Plan it around one person,
and the afternoon runs itself.

The ordinary window is the last stretch before the due date, in most places four to eight weeks out. Late enough that the pregnancy is comfortable to celebrate, early enough that the baby is unlikely to arrive first. Treat that as common practice rather than a rule — plenty of people hold one earlier, and some deliberately hold it after the birth.

The constraint that actually decides the date is physical, and it belongs to one person. Ask whether the guest of honour will still want to sit in a room full of people for three hours on the afternoon you have picked. In the last weeks that answer changes week by week, and the person you are asking will say yes to almost anything. Choose a date while the yes is still an easy one, and put it on a weekend afternoon.

If the shower is for an adoption the calendar is different and often shorter, and many families hold it once the child is home and the date is certain. The same goes for anyone who would rather celebrate afterwards. There is no rule that a shower has to happen before the arrival, only a habit.

The host is usually not the parent-to-be. In some places it is still thought poor form for the immediate family to host, precisely because a shower asks for presents and the family should not be asking on their own behalf; elsewhere the grandmother-to-be does it and nobody blinks. In practice the job goes to whoever offered first and has a big enough room, with the parents-to-be approving the guest list rather than organising their own party.

There is one rule about that list worth holding to. A shower is a gift occasion — that is what the invitation says to the person who opens it: something is expected, even something small. So the list should be the people who would want to give one. Close friends, the family who are genuinely close, colleagues only where they are friends outside work. Anyone who would be surprised to be asked is being sent a bill.

That usually makes the list shorter than the first draft, which is the right direction. Twenty people is a lot of faces to open presents in front of. If someone is left off and would mind, the answer is not a bigger party but a separate one: coffee the week after, or drinks in the evening for the wider circle.

Children first. Decide, then say so on the invitation, because the real mistake is leaving people to guess. If children are welcome you need floor space, food a four-year-old will actually eat, and the understanding that the afternoon will be louder and half an hour longer. If they are not, say it warmly — "we have kept this one to grown-ups so everyone gets to sit down" does the job without sounding like a regulation.

Second, and more delicately: almost every guest list has someone having a hard time of their own — trying for a baby, a recent loss, treatment that is still going on. Do not decide for them. Send a message before the invitations go out: the shower is happening, you would love to have them there, and you will think nothing of it if they would rather not come. Then let them choose, and do not chase the reply. Quietly leaving them off to spare them is the one thing that reliably hurts.

Two hours, and the shape barely changes: half an hour of arriving and something to drink, then food, then one activity, then the presents, then goodbyes. Put the presents about three-quarters of the way in rather than at the very end, so there are fifteen unstructured minutes afterwards and people can leave in twos and threes instead of all at once.

A longer shower drags because it has no second act. There is exactly one moment of ceremony in the afternoon, and once the last parcel is open the room deflates — but nobody wants to be the first to leave, so everyone sits on for another hour with nothing to do. Meanwhile the guest of honour is holding a cup of tea and a fixed smile and cannot walk out of their own party.

One activity is enough. Guessing the date and the weight, a nappy raffle, everyone writing a line for the child to read in fifteen years, decorating a plain cotton vest. One thing that can be done sitting down beats five that need explaining. And if the guest of honour would hate a game, have none; nobody has ever left a shower disappointed that there were no games.

A list exists to stop five people buying the same 0-3 month sleepsuit, not to price the afternoon. Ask the parents what they genuinely need, keep it to a dozen or so things, and let it span a range of prices so nobody has to guess what is appropriate. Include one or two larger items several people can go in on together. Forty items reads as a shopping list; twelve with the sizes beside them reads as help.

Some people will want to bring something regardless, list or no list, and it is kinder to give that somewhere to go: nappies in the size after newborn, a book with a message written inside the cover, a meal for the freezer. Frozen meals are the most used present at any shower and almost never appear on a list.

"No gifts" is ignored about as often as it is written, because guests read it as manners rather than instruction. If you mean it, give a reason and a substitute in the same breath — "we have everything the baby needs, so your company is the present; if you want to bring something, bring a book for the shelf instead of a card." A reason plus an alternative is believed; a bare "no gifts, please" is not. The baby shower invitation wording page has that paragraph in a few registers, along with the line for a registry.

Here is the part most guides skip. If the shower is for someone who is pregnant, there is a list of things they cannot eat: soft cheese, pâté, cured and undercooked meat, some fish, and a longer list that varies from country to country and that their midwife will already have given them. The instinct is to lay out the usual spread and make one separate plate. Do not. It marks them out at their own party, and they will spend the afternoon being asked whether they are allowed that.

Plan the whole table around what they can eat instead. It is less limiting than it sounds: hard cheese rather than soft, cooked rather than cured, a baked cake rather than a mousse. Then put a small card beside the two or three dishes that are not for everyone — the one with nuts in it, the one someone who avoids gluten should walk past — so nobody has to ask across a table.

Drinks work the same way. Something good that is not alcoholic, poured into the same glasses as everything else, means the guest of honour is holding what everyone else is holding rather than a glass that announces itself. Ask about allergies on the reply form rather than in the group chat; an online RSVP brings the dietary notes back attached to the name, which is where you need them.

Two things depend on a number: the food and the seating. Say twenty-four people are invited — the difference between sixteen and twenty-two is a different table plan, a different quantity of everything, and if you are ordering in, a different order placed against a deadline that is not yours. Put a reply-by date on the invitation, roughly two weeks before the day.

Then expect it to slip, and not out of rudeness. This is one of the few occasions where people honestly do not know how they will feel that week: a friend who is heavily pregnant herself, someone with a small child and no childcare arranged yet, a relative who has to travel. Plan for the middle number, chase once about a week out, and chase people one by one rather than posting a reminder to the group.

Collect three things and no more: coming or not, how many of them, and anything they cannot eat. An online RSVP returns those as a single list, with the party size and the dietary notes sitting next to each name — the alternative is counting a group chat twice and getting two different totals. A link also lets you correct the address after the invitation has gone out, which a picture never can.

A surprise shower is a lovely idea and a risky one late in a pregnancy. The person being surprised has to arrive somewhere at a fixed time, dressed, feeling however they happen to feel that day, and then be looked at by thirty people. If the day goes badly, you have no way to move it. The compromise most hosts settle on keeps the good half: the guest of honour knows the date and that there is a party, and nothing else — not the guest list, not the theme, not whose house it is in.

For a second or third baby, the word people are often looking for without knowing it is a sprinkle: a smaller, shorter shower on the honest grounds that the cot and the pram already exist. The same shape at half the scale — fewer guests, ninety minutes, nappies and consumables rather than equipment. Some families call it a sibling shower and give the older child a job on the day, which makes a three-year-old feel part of something rather than displaced by it.

A shower for an adoption works much the same way, usually once the child is home, and often with clothes in a size that fits now rather than newborn ones. Whichever version you are organising, the thing being celebrated is identical: a room full of people who wanted to turn up.