Baby Shower Budget: How to Make Sure You Do Not Go Over Your Budget.

Hosting a baby shower can be an expensive endeavour. In order to save on your credit card bill check out these money saving ideas:

Ask a friend or relative of the mother or mom-to-be to help “co-host” the baby shower. She can help with the baby shower menu, and take charge of either planning the baby shower games, or bringing some of the shower decorations.
Serve food that is light, and inexpensive to prepare. You can expect the cost of food to vary depending on the season you are holding the baby shower in.
Start shopping around for decorations, baby shower favors and invitations as soon as you can. This will give you tones of time to look for discounts, sales, and compare prices. My advice to you is to use the Internet as much as possible, not only will you get the best ideas from online resources, but you will also find the best prices world-wide!
Make sure you verify the number of guests attending 2-3 days prior to the baby shower. This will allow you to better plan how much food to buy. If you just assume that 25 guests will attend and prepare food items for 25 people and have only 10 people attend you will witness a huge waste of food…waste of money!

I have prepared an outline of a budget so that you can plan and allocate the necessary funds to each portion of the baby shower planning process. The way I suggest you use this free budgeting tool is to: 1) decide the maximum amount that you can spend on the entire baby shower, 2) figure out how many guest you expect, 3) decide how much you want to spend on the food, 4) allocate a certain amount to the baby shower gift, and 5) divide the remaining amount left amongst baby shower decorations, invitations, games, prizes and favors.

Budget

(1)Maximum dollars you want to spend:	$
Approximate number of guests attending:
(2)Maximum dollars allocated to baby shower food items:	$
(3)Maximum dollars budgeted for baby shower gift:	$
Dollars Remaining: (#1 - #2 - #3)	$
(4)Dollars allocated to decorations:	$
(5)Dollars allocated to invitations:	$
(6)Dollars allocated to shower games:	$
(7)Dollars allocated to shower prizes & favors:	$
Total Allocated to Baby Shower Theme: (#4 + #5 + #6 + #7)	$
If the number above is greater than the “Dollars Remaining” you may need to adjust the amount you are budgeting toward the baby shower theme.
Calculate if you are under or over the maximum dollars you want to spend on the entire baby shower: (#1 - #2 - #3 - #4 - #5 - #6 - #7)	$