Queen of Sparkles baby shower: Baby Royale in Baton Rouge | Entertainment/Life

When Jaime Glas Odom walks into a room, nobody wonders if she has a flair for the dramatic.

Glas Odom is the founder of Queen of Sparkles, the Baton Rouge-based clothing brand that has dressed LSU women’s basketball coach Kim Mulkey, Hoda Kotb, Jenna Bush Hager, Jojo Siwa and various reality television personalities. Odom has built an international following around the principle that more sparkle is almost always the right answer.

So when 25 of her closest friends — some dating back to second grade — gathered to plan the April 19 baby shower at The Colonel’s Club, they knew that nobody was bringing a casserole and calling it a day.

Instead, the baby shower theme was Baby Royale.

The execution was exactly what that sounds like.

Casino tables. Real chips. Real dealers. No money. Tiger Girls dressed as showgirls. Sushi served on personalized poker chips. A wing bar. A fry bar. An ice sculpture. A pianist — Rusty Yates, playing in the corner.

Custom-made neon signs. Feathered tablescapes. A scratch-off game called “Who Has the Daddy?” in which guests scratched off to find the real photo of father-to-be Hunter Odom instead of the many poses of Matthew McConaughey (who happens to look a lot like Hunter Odom).

At one point, the hostesses — all wearing matching feathered hats — emerged with sparklers and a light-up sign that read “Cheers, Mom and Dad,” in full Vegas-style fashion.

About 200 people attended the baby shower — and each left with Queen of Sparkles swag, including a limited edition Baby Royale sparkly sweatshirt.

The casino concept started with a suggestion from Hunter Odom’s mother. Glas Odom — whose Las Vegas bachelorette party included all the glitz and glamour possible — immediately said yes.

“Having it at Colonel’s Club was perfect — the perfect venue for that kind of party,” Glas Odom said. “Everyone did such a great job.”

Leigh Manuel, who was maid of honor at the couple’s 2023 wedding and is Glas Odom’s long-time best friend, served as chief party planner — a role she took on with enthusiasm and a dose of self-awareness.

“Especially for baby showers, I’m normally the girl who Venmos and that’s it,” she said. “But I knew that in this case, more is more.”

Glas Odom said the scale of the celebration caught her slightly off guard — which is saying something, given that she built a brand on maximalism. She acknowledged that she and her husband are outgoing, but that doesn’t mean they are looking to be the center of attention.

When it comes to party planning, she said her tactic is to make the festivities “super colorful and loud — and it will take the attention away from us.”

Manuel and the rest of the planning team took that concept as direction.

Manuel spent a decade as a retail buyer, so leaned into sourcing the details for the event.

“Jaime is easy to plan for. Everything is so colorful,” Manuel said. “I love to buy things — so that part was fun.”

She scoured Etsy. She made things herself. Other hostesses stepped in, including Megan Hutchins who handled the flowers and feathered tablescapes. The Colonel’s Club — which Manuel and Glas Odom’s longtime friend and University High classmate Jordan Piazza owns — handled food and coordination, including events coordinator Jessica Burris.

Bradley Easley, the Colonel’s Club’s manager, had his mother Tina Devall make all the desserts by hand. Devall was the one who placed the sushi on the poker chips, which may be the most on-brand detail of the soiree.

The party ran like it had been in the works for months.

Because the restaurant was open for Sunday lunch, the crew only had 90 minutes to transform the place into a casino and display the dozens of details that turned it from a shower into a spectacle.

“Seeing it all come together was really cool,” Manuel said. “Jaime and Hunter thought it was almost as good as the wedding.”

For a woman who is, professionally and personally, the Queen of Sparkles, that is not a small thing to say.

For Glas Odom, the event pointed toward something larger than a party.

“It’s overwhelming with love, more than getting married,” she said. “And it’s all about this baby inside of me who doesn’t know how much love is coming.”

Glas Odom’s due date is mid-May. She is still logging 10,000 steps a day. 

She said she has wanted to be a mother for so long that she made a conscious decision to enjoy every moment of the pregnancy — and by her account, she has, with one exception: sleeping has become slightly uncomfortable. 

But for Manuel — who admits this was her first real foray into party planning — the baby shower landed exactly as intended.

“It was so fun,” she said. “I told them I already have two ideas for the first birthday.”