A gender reveal video message does one of two opposite jobs: it delivers the "it's a boy" or "it's a girl" line using only the sex the buyer typed into the private request, or it congratulates a family whose reveal already happened. Confirm which job you were hired for before you record, and never film both takes. Personalized Videos let a follower pay upfront for one personalized video for themselves or someone they care about: you set the price and the delivery time, then record it on your schedule.
A gender reveal video message is a recorded personalized video in which a creator either states the sex a follower has confirmed in writing or congratulates a family whose reveal has already happened. Two requests arrive under that one label. "Can you be the one to tell us if it's a boy or a girl?" hands you a secret and a job. "We already found out — can you record something?" hands you news that is already public. The first is a reveal; the second is a congratulations. Getting them backwards either spoils a moment or manufactures suspense about a fact everyone already knows. Interest in knowing early is mainstream: 58% of Americans said they would be interested in learning their baby's sex before it was born, in a YouGov Omnibus survey published August 16, 2018 (YouGov, What Americans really think of gender reveal parties). The pool of pregnancies behind those requests is large: 3,628,934 births were registered in the United States in 2024 (CDC, FastStats: Births and Natality), and every one of them had a point, months earlier, where somebody found out first.
Is the request asking you to reveal the sex, or to celebrate one already announced?
A gender reveal request and a congratulations request are opposite jobs, so require the follower to state clearly in the original request whether you are revealing the result or celebrating news already announced. In a celebration request the sex is already public and suspense would read as a stunt.
| What the follower says in the request | What to record | What to leave out |
|---|---|---|
| "We know the sex — you tell them" | A reveal script stating the confirmed sex once, clearly | A guess, or a second alternate take |
| "We already announced it" | A congratulations script referring to the known result | A dramatic reveal build-up |
| "Guess first, then tell them" | A guess labelled on camera as a guess, then the confirmed sex | An unlabelled guess |
| "We find out at the scan next week" | Nothing yet — wait for written confirmation | Any statement of sex as fact |
The reveal version is the harder one, because the entire video rests on a single clause: "you are having a [confirmed sex]." Everything around it is warmth. Nothing around it can rescue a wrong word. That is the difference between this request and the general framework for what a personalized video should include — here, one detail carries the whole file.
Brillay's published planning range for personalized videos is 30–90 seconds, with 30–60 seconds suggested for a named, single-occasion message (how long should a Personalized Video be). That is Brillay editorial guidance on format, not a measured industry average. A reveal is a single beat, not a segment: build-up past about a minute makes the payoff smaller, not bigger.
What are some gender reveal video scripts you can adapt?
Four scripts cover almost every gender reveal request: the reveal delivered as the surprise, a congratulations message for a reveal that is already public, a playful guess that is clearly labelled as a guess, and an extended version naming several family members. Fill in only the details the follower typed into the request, and delete any bracket you were not given.
- Script 1 — you deliver the reveal. "Hi [parent names], it's [your name]. [Buyer name] asked me to be the one to tell you this, so I'm not going to drag it out. [Parent names] — you are having a [confirmed sex]. Congratulations, you two. I hope today is loud and happy, and I'm glad I got to be a small part of it."
- Script 2 — the reveal is already public. "Hi [parent names], [your name] here. I heard the news, and I had to say something — a [confirmed sex]! Congratulations, seriously. [Buyer name] told me you'd been counting down to this one. Enjoy the celebration, and good luck with everything ahead."
- Script 3 — a playful guess, only if the buyer asked for one. "Okay [parent names] — [buyer name] asked me to guess first, so fair warning, this next part is me being nosy with zero science behind it. My guess is [your guess]. And now the real answer, straight from [buyer name]: it's a [confirmed sex]. Congratulations."
- Script 4 — extended, multiple family members. "Hi [parent names] — and hi to [other names], because I'm told you're all in the room. It's [your name], and I was given one job today. [Parent names], you are having a [confirmed sex]. Congratulations to all of you. [Sibling name], you're about to be a big [brother/sister], which is the best job on that list. Have a great day, everyone."
Swappable openers: "Hi [names], it's [your name] — I was handed one very important job today." / "Hi [names], [your name] here, and I'm told I'm not allowed to stall." / "Hi [names] — I heard the news, and I couldn't not send something."
Swappable sign-offs: "Congratulations, you two. Enjoy every second of today." / "Save me a slice of whatever's pink or blue." / "That's all I've got. Go celebrate."
Keep the colour theming optional rather than automatic. Only 5% of parents say it is essential that baby products are designed for their child's gender, while 41% say it is not important at all — so pink-and-blue jokes should follow the follower's lead instead of being the default frame of a reveal script.
How do you hold a confirmed sex until the moment?
A reveal video is the only Personalized Video format where the creator is holding information the recipient does not have yet.
Four handling rules that are specific to a reveal, not to Personalized Videos generally:
- Check the confirmed result against the follower’s original written instructions before recording; if the request is unclear, decline it and ask them to submit a new one with the missing detail. Copy the follower's own words into your reply and ask them to confirm. A misread word here is not a typo, it is a wrong answer played to a room.
- Record the confirmed version only. Never film a "boy" take and a "girl" take to cover yourself. Two files in one folder is how the wrong one gets sent, and a family playing the wrong file at a party cannot un-play it.
- Ask how many babies the request covers. There were 109,195 twin births in the United States in 2024, a twin birth rate of 30.1 per 1,000 live births. "You're having a girl" is the wrong line if the answer is two of them, so confirm each sex separately.
- Keep it off your own feed until the buyer's moment has passed. Behind-the-scenes clips, story teases, and thumbnails can leak an answer the family has not shared yet.
Brillay states the policy plainly:
"What if I get a request I don't want to fulfill? You're always in control of what you take on." — Brillay, How It Works FAQ
When in a pregnancy do reveal requests land?
Most gender reveal video requests arrive in the middle of the second trimester, because that is when the sex is typically confirmed at a scan. Babylist's planning guide notes gender reveal parties are usually held "sometime between weeks 18-21", which lines up with standard prenatal ultrasound timing.
"You should have at least one standard exam during your pregnancy, which usually is performed at 18–22 weeks of pregnancy." — American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Ultrasound Exams
The calendar alone will not tell you which request you are holding, because some families know months earlier. Cell-free DNA prenatal screening, which reads fetal DNA in the pregnant person's blood and includes screening for the number of sex chromosomes, "can be done starting at 10 weeks of pregnancy," per the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG, Prenatal Genetic Screening Tests). A follower who found out at 11 weeks may still be booking a reveal video at 20.
| Roughly when the request lands | What the follower already knows | What the video is for |
|---|---|---|
| Before about week 10 | Usually nothing about the sex | Not a reveal yet — this is a baby shower or early congratulations request |
| Week 10 onward, after cell-free DNA screening | The sex, often privately, long before any party | A reveal held in reserve for a date the follower picks |
| Weeks 18–22, around the standard scan | The sex, freshly confirmed | The classic reveal request |
| After the birth | Sex, name, arrival | Not a reveal — see new baby announcement video message ideas |
Dates slip in both directions. 10.41% of United States births in 2024 were preterm, meaning delivery before 37 completed weeks of gestation (CDC, NVSS: Birth Data), so a reveal booked late can be overtaken by an arrival. Ask what the video is for rather than inferring it from a due date.
Where will the reveal actually be played?
A gender reveal video is a prop in someone else's event, so ask where and when the file will be played — a speaker in a full room, one phone, and a family group chat each need a different edit. Do not assume a party: 28% of Americans have ever attended a gender reveal party, according to a YouGov survey published March 1, 2023.
Three playback contexts, three different edits:
- Played to a room on a speaker. Slow the reveal line down, leave a beat of silence before it, and expect the room to talk over the sign-off. Put nothing essential after the reveal.
- Sent to one phone. Play it straight and quiet. The parent may watch it alone, twice, and screenshot it.
- Dropped into a family group chat. Assume it will be replayed and forwarded for years, and that people who were not there will watch it without context. Say the parents' names early.
Two follower patterns produce those contexts: the expecting parent staging the reveal themselves, and a friend or relative adding a creator's voice to someone else's moment.
Every Personalized Video arrives as a recorded file the follower plays back on their own schedule — no live call, no scheduling — so you are supplying the moment the party is built around. That is worth saying plainly in your reply, because a video is also the safest reveal mechanism a family can choose: the El Dorado Fire of 2020 "was ignited as part of a gender reveal photo shoot, burned nearly 23,000 acres, and caused a firefighter's death," per the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California (U.S. Department of Justice). Never script a stunt, a device, or a prop into a reveal video. Your file is the whole effect.
Which gender jokes age badly on a video a family keeps?
In a gender reveal video, cut anything that predicts a personality, a preference, or a future from the sex you were just told. A reveal video gets replayed at birthdays and graduations, so a bit that reads as playful on recording day has to survive being watched in fifteen years by the person it was about.
Three concrete swaps:
- Instead of "he's going to be a little heartbreaker," say "I can't wait to hear how he's doing."
- Instead of "girls are so much easier," say "congratulations, you two — genuinely."
- Instead of "I can just tell you're having a boy," say nothing about a guess at all unless the buyer explicitly asked for one.
Jokes about hoping for one sex over the other also misread most buyers: 56% of Americans say they have no preference between having a boy or a girl, while 19% prefer a boy and 15% prefer a girl, in a YouGov survey published February 2, 2023 (YouGov, Where Americans stand on debates over babies).
The format itself is divisive enough that a big themed performance is a gamble on a stranger's taste:
"More than one-third (35%) of Americans say these parties are 'unnecessary,' 30% say they're 'trendy,' 28% say they're 'silly,' and another 28% say they're a 'fad.'" — YouGov Omnibus, What Americans really think of gender reveal parties, published August 16, 2018
Match the follower's energy instead. A warm, plain congratulations lands with everyone; a party-sized bit lands with some. And if the follower asked you to guess for fun, mark the guess as a guess inside the video, not just in your private message, so a replay years later cannot mistake the joke for the answer.
What should you charge to be the one who says it?
Price a gender reveal video by runtime and personalization effort, not by how dramatic the moment is. As a concrete starting point, you could test $10–$20 for 15–30 seconds, $20–$40 for 30–60 seconds, and $45–$75 or more for 60–90 seconds, then adjust for your audience and demand.
Being handed the secret does not add a premium band, and that is the honest answer to the obvious question: a reveal is often the shortest video on your menu, because the one sentence that matters is eight words long. What justifies the upper bands is length and the number of named people, not suspense.
| Request type | What's delivered | Example price* |
|---|---|---|
| Reveal message | 30–60 second video stating the confirmed sex as the surprise moment | $20–$40 |
| Congratulations message | 30–60 second video celebrating an already-known reveal | $20–$40 |
| Extended family message | 60–90+ second video naming multiple family members | $45–$75+ |
*Example prices map the request type onto Brillay's published length-based bands. They are editorial guidance, not earnings data — creators set their own price, and actual amounts vary by creator, audience, and demand.
No monthly fee, you only pay a small platform fee when you get paid. 8% platform fee when a follower pays for work, 5% platform fee on tips and goals. Card processing is separate (pricing). Typical US card processing of 2.9% + $0.30 per successful domestic card transaction is separate and set by Stripe, not Brillay (Stripe pricing). United States creators should also know the reporting threshold: a third-party payout organization must file Form 1099-K only when a payee's gross payments exceed $20,000 and the number of transactions exceeds 200 in a calendar year, per IRS guidance on the threshold restored by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (IRS, FAQs on Form 1099-K threshold). Creators outside the United States follow their own country's rules, and income remains reportable whether or not any form is issued.
Should you offer a goal on a reveal request at all?
A goal belongs on your own pregnancy announcement, not on a follower's reveal request about someone else's baby. Goals gives a creator one named funding target with a progress bar on their Brillay page — so it fits a creator saying "help me cover the nursery," and does not fit a follower who is buying a reveal about someone else's baby and already has that family's registry to point at.
The distinction matters because the money in a reveal request belongs to a household you are not part of. Adding a funding prompt to a stranger's reveal reads as a tip jar attached to their announcement. Adding one to your own works, because the goal is yours to name.
If it is your own news, name a real number rather than a vibe. A middle-income, married-couple family was projected to spend $233,610 raising a child born in 2015 from birth through age 17, in the most recent edition of the USDA's Expenditures on Children by Families report — a figure that argues for funding one specific thing, not "the baby." A Goal has nothing to ship and no reward tiers, and goal versus an Amazon wishlist covers which of the two to point followers at. What arrives is cash toward the total you name on your own page, so you buy what the project actually needs and nothing is shipped to your door by a stranger.
Will the video land before the party date?
A gender reveal video arrives within the delivery time the creator sets, so check the follower's play date against that delivery time before you accept — a reveal is one of the few Personalized Video requests with a hard deadline attached to a room full of people. Brillay lets you set a Personalized Video delivery time of up to five days, for the schedule you publish.
Ask for two details in the original request form: the date the video will be played and whether that date is fixed. A scan-day reveal is fixed. A "sometime this month" reveal is not. If your delivery time does not clear the fixed date, say so and decline rather than accepting and hoping; the delivery time you publish has to be one you can actually keep. Delivering a reveal the day after the party is worse than never taking the order.
Frequently asked questions
Creators most often ask whether to guess, whether the video can be the reveal itself, how to keep the sex quiet, and what Brillay charges. The short answers: never guess, either format works, treat the sex like an embargo, and Brillay only charges a fee when a follower actually pays for the video.
Should I ever guess the sex if the buyer didn't confirm it?
No. In a gender reveal video, only state the sex as fact if the follower explicitly confirmed it in the request. If a request asks for a lighthearted guess as entertainment, present the guess clearly as a guess on camera, not as the real answer.
Is there a gender reveal script I can just fill in?
Yes — this page includes four fill-in scripts. The shortest reliable version is: "Hi [parent names], it's [your name]. [Buyer name] asked me to be the one to tell you — you are having a [confirmed sex]. Congratulations, you two." Everything else is optional warmth around that one sentence.
Should I record a boy version and a girl version to be safe?
No. Record only the confirmed version of a gender reveal video. Two takes in one folder is the single most likely way the wrong file reaches a family, and a wrong reveal played to a room cannot be taken back.
Can the video be the actual reveal moment, or does it have to come after?
Either works, and the two versions need different scripts. If the follower wants you to deliver the surprise, they'll confirm the sex in the private request and you read it back as the reveal. If the sex is already known, the video is a straightforward congratulations message instead. Confirm which one before recording.
What if the buyer's scan hasn't happened yet?
Ask them to come back once they have the result in writing, or decline and refund the order. Nothing about the request improves by recording early.
What does Brillay charge for a Personalized Video?
The platform fee for a Personalized Video is the one already laid out in the pricing section above, separate from Stripe's own card-processing fee. There's no follower minimum, and creators set their own price and delivery time for every Personalized Video.
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