An important thing to decide when you’re throwing a Unicorn Party: Is it about unicorns or for unicorns or inspired by unicorns? The answer will determine the direction of your Unicorn Party Ideas. It’s this kind of question Hallmark Signature Designers Lisa H. and Piper W. wrestle with, y’all. Because it is their job. 

PIPER: We spend all this time playing with iridescent foil. And one day we thought, “This needs to be all over everything.”

LISA: We work with sparkles all day.

PIPER: So we wondered if it would be cool to have a unicorn birthday party.

LISA: Things escalated quickly.

PIPER: My daughter is seven and loves all things glitter. So we invited some of her best friends.

LISA: It was all about being inspired by your daughter and the magic and wonder of childhood. And it was super girly. We were basically living out our childhood dreams.

PIPER: And my adult dreams. But…we were trying to think like little kids. It’s not about what we want—it’s about what they want.

Unicorn Party ideas: the basics

LISA: You don’t have to have unicorns everywhere.

PIPER: We didn’t want the traditional face on a unicorn cake.

LISA: Instead, we were trying to capture the essence of the magical, mystical unicorn.

PIPER: You don’t have to get hung up on everything matching. It’s all about magic and sparkle.

LISA: You’re really trying to capture a feeling. We wanted ours to feel like a fancy tea party.

Pro-tips:

• Start with a simple palette of 3-4 colors. For this Unicorn Party, it was pink, lavender, aqua, and glitter. And yes, “glitter” counts as a color.
• Plan your table, decor, and food around the color palette. Go to your grandma’s china cabinet, your craft closet, party stores, and thrift stores with your color palette and start pulling things together.
• Remember the sparkle. Look for iridescent, opalescent, and otherwise shimmery materials—fabrics, papers, ribbons, attachments.

Unicorn Party decoration ideas

LISA: We did lots of layering. We layered different fabrics—a silver table runner over a purple table cover.

PIPER: Cyrena M., one of our Designers, made a backdrop of balloons and balls and flowers and garlands.

LISA: We used a bunch of mismatched plates, platters, and bowls. You could also go to a party store and get solid color plates to mix and match. And fancy plastic champagne flutes.

PIPER: We wanted things to feel light and airy. Oh! And confetti. Lots of confetti.

Pro-tips:

• There is no such thing as too much—of anything. For wall decor, we started with three different kinds of garlands: tassels, strung confetti, and sewn circles. Then we added balloons, honeycomb balls, and paper flowers (see examples here and here and here and here).
• Chaos can be beautiful. We threw confetti all over the table, piled candy and cookies high, and let balloons bob around on the floor.

Unicorn Party activities & extras

LISA: Megan R., our Creative Assistant, made adorable unicorn headbands. The birthday girl, of course, got the special golden horn.

PIPER: We had a coloring activity—these printed unicorns the girls could decorate.

DOWNLOAD OUR FREE UNICORN STAND-UPS, PRINT THEM ON CARD STOCK, AND CUT THEM OUT. HAVE MARKERS, GEMS, GLITTER, AND GLUE ON HAND FOR DECORATING.

LISA: You could have extras for the girls to put on—tutus, spray on hair glitter, nail polish.

PIPER: All of our Unicorn Party ideas should do one thing: make each girl feel super-special.

LISA: After all the sugar, we put on fun music and had a unicorn dance party.

PIPER: Things got a little rowdy.

Unicorn Party Menu

Editor’s note: While it is awesome to have a team of crazy-talented designers to help with your Unicorn Party, you can also do it with your crazy-talented friends, or just your crazy-talented self and maybe Pinterest.

• Meringues: Use this recipe, but gently swirl two colors of food coloring into the egg white mixture, stopping before they’re completely mixed.
• Unicorn bark: Instead of nuts and cranberries, add fancy sprinkles.
• Birthday cake: We (and by “we” we mean Creative Assistant Kelsey D., who also made the bark) swirled different shades of food coloring in the batter for each layer, frosted it in white, drizzled it with lavender glaze, and topped it with meringues, unicorn bark, and fancy sprinkles.
• Unicorn cookies: We did not make these gorgeous things, because we have Bernard S.
• Flavored milk: Our local Shatto dairy makes this amazing cotton-candy milk. You could use strawberry flavoring or add food coloring.

So…be honest…are you inspired to throw a Unicorn Party? If so, we wanna see your pictures. And if you have more unicorn party ideas, share those, too! Tag us on Instagram or share on Facebook.

To see the Hallmark Signature unicorn cards that inspired this whole thing, go here. And check out our unicorn-party-appropriate gift wrap, too.

— Trish B.