Baby Shower Timeline Maker
Tell it when guests arrive, how many are coming, and what kind of shower it is. The maker sizes gift opening to your guest list — the part that always runs long — and fits games, food, and cake around it so the afternoon ends before anyone flags.
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Reorder by dragging, save versions, invite vendors, and export branded PDFs in the full app — see all features.
Gift opening is the part that runs long, so it is the part the maker sizes
Every baby shower plan underestimates the same block. Games are short and flexible, food finds its own rhythm, but gift opening is arithmetic: roughly ninety seconds per gift to unwrap it, hold it up, read the card, thank the giver, and pass it round the room. Twenty guests is half an hour. Forty guests is an hour of the guest of honour opening packages while everyone else watches — which is the moment a lovely afternoon starts to feel long. The maker ties this block to your guest count so you can see the cost before you commit to it. If it pushes the shower past three hours, you have three honest options: open only the group gifts, open the rest afterward with close family, or skip it and let the gift table stand as a display.
More on AI Timeline Generator →Games before gifts, never the other way round
A shower has an energy curve, and the schedule should ride it rather than fight it. The room is most animated in the first ninety minutes — people have arrived, eaten, and warmed up — and that is when games work. Gift opening is the opposite: a seated, quiet, attentive stretch where one person has the floor. Put games after it and you are asking a room that has just spent forty minutes watching to stand up and compete, and it rarely does. The order this maker uses — arrive, eat, play, open, cake, goodbyes — is the one experienced hosts settle on, because it lets each block hand its energy to the next.
More on Drag-and-Drop Builder →The guest of honour’s stamina sets the end time
Most showers happen late in pregnancy, and the person the whole event is for may be the one least able to stand for three hours. That shapes the plan more than any decor choice. Keep the standing, greeting-heavy part — arrivals and mingling — early, when they have the most energy. Give them a comfortable chair facing the room for gifts. And treat two and a half to three hours as a ceiling, not a target: the maker shows your end time as you add blocks, so you can see when a nice extra tips the afternoon into an exhausting one. A shower that ends while people are still enjoying it is remembered better than one that ends because everyone is tired.
More on Sharing & Participants →Prefer a written guide?
This builder generates a live schedule you can edit and print. For worked examples with downloadable PDF & Word templates, read the guides:
Common questions
How long should a baby shower last?
Two to three hours from arrival to goodbyes suits most showers. The default here runs about three hours with twenty guests; drop gift opening or trim the games and it comes in closer to two. Watch the end time as you change options — the guest of honour’s energy is the real limit.
When do you open gifts at a baby shower?
After food and games, before cake. Opening gifts is a seated, quiet stretch, so it belongs after the high-energy part of the afternoon rather than in the middle of it. Allow about ninety seconds per gift.
How many games should a baby shower have?
Two or three short ones is plenty — twenty to forty minutes in total. Co-ed and brunch showers need fewer; a classic games-and-gifts shower can carry more. Beyond that, games start to feel like homework.
Is this baby shower timeline maker free?
Yes — build, edit, and print your schedule with no signup. To share it with co-hosts or reuse it, open it in Chronolio and it carries across exactly as you built it.
Do more than build a schedule
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