A Fantasy World in a Fairytale Baby Shower

Set up a fantasy atmosphere with a baby shower based on the world of fairy tales. What's great here is that you don't need to stick to the more common fairy tales of Peter Pan and Cinderella but can explore the world of the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Anderson. You can even stretch it a bit and look at the myths, like King Arthur or look into ethnic fairy tales like 1001 Arabian Nights or Japanese folk tales. Something that may be even more fun would be to adapt parts of modern fantasies like Babar, The Lord of the Rings, The Princess Bride, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean or even Twilight.

A terrific way to announce this to the guests would be to indicate on the invitations that they would need to bring a favorite book of fairy tales from when they were small or one that their children liked them to read from. Have one of the characters from your chosen fairy tale be the front of the baby shower invitation.

Channel the world of fairy tales into your party area. For example, if you chose the classic fairytale theme, you could make your room look like a medieval castle or the inside of a peasant's hut. Keep to light pastel colors to have it tie in to the baby shower. Put little toy frogs around the room (The Princess and the Frog) with an especially large toy frog displayed with a golden ball. Cover the chairs with slipcovers in pastels to simulate a ball (Cinderella) and have synthetic vines decorating the walls instead of streamers (Jack and the Beanstalk). You could have a big open chest in the corner to collect all the gifts (The Flying Trunk).

The tables could be covered in pastel colored tablecloths and the centerpieces in the middle could be a wide dish filled with colored sand and pretty little seashells (The Little Mermaid) inset with white votive candles in clear glass containers.

Decorate the food table very simply – just have a big gingerbread house (Hansel and Gretel) as the center of attraction. If you could find those old-fashioned types of paper cut-outs that stand, position those among the food platters to add more interest. No need for a big flower arrangement here, simply scatter whole flower heads around the table.

You could base your menu on the fairytales, too. It would look something like this:

Chicken Salad served in tiny pumpkins (Cinderella)
Buttered Peas (The Princess and the Pea) with Sauteed Baby Radishes (Rapunzel)
Cheezy Potato Casserole with Crunchy Breadcrumb Topping (Hansel and Gretel)
Whole Baked Apples (Snow White)
Little Fruit Tarts and Tea (Alice in Wonderland)

If you still want a cake aside from the gingerbread house, Sleeping Beauty's castle would be the perfect cake for this. Surround the cakes with mini cupcakes in pretty pastel colors, if you like.

There are some fun games that you can play based on the fairytale baby shower theme. For a door prize, the guest that has a dried pea under her seat cushion is honorary princess for the day and wins a little crown. You could also do a trivia game based on fairytale characters or a game of charades to guess a main event in the fairytale (selling the cow for beans, biting the poisoned apple, losing a shoe, shrinking to a tiny size...).

Favors for the fairytale baby shower could be little tea lights in the shape of castles (Cinderella) and red lip gloss (Snow White) in a little velvet bag.