. Quietly educational for anyone who has not shopped for a newborn.
• Purse raid. Read out a list (a hair tie, an old receipt, a snack, something with a baby on it) and guests score points for what is in their bag. Zero preparation, and the whole room laughs at once.
• Guess the mom. Collect one childhood mishap story each from both grandmothers and the mom-to-be, read all three aloud, and let guests vote on who did what. It always turns up a story nobody had heard.

Write the rules on one card and read them once. If a game takes three attempts to explain, swap it for bingo. More ideas are in the baby shower ideas hub.

Keepsake games the parents keep

What outlasts a shower is the written stuff: the cards, the messages, the onesie somebody drew on. A side table with a sign, good pens and a basket runs itself.

• Onesie decorating. Plain white onesies, fabric markers, a few stencils. Guests draw, write a joke or sign a sleeve, and the finished ones hang on a mini clothesline as decor while they dry. Buy three and six month sizes so they get worn.
• The signing station. Something that gets used instead of a book in a drawer: a wooden nursery sign, a puzzle where each guest decorates a piece, or a storybook signed inside the cover. A guest book alternative costs the same and ends up on a wall.
• Late-night diaper notes. Guests write a message on the outside of a clean size one diaper. At three in the morning, six weeks in, the parents open one. Leave markers by the stack and let people be silly.
• Wishes for baby cards. One card, one wish, dropped in a jar. Ask for a wish rather than advice and you get warmth instead of instructions, which is the difference between a card reread and one skimmed.
• One thing I wish I had known. The advice version, best when most guests are parents. Ask for one line, not a paragraph. The card message guide has wording guests can borrow.

One station is enough. Stand a card with the baby registry name on the same table, where guests already linger.

Games that work with men and grandparents in the room

Coed showers fail predictably: the women play, the men gather by the grill, the grandparents sit on the good sofa. The fix is games with a clock, a score, or something to hold.

• The dad quiz. Ask the mom-to-be ten questions in advance (first craving, the week she found out, what she cannot eat anymore), then quiz the dad-to-be live while guests hold up cards for right or wrong. Five minutes, whole room watching.
• Diaper time trial. A doll, a diaper, a stopwatch, a line of volunteers. Fastest correct change wins, and the one-handed version, done while holding a phone to your ear, gets uncles off the patio.
• Guess who. Baby photos of both parents side by side, teams vote on which features this baby will get. The grandparents win every time, because they have the receipts.
• Onesie decorating as a contest. The same station with categories: funniest, best drawing, most likely to be worn in public. Put out fabric markers and plain onesies and name a winner. Grandfathers who would never play a guessing game draw a very serious fish.
• A yard game with a prize table. Cornhole, ladder toss or bocce running in the background at a backyard shower, with the same prizes as everything else. It gives the people who will not play a game something to win.

Two of these is the maximum. Coed showers want less structure, not more.

Prizes and how many to buy

Prizes go wrong in one direction: novelty items nobody takes home. A prize should be something the winner would have bought for herself. A candle, good chocolate, hand cream, local coffee, a gift card to the coffee shop down the street.

• How many: one per game plus two spares. Ties happen constantly with guessing games, and a spare beats asking two people to share a candle.
• What to spend: eight to fifteen dollars each, the top of that for the group game.
• Buy them matching. A set of baby shower prizes for guests in one order is cheaper than five separate gifts and looks intentional stacked on the table.
• Wrap them in the palette. Tissue and ribbon in your shower colors turn five small items into a display, so the prize table becomes decor. Palettes by theme are in the baby shower themes guide.
• Let the mom-to-be win nothing. She is not competing, and asking her to play against her own guests is an awkwardness you can skip.

Games I would skip

These three turn up on every list and land badly in every real room. They are the moments guests describe afterward with a small wince.

• Melted candy in a diaper. Guests smell and identify melted chocolate bars smeared in clean diapers. Somebody always declines, and the association follows people back to the dessert table. Swap it for the diaper time trial: same joke, a stopwatch instead of a smell test, and playable in front of a mother-in-law.
• Measuring her belly with toilet paper. Guests tear off a length they think will circle the bump, then wrap it around her while the room watches, and the guesses always run comically large. Swap it for the prediction board: same guessing, written on a card, nobody wrapped in anything.
• Guessing her weight. No version of this ends well, including the ones dressed up as guessing total pounds gained. Swap it for the baby’s birth weight and date, the same instinct pointed at someone who will not read the answers.

The general rule: if a game requires the guest of honor to be looked at, judged or measured, take it out. She has been the subject of comment for eight months, and this afternoon is on her side.

More baby shower guides

Games are one line on a longer list. The planning checklist covers the timeline from six weeks out to the morning of, the food ideas guide handles the menu, and the guest outfit guide is the one to send the friend still texting about what to wear.