My Bridal Shower – Wedding Planning Diary No. 12

If you follow me on Instagram, you may know that my bridal shower was a few weeks ago. We are not getting married until May, so traditionally it is a bit early to have a bridal shower – but I wanted to avoid the holiday season and the never-ending Pennsylvania winter. September just made the most sense for us and I do not regret my decision at all!

Additionally – since we are having a destination wedding – people will already be traveling, so this gave us the chance to break things up in case people needed to travel for the shower and the wedding. I know y’all are always curious about wedding stuff, so I wanted to share some snapshots of my shower with you all!

I want to give a huge shoutout to my mom, my sister, and my MOH Gabby for all the work they put in. Also, huge thanks to Grant, Vinnie, Bryce, and our family friends Debbie, Pam, and Shelby for helping out as well. I appreciate you!

As I said in a previous post, thankfully (even with COVID) I didn’t have to change too much with my shower. Our wedding invite list is small anyway, so we easily kept my shower around 25 people, including myself and my bridesmaids. We did end up hosting it at my parents’ house instead of our original location just so we could have more space and flexibility. It was a lot of work moving and cleaning things, but so worth it in my opinion.

Some of the other changes we made because of COVID included serving food, giving out hand sanitizers (which ended up being cute favors), and having individual bottles of sparkling wine and juice for the mimosa bar (which ended up being so aesthetic). Oh, we also had individual glass bottles of maple syrup for the pancakes – unfortunately no one took a pic of them, but these are the bottles we ordered.

We had the food catered by a local small business called Sideboard Charcuterie. We had four boards from her – two typical charcuterie boards, and two breakfast boards (these included bacon, sausage, pancakes, cinnamon rolls, fruit, etc). We ordered enough for 30 people and it was more than enough for the 25 attendees, plus the guys (Grant, Vinnie, Mike, my Dad, and Percy) got to eat as well. We still had leftovers after that – some people even took plates home and my brother-in-law had lunch for work for a solid week. I also loved that it included something for everyone, no matter their dietary restrictions or preferences.

I knew I wanted my cake from Nothing Bundt Cakes – if you haven’t had it, you need to try it ASAP. Grant was gracious enough to drive two hours round trip the morning of the shower to pick it up. We got a 2-tiered cake – the top tier was red velvet and the bottom tier white chocolate raspberry. We were nervous no one would be into the cake since we offered pancakes, but everyone seemed to love it! We had just enough and no leftovers.

Everything else we did ourselves including signs, creating balloon sculptures, place settings, centerpieces, etc. It was super stressful the night before, despite the work we did over the weeks prior, but it turned out really nice! We decided to rent chairs so everything would look uniform, plus it was much cheaper than buying chair covers. We rented 30 chairs for under $100 at our local party rental store. Thankfully, my family is the CEO of parties (lol) so we already had tons of 6 foot tables. But we invested in new white fitted tablecloths that were an absolute steal from Amazon – we got 15 for under $90 – plus they’re machine washable and you can steam them.

We also got these amazing table runners for a great deal on Amazon – they come in tons of colors. The centerpieces took a dramatic turn around 11pm Friday night. I am not kidding when I say the vases we had literally started to shatter out of nowhere. They had been sitting in the same spot for hours and BAM – they shattered. So Gabby and my sister ran to Walmart to try and find replacements, but we finally decided on just using wine bottles. It honestly wasn’t my favorite, but it was the brand of wine we used at the mimosa bar so it was pretty cute. P.S. If you’re looking for a great, affordable, sparkling wine – I highly recommend Verdi. We got mini 6 packs of them at our local beer distributor.

Some of my other favorite details included the table settings – we used pink cloth napkins from Amazon, gold plastic flatware from Target, large monstera leaves from Etsy, and the name cards were DIY’d using these mirrors from Amazon. We also had a great entryway with a photo backdrop, customized Bath & Body Works hand sanitizers, our Cinderella guest book, and these fun pens for everyone to take with them after signing the guest book.

When we played games, we gave tickets out instead of prizes and we had a few baskets to raffle off. My sister brought some Vera Bradley travel pieces, I put together some Disney goodies in a basket, Gabby got some Bath and Body Works, my Mom did a Lilly basket, and the guys made a Moscow Mule basket. My sister did something similar for her shower and I think everyone loved the basket raffle idea!

We had so much fun playing games, eating, talking, and spending time with friends and family. It went so well and I hope everyone had as much fun as I did!

Thanks for reading!

xoxo
Jayme