Our Announcement – How We Told The World!

We had been planning how we would announce for a VERY long time! But there are so many great ideas around! Should we use the dogs? A chalk board? Four pictures one word? A comic strip? So many choices! We knew that we didn’t want to announce with just a plain old scan picture, but that didn’t get us any closer to finding “our” announcement!

We decided early on that we would announce at Amy’s 30th Birthday party, when I would be 11+5 weeks pregnant. We had had two scans at that point and found baby many times on the doppler, so figured it was a great time to announce. A few days before the party, we went to M&Ms World in London (I know!) and got personalised M&Ms made.

We still weren’t sure what to do with them, but after a bright suggestion from Amy’s sister, we decided that cupcakes were the way forward. I would like to say that we “got our bake on”, but that would be a lie! We bought pre made fairy cakes and pre made icing (I know! So lazy!) and got to work on creating our little surprises, that we would hand out to family members during the party.

The finished result was lovely little “announcement fairy cakes” with sparkly pink icing and personalised M&Ms – yay! We did enough for at least one for everyone and put them into the cake holder that I had bought a few days before, ready and waiting.

A couple of hours into the party, everyone had arrived and we handed them out. I have to say, the reactions were mixed. Some people were just like “Ooooh cake!” and just ate it (I can’t blame them…), some read it and were confused and a few read it and were very VERY excited, which was awesome. There were lots of congratulations and happy faces once everyone caught on, as well as a slightly nasty reaction from one of Amy’s aunts. BUT there’s always one and it was always going to be that one, so it wasn’t much of a surprise in that way.

We were a little underwhelmed by the announcement reaction in general, but it was mostly very positive which was great. The rest of the afternoon was spent talking about baby things and it was so nice to actually be able to talk about it openly and be excited about our impending parenthood! My dad’s birthday was the day after Amy’s party, but I had sent his card early with instructions to open it a day early. Needless to say he was thrilled by the card addressed to “Grandad” and the first pictures of his new grandchild.

After the party, we decided that it was time for the Facebook announcement. This one we had designed after our trip to the Queen’s Garden Party – because why not announce with a picture of the three of you in Buckingham Palace Gardens?

 The reaction to our Facebook announcement was absolutely fantastic. I love that people are so clearly happy for us, especially those who know how long our journey has been thus far. It’s great to have friends and family sharing in our joy at our new family member.

It definitely feels a lot better to have it all out in the open now. We can talk about it. We can buy things and no more worrying about who knows and what we can say in front of certain people. It’s great to share the happiness with those around us and great to know how excited everyone is for the arrival of this little human!

Now to start planning the gender announcement…

(FYI… we don’t know yet. July 15th is the day!)