I jumped on the opportunity to throw my friend’s baby shower when I found out it was a girl. I usually strive for unisex in all things baby until their preference is obvious, but honestly, I wanted to tackle this girly party because I love a good challenge! I break out in an itchy rash whenever I see the “girl” aisle in the toy store even though I totally loved it as a kid. Now that I’m a parent, I’m definitely more sensitive to the gender specific stuff. Rather than give into the unisex themes, I thought it would be more fun to go straight at the stereotype with a tongue-in-cheek uber-girly party with all kitschy vintage teenage girl details. Think pink foam hair rollers, 60’s prom dresses, pleather diaries with locks…you get the idea. Since my friend is a fellow North Carolinian , the theme also accidentally took on a 60’s Southern belle vibe!
When guests arrived, we had a few different drinks out to start. For a sit down lunch, you really only need a starter cocktail or champagne and then one kind of wine with the food.
Our non-alcoholic beverage was the southern soda staple, Cheerwine. If you’ve never had it, I’m SO sorry!
It was a sunny day, so we used our giant Ikea umbrella for shade over the table.
For the hanging decoration, I strung small squares of tissue paper into lengths of string and then sort of twist/squished them so they stayed put. It was so quick!
I have 6 yellow plates and 6 speckled plates, so I rented 12 small white bread plates to tie mine together. Each place setting had a cheeky favor bag, a birthday card for the baby, a baggie of pink gummy bears and a lemon petit four “starter” with a jewelry box ballerina perched on top.
Lemon petit four with vintage plastic ballerina.
If you haven’t figured it out from my other posts, this is my favorite baby shower activity. Each person fills out a birthday card for the baby for as many years as you want. We stopped at sweet 16 for this party. I bought these cards because the dogwood is the North Carolina state flower…how perfect was that?!
I found a bunch of dead stock unopened vintage hair accessories online and couldn’t resist making them our party favors! I made the bags myself with some printed card stock using this template.
This was the only food shot I got! Ha! Sorry!
Forgive me…I got so wrapped up in fun conversation that I forgot to photograph any of the food, so you’ll just have to take my word for it…it was delicious and lovely! My co-host and I made a vegetarian Southern lunch with collard greens, mac and cheese, pickle biscuits, watermelon salad and tomato corn gratin. Click on the links for an idea of the recipes, though I do tweak most recipes I use. For example, I would never make mac and cheese without at least a little Velveeta to smooth things out and a couple shakes of Tabasco because I’m a southern girl only parading as a Californian.
After eating, we moved inside for (more) cake and gifts. This ridiculous prom queen cake was obviously a must.
delia-hauser.com 