Input on Birth Announcements

Thanks to facebook and other electronic forms of communication, I did not send any out! Good luck and congrats on the baby.

Hi K.,
You need to send those out ASAP, the earlier the better, so friends and family can prepare.

Congratulations and Happy Holidays!

I think sending them out as soon as possible after the baby is born is great. Otherwise, proper etiquette says within six months of the baby's arrival.

I really love the site www.tinyprints.com. They have a ton of different layouts and their site is easy to use. They also have great customer service & fast shipment. I also use them for our Christmas cards.

I have always sent out birth announcements to everyone on our Christmas card list. It's a big list but I don't care, I always wanted to show my new little baby off to as many people as I could think of :) Definitely finish your mailing list before the baby comes and even print off labels if you can, beforehand, so all you have to do is stuff and mail once you get the announcements printed.

Congrats and best of luck to you for a quick and easy delivery! Also, I totally love your little girls' name! I'm expecting my 3rd next May and Rose is such a pretty name!

I am 32 weeks pregnant and I plan to use Shutterfly or TinyPrints to make birth announcements. I plan to send announcements to close family and friends, as well as anybody that attended the baby shower (I'm sure people want to see the little person that they bought a gift for).

You might want to look at photoaffections.com too- they have some cute ones!

tinyprints.com is great, soon after the birth of the baby is best and i agree with you. family close friends coworkers or workplaces. thats enough probably! congrats and best wishes!

I use Tiny Prints and only send them out to family and close friends --maybe 40 people max. My plan is to place the order within 1 week of baby's arrival (I'm due in 3 days and waiting very impatiently to meet my little boy!)

I'd highly recommend printing some nice address labels for your list NOW, so that you are literally ready to get them in the mail as soon as your order arrives.

The sooner you can send them the better, but if you don't get them out in the first few of weeks, people will understand, especially this time of year. We used announcingababy.com for our daughter's and are planning on using them once we get a picture I like of our almost 3-week old son. They have a lot of cute stuff and the service was really good since it's a small business. I am pretty much using my Christmas list for the announcements, maybe adding a few co-workers. I think you can send them to as few or as many people as you like - it's totally up to you. Congratulations and best of luck to you!

Hi K..
We ordered ours from Costco because we sent out almost 150! I love tiny prints, but we didn't want to spend that much money. Ours were cute, but the problem with Costo is that you don't get to choose a font. There is only one. But I am going to use them for Christmas cards too because you get 50 cards for $14.99. The ones that we liked from tiny prints, were $1.59/each.

I had the address labels all typed and printed out before I even had my son. I also had the announcement picked out and ready to go. We just needed the baby to take a picture!:)

I think it's up to you as to who you send it to. We sent to almost our entire wedding list and then some co-workers.

Good luck with everything. Your baby name is beautiful!

We sent them to most everyone on the wedding list. You can send them out I think with in the first 8 weeks or so. We did ours at wall-mart or sams I think.
Congratulations. It is so worth it!

Believe it or not we used Costco! They have a bunch of options to choose from.We had a little girl too and picked one that allowed three photos to be used. You can upload your pictures online and they are ready at the store by the next day or you can have them shipped. We sent to everyone and anyone we wanted. I ordered 150 and I don't think I spent more than 50 dollars. Good luck!

We sent them to everyone on our wedding list. Our wedding wasn't huge so that basically covered all the extended family that we only see at weddings and funerals. We also of course sent it to all our friends and some co-workers. I think if you get it out in the first 12 weeks your doing good. this time of year, I have and I have friends who have, just added them in the Christmas Card, or made them the Christmas car (if you send those out). I also got mine from Shutterfly, I loved them. I would have done Tiny Prints, but we ordered over 100. I did look at Walgreens too because they are cheaper, I just liked the multi image design at Shutterfly better.

I know you have received a lot of input on announcements already but I wanted to share an idea that has not been mentioned yet. I got birth announcements for both my kids from picturemeperfect.com . Here is a link to an example on their website. http://www.picturemeperfect.com/getimage.asp?type=sample&...
It is not just a photo card like Costco, Wal-Mart etc has. It is a nice picture that they put on velum paper and back with paper color of your choice and a ribbon if you wish. They are a little more expensive than Costco but in my opinion look so nice - a definite keepsake. I even ordered an 8x10 copy of the velum print and framed it in the kids rooms. It's just beautiful.
As far as who to send them out to. I sent to every family member on the wedding guest list and all our friends as well. But for us it was also the first grandchild on both sides of the family!
Good luck and congrats ;0)

Unfortunately the younger generation is getting away from the birth announcement. You're lucky if you get an email. I've had all fall babies so I usually just enclosed my birth announcements in with our holiday cards (for the price of 1 stamp!). I made my own (and others) using whatever theme is the nursery (serves as a helpful hint if someone decides they wanna send you soemthing) and the last child I did insert the hospital website photo.

Send them out to whomever you may think wants to know! You can get announcements anywhere, online, Walmart, Walgreens, Costco. Check them all out, figure how much you want to spend and what you want them to say!

Hello K.. Congratulations! I hope you had a wonderful holiday with your new baby girl. I'm not sure if you've made a decision about birth announcements yet. I have to say, you are much more on the ball than I was with my first one!

I wanted to recommend the company that I work with for your birth announcements. It's called PJ Greetings (www.pjgreetings.com). It's a family owned company and we pride ourselves on providing unique, personalized cards with personal service. We have some birth announcement styles on line to see, but the majority of the announcements that we do are customized and designed to your taste.

We could do a "holiday blessings" or "blessings for the new year" theme for you. We could also change the colors on any of our holiday cards if you like those designs. Or, as I said before, our specialty is creating something just for you.

I'd be happy to assist you with your announcements in any way that I can. I do offer a discount for Mamasource moms.

You can use your own photos or I can recommend a couple of fabulous photographers. Amelia Nenni with Worth a Thousand Words Photography is amazing and has photographed my children for years. She is in Oswego but will travel to you if you prefer. Megan Kelly Photography (in Geneva) is also great and both are Mamasource moms.

We also have matching return address labels and thank you notes for all of the well wishes and gifts. I wouldn't say that you have to send them to everyone on your wedding list. Family, friends, co-workers, anyone who attended your baby shower.

Wishing you and your family all the best!

Hi K., I sent ours in the thank you note for the baby gift and it took me probably 3 months to get to them all. I made them using Publisher and printed them at home since I couldn't find a design that I really liked anywhere else. I know more people probably would have liked to receive an announcement but since I made them all myself I just couldn't manage. I did email the announcement to extended family. Good luck and congratulations on the new baby soon to arrive!

Congradulations!!!
What a wonderful journey youo and your husband are going to go on!
As for birth announcements, I had the envelopes addressed and ready to go before she was born so all I had to do was send in the picture for them to make the announcement(I paid for them in advance to get the envelopes ready). as soon as I recieved them back about 2 weeks after she was born they went out.
as for who to send them to, pretty much anyone you want to, make sure you send them to everyone from your babyshower, not necessarily your wedding.
Congradulations again!!
I have a 5 year old daughter. By far my Biggest Blessing!

V.

K.,

We did our photo birth announcements online and they turned out great, plus they were delivered to the door. Shutterfly is a great site!
You can send them out whenever you want, but I would think in the first month. We sent them to our Christmas card list.

Hi K.!
When I sent out announcements for my 2 kids, I sent them to EVERYONE!! Family, friends, anyone who you think is important to you should receive one. I think I usually see announcements within 8 weeks, or so. Kind of depends on how busy you are. As for where to get them done...This may be a far stretch for you, but I do personalized announcements, invitations, cards, etc. So, if you wanted to run some ideas past me, please do. I've been doing it for a little while now and am finally setting up my website to go public. I have a number that I have made. Either I make them with all of the info already included, or I leave some info blank for you to fill in. Whatever way you go, just make sure it is how you want it to be. Good luck & congrats on your new baby!!
J.

I used Shutterfly for my daughter's announcements. It was very affordable and I was able to put in more than one picture with the format I chose. They have so many choices, I had hard time choosing. I also considered tinyprints.com another poster mentions. I sent them out about a month after. The first few weeks at home with a new baby are so busy, sending a month out should be acceptable.

In my opinion, it's good to have a little bit of a game plan before the baby comes, so kudos to you!

You can send the announcements to whomever you'd like. We sent them to family, friends, co-workers, and others we thought would be interested. Yes, it is an awful lot but chances are many people know you were expecting a baby and look forward to sharing your joy with you. However, there is no obligation to serve up hundreds of announcement; this really is your choice to do as you please.

We got our first son's birth announcements at Tiny Prints (www.tinyprints.com) and will do the same for our second son (arriving in 3 weeks, too :) ) It was a personal preference for us - I wanted an announcement that was card stock, included a color photo, and was simple and elegant. I found that their products suited our needs. We sent ours out around 6 weeks, I think. This time around, however, we will try to send ours even earlier since my baby is coming on the 22nd, we are doing a Christmas-themed announcement, and we'd like to get them out with the holidays still fresh in the mind.

The biggest task will be addressing the announcements. You can attempt to squeeze this in between naps or if you have close family members who want to stop by and 'help' this is the perfect task for them.

Good luck and enjoy your last three weeks before you increase your family by 50%! Best wishes for a happy and healthy baby.

I don't have 'from experience' advice, but our first little one is due in January and I am planning on typing up labels for the birth announcements from our Christmas card list, mainly close friends and family. I plan on ordering the announcements through Costco or Kodakgallery.com for the convenience and price factor, both have nice options. I believe who you send it to is a personal choice and choose who you think would be interested. My company sends out an email with the announcement in it so my co-workers are not on the list. I also plan on posting it to Facebook so that will cover the additional friends who will not be getting one in the mail. If you get them out in the first 4-6 weeks, you're doing good. I'm shooting for that time frame myself.
Wishing you a healthy and happy delivery!