A few questions from a first time shower thrower

MamaHanna

Good morning ladies! Ok so let me preface this with I AM NOT THROWING MY OWN SHOWER! LOL. My mom is not very tech savvy to be able to post herself and she has never hosted a baby shower before so she wanted me to ask some questions for her on the board. My question is my mom booked the shower for October 20th and she was wondering when should we send out invitations? We already gave ?out of towners? the heads up via phone call/e-mail. I am assumes same rules apply as a bridal shower about 1 ?-2 months. Any hot tips for ?team green? themes? We are going to do a gender reveal at the shower as part of the dipper raffle. If you bring a pack of dippers you get to vote for boy or girl and then we will pull a name from the correct gender pick and they get a spa gift certificate! I wanted to make sure people would do gender neutral gifts because my one friend told people in advance and got tons of REALLY cute pink stuff but now she is having a boy and has to re-buy almost everything. This is our first and we are planning on a big family so I want stuff that will be able to be re-used. Last question! What is an appropriate length for a baby shower? My bridal shower got taken over by my in-laws and went WAYYYYYYYY to long people got restless and a lot of my guests left before I even got to open gifts. Needless to say we are not looking for a re-peat of that! We were thinking 3-4 hours is good. Thank you for all of your help ladies! I am sure my mom will appreciate it!