Question:
What are your thoughts for online baby showers? Any recommendations for a good (free) hosting site?
Answer:
Dear Delainie,
I've fielded several questions over the summer regarding online showers, webcam showers, telephone conference showers, and any variation in between!
If there simply isn't any other way to gather partiers under one roof, then the "virtual shower" becomes your game. The trouble is, I haven't come across any free virtual baby shower hosting sites. No one on my research team has either.
If you can spend $50 or so, check out "How to Plan a Successful Online Baby Shower".
This guide gives you advice and provides links to baby shower sites that host online showers. You'll have to get a webcam, though. If you don't have one already, they are reasonably priced and can be obtained at outlets such as Radio Shack, Circuit City, Target, Best Buy and Wal-Mart.
The $50 cost of the feed is actually reasonable and well-worth every penny if that's your only means of getting favored guests to participate "live" at Mom-to-Be's shower.
A no-cost solution would be to start a free blog at https://www.blogger.com/start. The walk-thru for set up is user-friendly and uploading photos to a blog is a breeze. The downside is that none of this unfolds in real time. To get photos up on the blog on the same day during the shower, you'd have to have a tech-savvy guest on hand. Someone would need to snap photos using a digital camera then have your tech-savvy wizard quickly upload them to the blog.
The other option is to upload photos later, after the shower, or post them on a free account website like http://www.webs.com/. At webs.com you can start your own website and make into a blog, a video and photo sharing hang-out and even have people blog back to you! It's a fun way to "go community" in virtual space when people can't meet up face-to-face.
Delainie, strike a pose! How about doing a Vogue "model shoot" shower theme? It's cost effective! You can hang a black cloth drop, aim some lights onto it, then have your guests do campy poses for their "official" blog pic! Mom-to-Be is, of course, the star!
Just for for fun, I'm providing the YouTube link to Madonna's "Vogue" video. You can easily link it to your blog for "atmosphere." Oh, what a fun shower this could be!
Happy Showering!
Susan "The Shower Diva"
Where Fun Reigns!™
