This February (2023), Mike and I threw a pretty big Pokemon-themed Baby Shower.
It very much had wedding reception vibes, and we had been told by many guests that it was the fanciest baby shower they’d ever been to, lol.
Inside Our Pokemon-Themed Baby Shower
I’ve been saying, you only get to throw a baby shower for your Miracle Baby after struggling with Unexplained Infertility and trying to conceive for 10 years once, lol, so we went big. 😅
Thank you to everyone who helped us celebrate our soon-to-be-born baby boy, and thank you to everyone on the Internet who continues to share in our excitement and this journey.
As of writing this post—on Pokemon Day of all days—we are nearly ready to welcome baby!
I wanted to share details from our Pokemon-themed Baby Shower in case parents to be / baby shower planner friends or Pokémon lovers want to copy some of our party ideas. 💛
Note: some of our vendors gifted us items, most we hired! All local. Any partnerships are indicated.
Inside Our Pokemon-Themed Baby Shower
Pokemon-themed Baby Shower Balloons and Decor
We knew we wanted some kind of Instagrammable photo backdrop / photo op area for our Baby Shower, so we reached out to hire Edmonton event styling / balloon decor pros Party and Confetti. We already knew about their services before but it was an extra convenient connection through our event venue as well as The Foundry Room recommends Party and Confetti as a decor provider option for many of the weddings/events that The Foundry Room hosts.
Veronica and her team at Party & Confetti were excited to bring our Pokemon theme to life!
We shared with them some preferred colours and favourite characters, and then showed up to this stunning Pokemon balloon backdrop. We were just floored. We knew they did great work (a quick browse of their social media shows you how good their work is), but THIS GOOD?!? 🤯🤩
We can’t recommend Party & Confetti enough!! They do balloon decor for all sorts of events. Follow their Instagram for balloon and party decor inspiration and check their website to sign up to their email newsletter if you think you might book in the future. They share booking discounts and promos throughout the year you can take advantage of—for ANY event!
We happily hired Party & Confetti for our Baby Shower and believe the $ investment was worth it—but are also grateful they gave us a discount for their services as well.
We also purchased some additional Pokemon balloons off Etsy (including the massive Pikachu) to add to more areas of the venue so there was a touch more Pokemon in other areas too.
And in the end we let kids and whoever take different balloons home!
Pokemon-themed Baby Shower Cake and Cupcakes
In the winter I had worked with The Nancy Bakes on a holiday giveaway, and at that time she had offered to gift us one of her signature cakes. I knew our Baby Shower was coming up so asked if we could redeem the gift for the shower and she said yes! When we told Nancy we wanted a Pokemon-themed cake, she was as excited as we were!
We also ended up placing extra orders for Pokemon-themed cupcakes to round out the themed desserts.
We thought Nancy did such a great job incorporating the colours / characters we wanted (the characters are edible images on fondant). The inside flavour: of hte cake was Cookies & Cream (you can choose from lots of flavours). And the Pokeball cupcakes are vanilla flavour with chocolate Pikachu cupcakes. As delicious as they are adorable.
My mom said this was the prettiest cake she’s ever seen which is quite a compliment coming from a pretty judgey Asian mother, honestly lol. Both cake and cupcakes were showstoppers!
Catering and Party Favours for our Baby Shower
As mentioned our Baby Shower venue was The Foundry Room and one of the nice aspects of working with The Foundry Room is that they have a list of preferred vendors / connections already, including caterer.
Like with Party & Confetti, it just so happened that The Foundry Room’s catering partner A Cappella Catering is a local Edmonton business we were already familiar with and excited to work with on the Baby Shower menu.
(Really love that The Foundry Room partners with equally awesome local vendors!)
We hired A Cappella Catering (through The Foundry Room) to cater our Baby Shower!
The Baby Shower Menu included:
Various Appetizers
- Bocconcini Tomato Skewer (Balsamic Marinated Cherry Tomatoes / Bocconcini / Basil)
- Bruschetta (Roma Tomato / Red Onion / Basil / Parsley / Parmesan)
- Jumbo Shrimp Cups (Butterflied Jumbo Shrimp / Cocktail Sauce)
- Mini Cajun Chicken Tacos (Tortilla / Romaine Lettuce / Cheddar Cheese / Blackened Chicken / Sour Cream)
- Pesto Deviled Eggs (Egg / Pesto / Capers)
- Poke Boats (Ahi tuna / Cucumber / Pineapple / Toasted Black Sesame Seeds / Cilantro)
- Roast Rolls (Sun-dried Tomato Tortilla / Olive Spread / Cream Cheese / Roast Beef / Green Leaf Lettuce)
- Smoked Salmon Platter (Chilled Smoked Salmon / Lemon Slices / Capers / Cream Cheese / Red Onions / Artisan Cracker)
- Sushi Squares (Nori / Seasoned Rice / Wasabi / Chilled Smoked Salmon / Cucumber / Sesame / Soya Sauce)
- Thai Chicken Lettuce Cups (Boutique Romaine Lecture / Rice Vermicelli / Spiced Peanuts / Thai Chicken)
- Turkey Spinach Rolls (Spinach Tortilla / Cream Cheese / Parmesan Spread / Fresh Spinach / Smoked Turkey)
Charcuterie Grazing Table
- “An artful arrangement of cured and smoked meats, gourmet cheeses, olives, pickles, spreads, dried fruit, crostinis, and artisan crackers and breadsticks.”
Gourmet Dessert Selection
- “An elegant variety of handcrafted sweets made in-house by A Cappella’s Pastry Chef.”
One thing we heard over and over at AND after the event was how delicious the food was!
Super recommend A Cappella Catering, particularly these items, with your next event (especially if it’ at The Foundry Room!)
In addition to the Catering, we also added food as Party Favours.
We ordered Brazilian Pão de queijo cheesebuns from A Bite of Brazil and these were such a hit!
Baby Shower Activity: Build Baby’s First Library
For well over the decade we had been trying to have a baby, I knew I wanted one particular activity to take place at my future Baby Shower: Build Baby’s First Library.
We curated a list of books (like a book registry) and shared that with guests in advance.
We also hired The Chinese Takeout Shop, another local Edmonton business to create custom book stamps that guests at the Baby Shower could use to stamp their books!
This was a super cute activity and it looked really great at the event. The little bookcase was overflowing with awesome books (that to be honest, we still haven’t had a chance to go through fully! I plan to blog separately about the Baby’s First Library to include a list of all the books).
I just highly recommend this type of activity if you love reading / books / and want to pass that love on to your baby.
And for the most part we didn’t get too many duplications thanks to the book registry!
Other Baby Shower Games and Activity Ideas
We didn’t want specific timed activities for our Baby Shower (where everyone participates and / or everyone is watching you play the games) so we created Activity / Game Stations that people could do at their own time throughout the event. All of these activities COULD be ones that you have all guests play at the same time though, depending on how your party is planned.
The Name Game
- Ask guests to write down what name they think the baby will have on one side of the card and then their name on the other side.
- Pin it to the cork board and the parents to be can see if anyone guessed correctly (but don’t reveal the name / winner if there is one until after baby is born assuming you’re keeping the name a secret!)
Speed Diapering
- Get toy babies or stuffed animals and diapers and have people go head to head to challenge who can diaper the toy / animal quickest. Challengers time themselves!
Guess the Baby Food
- Present a few unlabelled jars of baby food and provide tasting spoons to ask guests to taste test the jars and guess what ingredients are in each jar.
- The person who guesses the correct number of ingredients wins!
How Big is the Bump
- Ask guests to cut a string to the length they think it will fit all the way around the baby bump. Measure the string with a measuring tape and write your name / measurement on the tag for reference.
- Find the mom to be and wrap the string around her belly for fun interaction but keep your measurement handy for when the actual string measurement is announced to see if you’ve won! Closest measurement wins a prize.
Guess the Baby’s Stats
- Have guests fill out their guesses for:
- Date of Birth
- Time of Birth
- Baby Weight (lbs)
- Baby Length (in)
- Hair Colour
- Eye Colour
- Drop predictions in a try and the closest correct guesses wins a prize (after the baby is born and stats are revealed!)
Diaper Notes
- Ask guests to use markers to leave notes, messages, jokes, etc. on diapers.
- We called it “Diaper Notes to Compile for Late Night Smiles” and asked people to “write a message on the booty to take our minds off the doody.”
We did announce some winners / gave away some prizes throughout the event, but for some of the events we’ll pick winners after the baby is born.
If you are doing the games as an everyone-participates live thing, then you’d just gift prizes in that moment, rather than us (we gave away some prizes every hour of the shower).
We also did a gift opening, which was the only real ‘timed’ or formal activity for the shower, but we held it in the last half hour of the event so mostly only family and a handful of friends were still hanging around by this time. Gift openings can sometimes be awkward so we didn’t want people to feel that they needed to stay to watch us. lol
We are so grateful for all of the wonderful gifts we received!!
Our Baby Shower Venue: The Foundry Room (Edmonton)
Finally, I already mentioned The Foundry Room as our Baby Shower venue, but really wanted to call them out specifically as not only an amazing event venue option in the city that you should definitely consider for not just weddings but really any event, and also to thank them for hosting our Baby Shower.
The Foundry Room started as a single venue in 2015 to multiple spaces in the Edmonton area ever since. Each venue is unique and offers a little something different in terms of space, vibe, capacity. Along with wedding ceremonies and receptions (which they are very popular for), The Foundry Room venues are also great for birthdays, fundraisers, corporate events, live performances, bridal or baby showers, and more.
A nice perk is that booking with The Foundry Room also gets you access to their network of recommended event planners and local vendors—from A Cappella Catering to Party & Confetti, photography services and more.
Our Baby Shower was initially going to be held at The Foundry Room’s Whyte Ave. location, but then we moved it to their Oliver Exchange Building venue so it would feel more spacious for guests. There are different capacity and floor plan / layouts depending on the venue and they’re adding new venues all the time so it covers even more areas of the city and more styles of room and capacities too.
Our guests loved the venue and so did we! We actually were involved in an event at The Foundry Room’s Fort Saskatchewan venue back in Feb 2020 (a Vow Renewal! so you could say we like to have milestone events with The Foundry Room lol). At that time we loved the set-up, which is how we first came to learn about The Foundry Room and their services. We’d also been to a wedding held at their Whyte Ave location too—and thought it was so pretty and perfect!
Thank you to The Foundry Room for hosting our Baby Shower!
Highly recommend you book with them for your next event.
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So that’s a look inside our Baby Shower!
If you liked these Pokemon touches, stay tuned as we have decorated our nursery to be Pokemon-themed as well and will be sharing about that in a separate blog post.
Thank you again to everyone for your beautiful well wishes + celebrating our baby boy!
It still feels very surreal to say that and I personally still don’t feel like this pregnancy is real until he’s out and in our arms but Mike and I are both so excited beyond words.
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Linda & Mike’s Baby Shower Vendors
- Venue: The Foundry Room (hosted)
- Decor: Party & Confetti
- Cake: The Nancy Bakes (gifted)
- Cupcakes: The Nancy Bakes
- Caterer: A Cappella Catering
- Party Favours: A Bite of Brazil
- Baby Library Stamp: The Chinese Takeout Shop
- Photographers: Alexis Zarcharko & Karly Watson
If you found inspiration for your Baby Shower in this post, let me know in the comments!!
Linda
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1 Comment
Awesome cake! And that menu has me drooling! I love that you did the book registry. And your games sound so fun … this is one baby shower I would have loved to have been at!