Is this blog post a full 9 months late? Yes, yes it is. Better late than never?

Honestly, I had considered not writing a blog post about my baby shower because – as any mom who has had a baby shower knows – on the day of, the last thing you’re doing is making sure pictures get taken. Yes, there will be a million pictures of you opening presents. But no one really thinks to take pictures of all of the details of the party! I think typically friends or family of the mom-to-be plan the baby shower but I actually planned my own. I capitalized on baby girl’s early June due date to have a baby shower on Kentucky Derby weekend for a great theme and I had so much fun planning out all of the details and sourcing all of the items that we used.

So, while I might not have pictures of everything, I wanted to at least make this blog post as a reference and guide for anyone else who might want to throw a Kentucky Derby themed party so you can have all of the best details gathered for you in one handy spot.

First, let’s start with the cake!

We always have You Need A Cake in Oklahoma City make our cakes for events and, as usual, our gal Yunita knocked it out of the park with this one! Feel free to use this picture as an inspiration pic to take to your local bakery or cake decorator. Fortunately, our cake place doesn’t just produce gorgeous pieces of art but they are also consistently delicious. This cake had one layer of strawberry and one layer of champagne.

As for cake accessories, we ordered this custom cake topper with her name and served it on this cake stand.

We had a buffet of traditional Kentucky Derby foods such as pimento cheese with crackers, barbecue sliders, fruit and cheese platters, cucumber sandwiches and more. We also provided water and tea along with champagne and fresh fruit juices on a mimosa bar and had waiters carry around silver platters of mint juleps with these (and these) adorable acrylic stick stirrers. Truly so cute!

You can see the mint juleps with the stir sticks on the bar here! And you can also see party favors which were honestly one of my favorite touches. For the kids attending the party, I got champagne flavored Jelly Bellies which you see in front. And for the adults, I got miniature La Marca proseccos with these tags on them. It was SO fun because on the day that we had Evelyn, we had so many people send us pictures of them popping their champagne bottles and drinking a toast to our girl! Highly suggest copying this idea for your party favors!

Next up, let’s discuss the invitations and decorations – all done by the same designer I found on Etsy, Pretty Plain Paper. Lucky for me, she already had several Kentucky Derby party designs that I was able to pick and choose from to create our invitations along with on-theme envelope liners and then printable files that I was able to take to Staples to print a welcome sign and the banner for our photo backdrop.

An added detail was that I also ordered these envelope stickers for even more personalization.

I worked with Prep Lively in OKC for the faux grass backdrop with the balloons and then added our derby banner although in this picture it does look slightly askew LOL so please do not blame Prep Lively for my additions to their work haha!

I ordered the baby blocks on Amazon and then filled them with some baby pink balloons I grabbed at Party City.

Guys, we are three months away from our daughter turning one (LITERALLY HOW?!) and I’m so glad I finally got all of this down in a post. Especially because I have another super fun theme for her upcoming party that I’m going to want to share about soon so I had to get this one out of my brain first. And hopefully I actually get some pictures at this next party!

XOXO,

Thessali

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