These Gender Reveal Parties Went Horribly Wrong

I have two kids and I had two gender reveal parties for both of them. Well, I should say my wife had two gender reveal parties. On the one hand, I'm glad these little get-togethers make her happy.

Yes, it's good to spend time with your friends and family. It's fun to invite people over and have a nice little shindig and share the joy of your upcoming birth with them. But then there's a part of me that just absolutely hates gender reveal parties.

I understand it's just another way to celebrate the birth of your child, but I can't help but feel like it detracts from the "I'll love the kid no matter what" philosophy, you know? Plus, there's something inherently arrogant about thinking your child is so darn important that everyone in the world is going to want to see a celebration dedicated to the announcement of your offspring's sex.

Those are some of the reasons gender reveals rub me the wrong way. And for everyone who says I'm a curmudgeon or I'm just being a hater, I would point to solid evidence that sometimes gender-revealing can go too far and possibly kill people in the process. 

And although I fundamentally dislike these parties, even I can't bring myself to delight in how horribly wrong these gender reveal celebrations went.

We previously wrote about this couple who thought it'd be a good idea to have as explosive of a gender reveal party as possible, by literally blowing up a box containing the gender of their child. 

Now, newly released video shows the over-the-top gesture on camera, and the subsequent mayhem it caused.

The offending dad who started the fire, Border Patrol agent Dennis Dickey, has been forced to pay $220,000 in restitution charges. If you think that's a lot of money, it's only a fraction of the estimated damage his little stunt caused: a whopping $8.2 million. Honestly, what he owes is pretty much what med school students are in the hole for after they graduate, so it could be worse, I guess. Then again, the average salary of a border patrol agent means he'll probably be paying that off for a long, long time.

When Molly Mae Thompson was expecting her child, she decided to go the balloon reveal route. She probably regrets that they didn't keep a tighter grip on it.

"We stood with butterflies waiting to pop this balloon. Within moments, we would be showered with pink or blue confetti, revealing the gender of our little one," she wrote. "Well, the Santa Ana [winds] had a different plan. Not only did the balloon not pop, but a gust of wind blew that thing right out of our hands, straight over the roof, never to be seen again."

If this expectant mom was trying to escape in a cloud of blue smoke for her gender reveal, then she did a good job. There's nothing wrong with this reveal, per se, but the photo capturing the moment looks like a Gob Bluth illusion gone wrong.

This couple received conflicting gender results from the ultrasound company and their doctor, leading to some confusion on the day of their gender reveal party. The mama in the photo above wrote about it in her Instagram post.

"This video was cool and awesome until it was wrong," she said. "After the party, we went again to confirm the gender and it is a boy."

Learn from this parent's mistake: if you're planning on revealing the gender of your child, maybe don't leave it in the hands of Domino's. The toppings on the pizza were supposed to spell "it's a boy" but instead it just looks like a bunch of pizzas.

"#epicfail Dominos! This was suppose to be my gender reveal for the grandparents...total flop, should read "It's a boy" but dominos apparently doesn't know how to place pepperonis close together!"

Another common gender reveal method is to fill some cupcakes with either pink or blue filling, which is a cute and delicious way of announcing the sex of your child. However that only works if you take a bite out of the cupcake and not swallow it all in one bite, like this Daddy did.

"So this was suppose to be the gender reveal for Chad at work but somehow the 'gender reveal' part got left out and typical for my husband he ate the cupcake whole not even noticing the pink cream center."

This couple had a box packed with balloons. Their idea was to pull a string and have either a bunch of pink or blue balloons fall down on them at their gender reveal party. Instead, the box fell on mom's head. Definitely not as cute.

All right, take a quick look at this cake (if you're not colorblind) and tell me what two colors you see. Now, it'd be fine if these parents were having twins, but they're not.

"Chocolate = boy
Strawberry = girl
There is only one baby and I see TWO flavors......"

This one was even more confounding than the cake conundrum above. It's simple: you pack a box with pink balloons for a girl and blue balloons for a boy. What does it mean when you've got blue, purple, yellow, green, orange, and red in there? Maybe whoever packed the box didn't want the kid's parents to assume their kid's gender for them.

Hey, does standing in front of a homemade cannon with your very pregnant wife for a gender reveal sound like a good idea to you? No? Well then congratulations, you've got a ton of common sense.

Even though the couple tested and re-tested this cannon before their big gender reveal, it malfunctioned at the last moment, forcing someone off camera to kick the thing to get the confetti out. Which resulted in the injuries below.

Thankfully no one else was hurt in the incident. In case you're wondering, it was a boy.

We've already written extensively about the psychopathy that was this gender reveal explosion. But basically, a New Hampshire couple using the stuff found in Tannerite exploding targets to make an "exploding" gender reveal announcement ended up using way too much of the stuff.

What ultimately happened was a yet-to-be-determined amount of property damage that cracked the foundation of a neighbor's house and an earthquake that was reportedly felt some 30 miles out.

It's a pretty commonplace gender reveal tradition, someone pops a balloon that's filled with a specific-colored dye that will indicate the sex of the baby. A ginormous balloon filled with blue powder was popped and it went all over a running Toddler's face. Pretty fantastic. The kind runs to his Mama and she uses her shirt to wipe it off his face.

This adorable little girl was supposed to find out the gender of her new younger sibling, instead she just got a big box dropped on her head. Maybe she'll be like me and end up hating gender reveals?

This extremely young looking couple planned a simple gender reveal...but they should've probably picked a less windy day to do it, because the dye went straight into this young man's face. It seems like he was excited for a boy, though, and that's what he ended up getting.

Hitting a pinata with a stick with blinfolded is difficult enough. But when it's a smaller one in the shape of a baby crib and that thing starts getting all curly twirly across tree branches, well, that's no fun for anyone.

Fireworks always seem like they're a great idea, until they fall over and start shooting at you and all of your family members. It happens.