Sending Baby Shower Info to Out of Town Guests by Email

I went to evite.com and made my own invitations and in the message just put that I knew people would not be able to make it and that I wanted to let them know that I was thinking of them and wished they could be there. I did not put my registry info on there but I did put all of the shower info on it. I got many responses!

How to say this delicately...You don't just send people information on your registry if you are not inviting them to the shower. And even then, some purists think it is still a serious violation of etiquette to send registry information with a shower invite. The reason is that it suggests that gifts are required when they are always optional.

While I am sure your intention is to make things convenient for those who *want* to send a gift, the more polite way to do that may be to wait until someone asks you (or your mom, sisters, aunts) about it and then you can start to spread the word.

I am also pregnant with my first and while my husband's family is all close by and will attend the shower, my friends/family are all spread out. So I understand wanting to get the info out to in a fast/convenient way. But I still believe you don't want to give people gift information unless and until you are asked.

Congrats on your baby and good luck.

I think it would be rude to send the registry information in anything but a shower invitation. That being said, you could always use evite.com and make a cute invitation for free. You could add to the wording that you know some live too far to attend, buy you wanted to include everyone who will be special in your baby's life. Good luck!

You could try evites. In my experience people respond much better to snail mail invites though. I mailed all my invites and was surprised to find that 2 families drove 9 hours to come to the shower! I rarely get to see them so that was gift enough, but they did bring super nice gifts too. I also had tons of gifts mailed to us from people I didn't even know (friends of my mom's who I hadn't even met). I doubt people would have taken the time to send those gifts if I hadn't taken the time to actually send them a REAl paper invitation.

If you are going to stick with internet invites perhaps you could also set up a baby website and announce your registry info there so it doesn't seem like you are saying "I'm not willing to pay for a stamp but you should send a gift". Babies Online is a free website and you can put links to your registry on it.

Hi A.....Is someone else giving you your shower? I would have them send the invite with arecent pic of you and a little note like...know that it may be hard for you to attend but still wanted to extend the invite to speical friends and family of A. and Paul.
Congrats!
Keep us in mind if you want to hang back and enjoy your own party!-
D. Sansone
Party Angels
www.partyangelsus.com

The decision for them to attend or not is up to them. You might be surprised to find that someone will make the trip to come to your baby shower for your first child. I think if you want to send registry info, you need to send them an invitation. It shouldn't be that much more expensive to add the out of town people to the guest list, and I think it would be a bit rude to just send an e-mail with your registry info. Now, another idea to keep your out of town family involved in the pregnancy would be to send out an e-mail once a month or so with info on how you are doing. I had joined babycenter.com when I was pregnant and they send you an e-mail once a week telling you things like "the baby is now the size of a lipstick tube", etc. You could send out a monthly e-mail to your family with that kind of info as well as how you are feeling and what is going on like "we've picked the nursery theme and starting to prepare for the baby's arrival". They might then ask where you are registered or if you need/want anything. I think that would be in better taste.

Congrats on your 1st pregancy!

I have used www.evite.com for a couple different event that I wanted to let intown and out of town people know about. It is free and they give you several options. I am pretty sure you can add registery info too.

There are different websites out there that do email style invitations... 123greetings.com is one

Just an idea...A while back for a friend of mine who lived out of state, there were a few of us who could not attend her shower so we did a babyshower in a box. What that was is each of her friends/family that were out of town that could not attend the shower put a gift in a box. The first friend sent it to the next friend who added her gift, then that friend sent it to the next and so on...It was fun and the expense was not so great on the last friend who sent the box to the pregnant friend. My pregnant friend was surprised and very happy with all that was included in the box...

I did the same thing. I just sent an email from wherever I registered... usually their website will provide you with a way to do that. Another thing you could do is email everyone and send them the links with your registration info, telling them what name it is registered under. This was my first pregnancy, so I understand where you are coming from! It is convenient and easy! You can just say something like I am sending this link or whatever it is, to everyone so that if they wish to gift something to the baby they may do so by logging on to whatever website/store you are registered at. I sent it to people who were in the same state/city as well. But I did not ask anyone to give me anything, I just said if they wanted to... hint hint. LOL! Hope this helps!

I use Evite.com for alot of invitations. It seems a little impersonal, but with the changing and busy lifestyles of today, it's practical. You can choose from many categories, designs, etc. It's really great!