"D-I-Y BRIDAL SHOWER" (Part I)

…I’m pretty sure most bridal showers are Do-It-Yourself, but I certainly think that you can turn it up a notch by creating an event with a pretty inspiration in mind as oppose to just throwing anything “bride-y” together.

I’m lucky to have wonderful friends who took time off from their busy lives to spend the day showering me with love, attention, and awesome gifts. I’m lucky to have the best Maid of Honor and bridesmaids who ran around town getting things ready for me aka the bride. I’m lucky to have an amazing fiance who not only custom-made my 3-course bridal shower meal AND my signature drink AND acted as the photographer for these awesome photos for my blog, he went along with the girls when they urged him to “re-propose” to me during the shower. I had the best shower a girl could ever asked for. Yes, I am a very lucky girl.

These are my girls who made this shower so fabulous…

The inspiration from the shower came from me wanting to have a very, very girly event. We created our wedding knowing that we do not want it to be girly. So when it comes time for my shower, it is my only chance to be super feminine. We also had a strict budget as I did not want to overwhelm my friends with an expensive shower so we shopped carefully and scouted for deals. We started off at IKEA just browsing to see what is reasonably priced yet chic. And we found these adorable vases…

The white ones have Jonathan Adler-feel to them which I love since that sort of ties in to our wedding venue, the Parker. The pink one is soft and feminine so we decided to group them for an eclectic look. We picked out a couple different pattern papers from Michael’s scrapbook department as a base to give the table a bit more color since we could not find (nor did we have the budget for) a table runner.

For the flowers, I knew that I would want a single bloom in each white vase, and a bunch of baby’s breath in the pink vase. I really wanted peonies, but they were not available. We got the gerber daisies instead, and they turned out beautiful. The butterflies were a last minute touch. I had them left over from my cake decoration so I decided to use them (I’m all about recycling). They added such whimsy to the centerpieces. I love them! Everyone wanted to know where I got them from, and they are from floraltrims.com

While we were at IKEA, we also found these mod-looking frame for a steal! We bought a whole bunch wanting to give them away as favors. I’m all about giving out favors that people can actually use so these are right up my alley. But then we figured they can also double as place cards. Score!

This project is SUPER easy. I just downloaded a cute background that compliments our color scheme from the internet then I just inserted the jpeg file in Word and just added each girl’s name. I then got an adorable pink ribbon from Michael’s and tied it to the base. Voila! So cute.

E helped me created the menu for what to be served at the shower. He let me picked all my favorite things…(this is really when it pays off when the love of your life is an amazing chef). Then my bridesmaid, Debi, came up with the catchy name for each items. I chose pretty fonts for the menu and just printed them on plain cardstock papers.

Then there were a couple other DIY projects. We had discount coupons for Michael’s and found these tissue papers that I used to make the poms, which really influenced the final color scheme for the shower. (See my POM POMS post on how to make the poms).

We ordered red and pink flowers to coordinate with these poms. Then I made these DIY bridal shower flag garlands. (See my FLAG GARLAND post for instructions on how to make the garlands).

To further save more money – BORROW, BORROW, and BORROW. I just borrowed a bunch of living room decorations from my bridesmaid, Debi, who graciously hauled over 2 big shopping bags full of her living room decor for me. The tall vases, the books, the candle, and the cool silver owl are hers. I then borrowed also from my own wedding decor – the butterflies wreaths and the chalkboards I made a while back for the photobooth. I’ve been wanting to test how well they work so might as well put them to good use now. (See my BUTTERFLIES and CHALKBOARD posts on how to make these items).