8.11.2016

~120~ Bridal Shower Planning

I love weddings-everything about them: The dresses, jewelry, photographs,
and of course seeing the happy couple. 
Last month, I offered to help throw my future Sister-In-Law's bridal shower. I was honored when she asked me to be one of her bridesmaids, so I thought I'd return the honor by hosting her shower. As much I love weddings, and though I've been to many bridal showers before, I've never actually thrown one. The last shower of any type that I hosted was a baby shower when I was 14 for my sister-in-law before my nephew was born. 
After planning my own wedding, in the back of my mind, I've always thought that it would be fun to be an event planner - mostly as a wedding coordinator, but really any type of event. I enjoy putting things together and seeing my vision come to life. 

The first thing I did for this shower was design the invites. I was on a time crunch and didn't really have time to order invites.  Besides, I enjoy a little graphic design here and there - though I'm not so sure how good I really am at it (I only took one class in college). We were combining the bridal shower and bachelorette into one whole day of celebration, so I also had to come up with a combo invitation for those who were being invited to partake in both events.  My solution was to print 2 different invites and assemble them back to back. 
The next thing on the planning list was decorations. My first stop was the Dollar Tree to pick up table cloths, plates, silverware, glasses, and any decorations that I thought might work. The best find was stems of fake purple flowers. I had already planned out in my mind to make centerpieces for the tables with mason jars that I already owned and flowers.  Silk flowers are typically $5-$7 bucks at JoAnn or Michaels, so getting them for a dollar was a steal! My Mother-in-Law came by some clear jewels which we scattered around the centerpieces.
After perusing Pinterest, I also decided that I wanted to paint a large wooden H and have guests sign it in silver and white sharpies instead of a traditional guest book.  I added a silver ribbon to the back so that they can hang in their house later. 
The last decoration that I put together was a banner that said from "Miss to Mrs".  I created the banner panels by layering purple and grey cardstock. To make the point I just used a ruler to mark the center of the paper about 3 to 4 inches from the bottom and then drew a straight line from the bottom corners to the mark and cut the triangle out. I also added a fold 1/4" from the top using a My Score Pal so that I could hang it on string when I was done. Next I simply traced the cut-out triangle area onto the grey cardstock and trimmed 1/4" off each side and 3/4" off the top to create the layered affect.
The rest was created using my Cricut.  The individual letters are from the "All Mixed Up" cartridge using the blackout function. The heart is from "George and Basic Shapes", and the word "to" is from the "Opposites Attract" cartridge. Everything was then assembled using my ATG gun. To add a little extra something, I blinged the outline of the heart using some adhesive crystals that I had. The last step was hanging it on string. I tied knots between each panel, just in case to keep them from sliding together, but really the tape from the ATG kept them in place.

The cake was a sheet cake from Costco (seriously, you can't go wrong with that!) and the punch was a recipe I found on Pinterest of course. I also made some custom water bottle labels in case anyone wanted water instead of punch.


And of course, no bridal shower is complete without games! These were also Pinterest inspired. The first was a Mad-Libs game for guests to help the bride write her vows-just something cute and fun. 
The second was the ABCs of a wedding. Guests thought of a wedding-relate word for each letter with the hopes of matching as many words as possible with the bride.  
I also had large craft sticks in a jar for guests to write date-night ideas on for the bride and groom to pull from later on.

The whole day was so much fun! I can't wait for the wedding a couple of months!

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