Last weekend, Thomas and I went to our friends’, Ali and Shannon’s, baby shower. Baby showers are not typical here – it’s more common to have friends and family stop by after the birth to meet the baby. Since our friends are American though, we went to a typical American-style shower…well, except that the guys were invited too. But it was fun – we grilled out, played a couple of games, and oohed and ahhed as the parents-to-be opened the presents.
The Party Organizers: Maisie, Ali, Stephanie, and Leah
There are a few differences in baby stores that I learned through Ali (the mom-to-be) and my own experience in buying a gift. The main baby store around here is called Premaman. You see them everywhere, so much so, that Thomas and I have turned this into a noun – “there’s a Premaman on the tram, why don’t you give her your seat.”
The Premaman: Ali
When registering, the main difference is that they actually take the items off the racks and put them in a big box in the back. After the shower, anything that is still in the box, that they’re no longer selling (like seasonal clothes) has to be purchased by the parents.
Chilling on Leah's Back Porch
I purchased something off Ali’s list online. Many of the items on the website did not have images, so I had to decode the abbreviation (in French) to guess what it was. When I was ready to check out, it lead me to my bank’s website to pay. This is common here – I really need to do a post just on online banking because it’s very different… The online checkout never asked me to pay for shipping or where to ship it. It turns out that the parents have to go pick the items up at the store. Ugh, whoops. If I had known, I would have picked it up myself.
The Parents-to-Be Open Gifts
Anyway, here’s some links if you want to see more baby shower photos or read Ali’s post on buying baby supplies in Brussels.
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Looks like a fun party.
In Belgium, when one visits a new baby, the visitor recievers a gift – usually sugared almonds. They are like the bomboniere given out at weddings :)
I really struggled with the lack of onine banking in the USA – we even paid our rent and electricity by cheque. But then in Belgium I have to remember to bring our little KBC digicard reader with me whenver I make an electronic payment.
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Ooh, I was wondering why someone in Belgium was having a babyshower. Guess it’s cause they aren’t Belgian, hehe.
And yeah the candy that visitors get is called doopsuiker in Dutch. No idea about French.
Hans can’t grasp the fact that we can’t do money tranfers and paylents via computer like they can here. I like the amount of online banking here, but that digipass? PAIN!
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The shower and premaman look lovely, but the shopping part and gift registry… it’s really different ( I am trying to not say “hard” or “weird”, but it is definitely different!)
Thanks Dallas for posting a blog on our baby shower! It was a lovely time and was happy you guys could make it!
Thankfully, we didn’t put everything on our ‘Definite’ list or we’d be required to purchase a lot after the baby was born! Basically the store, Baby 2000, requires you to say if the item you want is a ‘must or definite’ in that case they put it the backroom in a box for you; if you say the item is ‘not a definite’ than we’re not guaranteed to be able to get that product or forced to buy it, especially if it’s seasonal or some product that they won’t get again. When we were at Premaman, I don’t think we had the option to hold items back or make a ‘Definite’ list unless we wanted certain clothes which were seasonal, in that case, they’d hold them back and we’d be required to purchase them (though, you could only register for clothes 2-3 weeks before the baby was born which wasn’t worth it in my case b/c of the showers being before those dates). We created our registry back in April and the baby is due in July which is not normal by European standards since they wait until a month or less before hand to create their baby list(I think). Also I was a little annoyed that the websites didn’t have better pictures (if any at all) or descrptions…oh well, it was a new experience!
Thanks again and by the way I love the adorable burp clothes you made! I’m going to pick up the other items at Premaman soon, so I’ll get the baby food cups and bottles as well! Thanks!
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