Throw a 100 Days Korean Baby Shower!

If you've decided to throw a baby shower for a friend of Korean ancestry, be aware that there's nothing like that in her native culture. Babies are generally presented to everybody one hundred days after they are born, to make sure that they don't catch anything serious. And the biggest party celebrating a baby is called a dol – usually done to coincide with the baby's first birthday. It would be good to ask the mommy-to-be what she would be more comfortable with before you decide.

Your invitations should show the theme of the Korean baby shower clearly and a card that features the Rose of Sharon (Korea's National Flower) or peach blossoms (symbolizing long life or Paradise for Koreans) are great choices. If the mommy-to-be's more modern, a cute card featuring Pucca would be perfect.

To set the stage for your Korean baby shower, have a lot of flower arrangements around. Korean people love flowers and rather formal arrangements would look wonderful in this setting. Add some twirly branches to make it a more interesting arrangement. Instead of flowers, hang paper umbrellas up in the corners. You could have some streamers hanging down from them, too. Bright, happy colors should be dominant here, red, yellow, pink, blue, and lots of white are perfect.

Cover the tables with a pure white cloth and set a formal arrangement of flowers in the middle. Have multicolored vigil candles ringing the flower arrangement. Use pure white plates at each table setting but vary the colors of the napkins and tie up each one with a ring of curling ribbons.

Cover the buffet table in a white cloth as well. Have some paper fans serve as unusual paper trivets under the platters of cold food. If you can manage to find a few round Korean drums, hang them up behind the table to serve as decorations. Or they can be hanging above the table, decorated with flowers. Serve the food in earthenware pots and white platters or use the eight-sided divided platter usually used for dried fruits to serve a selection of pickles and side dishes.

If most of your guests are not familiar with Korean food, go a bit easy on them and serve the dishes that are usually acceptable to Western palates. One popular dish is Kimbap, maybe because of its similarity to sushi. The only difference is that the fillings are all cooked and the rice is dressed with sesame oil and not vinegar. Galbi Chim is a beef stew flavored with pears that literally melts in you mouth. Serve that with plain rice and a selection of up to twelve different pickles and side dishes. You can order the side dishes from a local Korean restaurant since they are a bit difficult to make. A fruit juice goes perfectly with this, as does the traditional Korean ginger tea with orange peel or green tea with toasted rice.

A One Hundred Day's Korean baby shower would not be complete without bean cakes. Red and black bean cakes are served to everyone and this traditional sweet is eaten to ensure the baby's long life. Stack the bean cakes on cake platters to serve.

For favors, nothing is better than a Korean paper fan. Pair this with a few bags of green tea and a selection of Korean sweets like black and white sesame roll cookies.