Bridal Shower: The Decor

The weekend of St. Patrick's Day I hosted a bridal shower in Atlanta for my dear friend Blair with her sister and mother at Blair's house. I wanted to share the personalized decorations with you and in another post later this week I will share her gifts, all of which I made of course :).

Blair's sister Kristin, Blair the bride and me

Originally, Blair's mom thought a Breakfast at Tiffany's theme would be fun…guests in black dresses, hats and pearls with tiffany blue, white and black decor. In the same email she also commented on how Blair would probably like everyone to come dressed out of the movie "The Help," pretty sundresses, etc. So, we ended up combining the two and went with the sundress apparel and used tiffany blue and shades of purple (her wedding is monochromatic purple).

I spent January and February making about 25 invitations by hand. I used my Cameo for all of these projects. I thought the scalloped edge card was feminine and I designed it to fit in square purple envelopes I had ordered from Paper Source. By the way, why do square envelopes cost more to mail? I think USPS is profiting from the wedding industry! To make the plain white wedding dress look better, I added some small adhesive crystals randomly on the skirt and tied a coordinating ribbon around the waist of the dress. I wrote out the invitation text on the back of the flat card by hand because I had not yet ordered the Silhouette sketch pens. Those things are wonderful and I wish I had used them.

Now onto the actual shower…..

Blair's sister Kristin came up with the idea to give out wine as favors to our guests. Once we bought the wine at our favorite stop, Trader Joe's, Kristin removed the labels by soaking the bottles in the kitchen sink and just rubbing off the labels. Blair's dad got in on the fun by cutting out the adhesive labels, designed by Kristin, with a paper cutter before she applied them. I made the purple and tiffany blue wine bottle hangers to add a pop of coordinating color. I am glad I made a few different styles because I used the cutouts from some as dresses on the other which really made use of everything I had cut.

We displayed the wine bottles on a table underneath a window off to the side of the kitchen with some beautiful purple flowers arranged by the mother-of-the-bride. The tablecloths were actually from my baby shower in Connecticut last year and my mom had extra and since they coordinated, we used them!

I made a "Congrats Blair" banner to hang across the fireplace where I assumed the bride would sit to open her gifts. I used the same paper as the invitations and used thick gold sparkle letters since her wedding colors are purple and gold. I used a scalloped edge for the background to coordinate with the invitations once again and because it is feminine and springy. Did you know I make custom banners for clients? Come check out some examples on Facebook and "Like" my page…I'd love to talk with you about a custom order!

For dessert we had ganache filled chocolate cupcakes and one of the bridesmaids decorated them all different. I took one of Blair's cake stands and tied another tablecloth around it with some tulle we had on hand. Don't get me wrong, the cake stand was lovely colors, but it clashed with the look I was going for ;).

Another simple thing I did was fill the chine cabinet with framed photos. On the morning of the shower I asked Blair to go around the house and collect photos of her and Joe for me to put on display. Since guests sat in the kitchen, dining, and living rooms, I thought it would be a nice subtle touch to display more photos of them in the dining room.