Our Paddington Themed Baby Shower!
With the recent surge in relevance of Paddington Bear (because of the new West End musical!), I thought it was as good a time as any to share all the details from our Paddington-themed baby shower.
In case you missed it, my husband and I welcomed our beautiful baby girl, Della, into the world last spring. But before doing so, we had the most adorable baby shower celebrating her arrival! My sweet friend Ashlee helped me plan and host this epic day back in March 2025 (when I was just starting my third trimester), and we cannot thank her enough for such a wonderful day surrounded by our lovely family and friends.
Daniel and I are both huge fans of the Paddington movies (specifically Paddington 2) so we thought it would be the perfect theme to celebrate the arrival of our new little cub. We wanted there to be hints of Paddington details around the party but mostly we just wanted to utilize the amazing color palette and general style of the movie. So Ashlee and I got to work brainstorming and building a mood board and I’ll share some of the fun details we DIYed below.
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“I’m afraid we’re not going to London after all... We’ve got a cub to raise!”
PARTY DECOR
When we began planning out the decor and theme for the party, my descriptions included whimsical, vintage, colorful, quirky, eclectic, and handmade. And then from there we started brainstorming what decor elements would bring the Paddington 2 aesthetic to life!
One thing we thought would be cute for the entrance to the party was to DIY fabric pennant bunting. We went to the fabric store and picked out a bunch of colors and patterns and then we simply cut them into triangles and hot glued the top edge over a piece of twine rope.
We rented these fun vintage suitcase props to decorate the photobooth wall. And we had these amazing balloons done by our good friend Ellie at The Pop Shop (@the.pop.shopllc). They added the perfect touch of playful whimsy to the theme. She’s amazing at what she does!
Ashlee does a lot of hosting so she has a lot of great tips & tricks, and one thing she does that I think is such a good idea is she buys inexpensive shower curtains or sheets to cover her outdoor furniture if she wants to give it a different look for a particiular theme. We tried to do as much color and pattern in all our throw pillows and decor.
And of course we needed a few lifesize cardboard cutouts of the main man — Paddington Bear!
We used a room divider to create a backdrop for one of the lounges and it was the perfect place to string up and show off some of our new adorable baby clothes!
And Ashlee did all the flower arrangements herself — she is so talented, I cannot even believe these florals are real!! And the pink, red, orange color palette was perfection.
We were obsessed with the look of these striped Meri Meri paper lanterns, but we needed a bunch to fill the space so we went the budget route and DIY’d our own! We just bought plain white paper lanterns in different sizes and painted on our own vertical stripes with acrylic paint. Then we hung them up from string light strands with clear fishing line.
We rented quite a few things, like cocktail tables, linens, a shelving unit (for the craft station), and a bunch of platters, serving utensils, and tiered trays which all came from the best of the best, Premiere Party Rents (@premiere_rents)!
TELEPHONE GUEST BOOK
One of the most special details of the party was our audio guest book! We got one of those telephone audio guest books that we set up on a cocktail table for guests to stop at and leave a voice message for baby Ott. The messages our friends and family left were so sweet and listening back to them definitely made me cry in my hormonal last few weeks of pregnancy haha! I can’t wait to listen back to them with Della one day.
To add to the Paddington theme, we rented a vintage-looking London telephone booth, and obviously it had to be PINK for baby girl :) this decor was a hit and was a great photo opportunity for guests!
I also created this cute little wood A-frame sign that read “At the tone, leave a message for baby Ott!” and instructions on how to leave your message on the audio guest book. I decorated it with a little felt Paddington with a phone that I crafted. It turned out soo sweet.
I would highly recommend this activity at your baby shower or wedding. It is such a special keepsake!
GUESS THE BABY’S BIRTHDAY ACTIVITY
Another simple activity that I think is a must at any baby shower is a station to guess what day the baby will be born. You can find a lot of premade calendars for this (like this wildflower one or this cute customizable digital download) but I wanted to make something that would fit the colorful theme, so I used paint chips to make this project.
I had this old IKEA frame at home, so I cut out a piece of cardboard that fit inside the frame and I glued a piece of this cute squiggle fabric to the cardboard and placed it behind the frame’s glass to make a background.
Then on the outside of the glass, I cut out 28 little squares of different colored paint chips and double-sided taped them to the glass to make a calendar. I cut out the letters for the title, days of the week, and numbers out of vinyl with my Cricut. I included 3 weeks before and 1 week after her due date and I added a gold star on her due date square.
And then guests could simply walk up to the table and write their name with sharpie on the date they thought she would be born. There was no particular prize for guessing correct, besides bragging rights :P but it was fun to look at this calendar on the days leading up to her birth to see who guessed each day. There ended up being quite a few guesses on the day she was actually born!
GAMES & ACTIVITIES
We had the sweetest photo backdrop setup for everyone to take pictures in front of throughout the party! Ashlee painted the arch backdrops in corresponding colors to match the pastel color palette.
And, of course, we had to have a little Paddington Bear for a charming photo op!
And no baby shower would be complete without cheesy games and activities so we had to include a few!
The first one we did was musical pacifiers — a musical chairs game where participants stand around a table with pacifiers in the middle (one fewer than # of players) and they have to circle the table while the music plays, then grab a pacifier when the music stops. One player is eliminated each turn who doesn’t grab a pacifier fast enough until only one winner remains.
We had a don’t cross your arms or legs game going on throughout the party where guests received a badge when they arrived (it was a “please look after this bear” Paddington tag) and they were told not to cross their arms or legs. If anyone else saw someone violating the rule, they got to take their tag. The winner was whoever ended up with the most tags.
Another game we played was a match the sock game! Ashlee had hidden a bunch of baby socks all around the yard and people could collect them as they found them throughout the party. Then they had to take them to a laundry basket we had filled with baby blankets and burp cloths and they had to rummage through the basket to find the corresponding matching socks and match them up. Whoever made the most matches was the winner.
For prizes we had the choice of chocolate bars or tins of Harney & Sons tea.
FOOD & DRINKS
Our lovely friend Taylor (@hallsktchen if you’re looking for an amazing personal chef!) did all the catering for our party, and it was such a hit! We wanted the food to be afternoon tea themed, so think tea sandwiches, cookies, fruit, scones & marmalade (of course!), etc. Everything was setup buffet style for guests to just casually grab and go.
Ashlee and I decorated the buffet with mixed patterns of tablecloths, baskets, tiered trays, and vintage tea cups & saucers. I even used my DIY card holders to label all the food & drinks.
For drinks, we served coffee, tea, water, sparkling lemonade, iced tea, sangria, prosecco, and an orange mocktail.
Our full party menu included:
Sandwiches — caprese on focaccia, chicken club on croissants, and grinder Italian sub sliders
Chicken cesar salad
Bacon & cheese mini quiches
Pesto & cheese puff pastry pinwheels
Lemon bundt cake
Mini coffee cake cupcakes
Shortbread pecan bars
Scones — cheddar & chive and lemon poppy seed (with marmalade & clotted cream)
And other assorted sweets — like macarons, madeline cookies, and brownie bites
Berries (which we served in these cute little cups)
And cutie oranges :)
PAINT-AN-ANIMAL CRAFT STATION
I will go into more detail in a separate blog post (coming soon!), but I wanted to have some kind of craft for guests to do at the shower, and I had seen a bunch of fun ideas like painting baby blocks, drawing alphabet coloring pages, or decorating baby bibs/onesies. But I felt like everything was overdone or that I wouldn’t actually use the finished products after the event. So I brainstormed with Ashlee a unique craft for guests to do and I absolutely love how this project turned out!
We setup a table for guests to get crafty and paint little animal figurines that would eventually hang over the crib or changing table from baby’s mobile.
For table cloths, we used some simple drop cloths and then scattered some buckets of acrylic paint, paint palettes, and paint brushes across the table.
Guests grabbed an animal toy of their choice from a basket and could decorate and paint the animal however they wanted. The crazier & more colorful the better!
We had a cute little shelving unit where guests could place their animals to dry on top of a card that said the artist’s name (so that we can remember & tell Della who made each one someday!).
Everyone seemed to have a lot of fun painting their animals and we still use the mobile today, so I think it was a great project if you are looking to add a unique crafty activity to your baby shower!
PARTY FAVORS
To send our guests off with a little token of our appreciation and memory of the day, we put together these sweet little Paddington-themed party favors, including a mini jar of marmalade and a shortbread cookie. Because, you know, “a wise bear always keeps a marmalade sandwich in his hat in case of emergency.” :)
We bought these mini 1oz jars of marmalade (I’m screaming at the cuteness!!) and we tied a tiny piece of fabric onto the top of each one with twine to make them look handmade.
And then for the shortbread cookies, we found a simple shortbread cookie recipe on pinterest and we cut them to shape with this hang tag cookie cutter. We made a hole in the “tag” with a straw, and we pressed a message into the cookie with these letter cookie stamps that read “Please look after this bear. Thank you.” The classic tag on Paddington’s coat. Then we packaged them individually in these clear cookie bags.
If you are on the fence about hosting a co-ed baby shower, I would highly recommend it. Daniel and I had so much fun working together to include both of our personalities into the party and it was so fun to have friends from both sides there to celebrate our little one. It definitely made the party & budget a bit bigger, but no regrets. You (usually) only have one baby shower anyways, so why not go big!!
I also loved the casual-feel of our shower. Most everything was just setup for guests to do at their own leisure — like the craft station, guessing the baby’s birthday, the photo booth, the afternoon tea snacks… we even had Paddington 2 playing on a TV inside in case anyone needed a break from the sun! Guests only had to participate in what they wanted to, they could simply eat and mingle if they wanted. But there were still touches of “baby shower” to differentiate it from a regular party. We didn’t actually have a dedicated “gift opening” time either — we had a table with a lot of the gifts we had already received from our registry on display and we filmed ourselves opening things at home to send to people that wanted to see our reaction.
“If we look after this bear, I have a feeling he’ll go far.”
A special thanks to my friends Kelly and Natalie for taking all these photos for me so that I could soak up the day and enjoy time with everyone. You both did fabulous & I’m so happy to have these memories documented.
Thank you so much to all our family and friends who made this day so special for us! We are so grateful for all the gifts and all the love our little growing family received and can’t wait to tell Della about all these memories for years to come.
xo Rachael & Daniel (& baby Ott)
