Baby Showers
softthunder
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Co-ed Cookout/baby shower
softthunder
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in Baby Showers
My MIL is "planning" the baby shower ... she's hosting but I dont know how much planning she's actually doing. We want the baby shower to be co-ed both families and friends and be outside. I dont want the burden of all the food expense and prep to be on MIL, but other than asking family to bring dishes like we always do at large family dinners, I'm a bit lost at how to go about keeping costs low. I'm not thrilled about having family to bring food to a baby shower it seems rude to me. Thoughts/ideas on menu options or other ideas would be great! Thanks 
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Re: Co-ed Cookout/baby shower
Ditto Rach.
Another thought, though - a couple 4th of July's ago, we used a Mexican place (Salsarita's, in case its in your area too) to cater our party. It was surprisingly inexpensive for what we got. For the fact that it saved us the set up and clean up - we felt the added cost was worth it.
~Benjamin Franklin
DS dx with celiac disease 5/28/10
I totally agree with this...
I agree with checking around particularly with Mexican food places b/c you can get a lot of enchiladas for cheap usually.
Or would another family member maybe be willing to help even if only in the sense of doing the grilling at the party if you did hot dogs/hamburgers? Your mom could enlist cousins/aunts/uncles to help not with money but with their time for either cooking or some clean-up.
One of our showers is a co-ed BBQ as well. We're just doing burgers, brats, and hot dogs. I've had a lot of people offer to bring a side. So that's awesome. But we're going to costco to get most of our stuff. Keep it simple. People are there for you, not the food.
Ditto the others, another idea is pulled pork with sides if you happen to live in an area where that is popular- we do that for our July 4 bbq every year so we don't have to spend a ton of time over a hot grill. It isn't terribly expensive. maybe you could see if some close family (like siblings or aunts/uncles or close friends of family) would be up for bringing a side or app, that way it is the family all helping out to throw the shower & you're not asking guests to bring a dish, which definitely would be tacky.
GL!
Generally speaking you can't ask for food AND gifts.
There are ways of keeping the food prices low. Maybe your mom can see if a few aunts/cousins will help to host the party (instead of doing gifts). BBQ's are great for large amounts of chicken, corn on the cob and potato salad.