Big City Moms headed to Los Angeles in late February to host their first “Biggest Baby Shower Event” outside of New York City. What an experience! Over the past 8 years we’ve hosted 10 successful Baby Shower Events in NYC and finally decided to spread the fun to other markets. Our first stop: Los Angeles! Who knew that expectant and new moms on the West Coast would be just as excited about the event as our New York fan base. We sold out of tickets after just 3 weeks of promoting the event with a wait list of over 300 people! Don’t worry if you missed us- we will definitely be back!
AS New Yorkers, we are so used to packing up trunks of taxi cabs and schlepping all over the city for our events, so when people started telling us about the dreaded traffic on the 405 and confusing back roads to avoid gridlock, we knew we were entering foreign territory!
Luckily we were introduced to the team over at General Motors through the fabulous organization Safe Kids. GM provided us with a Cadillac Escalade and a Buick Enclave to haul our equipment through the traffic and to our event at the Skirball Center. Coming from NYC where the avenues and streets are typically laid out in a numbered grid, it’s easy to find your destination. In LA, we were more than a bit nervous about getting lost. But with GM the cars were equipped with the On-Star system which easily helped us navigate the LA area – not once did we get lost! The best part? We avoided construction delays and got to our destination ahead of time which is apparently unheard of out there.
Leslie’s favorite feature of both cars was the screen that helps you back into spots. She says the Escalade is like a house on wheels- a big difference from her compact car in NYC. Usually packing up all our gear whether for an event or a weekend stay at Grandma’s takes up every inch of our car. We were elated to easily fit all of our stuff in the Escalade and Enclave with room to spare. Having these cars to get around was like a dream come true!
Okay – so about the event – there were about 80 companies present and over 500 expectant and new parents that attended. That’s a lot of female hormones in one room! The attendees were showered with gifts from all the vendors who were there to sample and educate about their various products and services.
Along with table hopping from company to company – we also hosted a bunch of educational seminars moderated by Samantha Ettus with celebrity parents and experts in just about every topic anyone starting a new family would need to know. Jessica Alba and Christopher Gavigan of The Honest Company spoke about safe products for children and the importance of simplifying your life once kids come into the picture. They also answered questions from the audience about raising children in the celebrity spotlight. (Christopher’s wife is actress Jessica Capshaw)
Other experts on hand were famed pediatrician Dr. Alan Greene who spoke about colic, Pump Station founder Wendy Handleman who spoke about breastfeeding and Dr. Harvey Karp shared his techniques for soothing babies. A handful of other leading experts spoke on every topic from raising a “green” family, baby gear must-haves, to what to look for in a caregiver and the ever-popular topic of work/life balance!
What did we – the team at Big City Moms learn about our LA experience? Expectant moms in LA are far less Type A than New Yorkers, the sushi is amazing, having a navigation system is a MUST in any car and we can’t wait to come back!!!!
Thanks GM for giving us the opportunity to work with you, test out the Escalade and Enclave and put smiles on all the military families that you sponsored to attend our fun-filled event!