I hosted a bridal shower in my home this past Saturday, something that I have never done before. While I’ve helped with several showers in other friends’ homes and hosted a baby shower in my own home a few years ago, this was a first for me to host a bridal shower. Honestly, while it was a lot of work, I had a great time preparing for the event, as well as hosting it on Saturday.
The bride-elect chose dark purple and turquoise blue as her colors, and it was a bit of a challenge to find those colors together in just about anything. But when all was said and done, I actually liked the colors together in our table display, even though I will confess that it is still not my favorite color combo. However, it was prettier than I anticipated that it would be on the table.
Table – The refreshment table is always the centerpiece of the shower decor, and that was our first challenge to tackle. My dining room table is oval, so I used my favorite white oval tablecloth as the primary table cover, and we found a pretty and inexpensive fabric remnant that worked very well as a decorative drape over risers on the table to give it some varying height.
For the risers, we just used six 12-pack cartons of canned sodas. I keep those on hand anyway, as I stock up on diet sodas every time they go on sale, and they provided a good, stable base for the draping fabric. We also chose to use our crystal serving dishes, so that the pretty draping fabric would show through them. I use my nice crystal pieces so rarely that it is always a treat to pull them out anyway, but they looked fabulous on this table display with the bold colors of the fabric.
Drinks – My dining room table is not very large, and we discovered that there really was not adequate room for the punchbowl on the table with our desired setup for the food with the risers. So, we opted to have a drink station in the breakfast room with the punchbowl and a Keurig coffee bar for the few ladies that wanted a cup of coffee with their dessert. I simply used some table linens that I already had on hand that had a bit of purple in them as a draping over another white cloth with purple candlesticks in the center of that table, and we put a few extra desserts on that table as well.
I also had some fruited water available in the living room, too, serving it up in a pretty crystal beverage dispenser that I found at our Sam’s Club a few weeks ago at a great price.
Flowers – This was probably the biggest challenge in using the purple and blue color combo. For the bride’s corsage, we opted for a combination of fresh mini white rose buds and tiny purple astramaris, with a purple and blue bow. For the mothers, I made corsages of a single mini silk purple rose bud and fresh baby’s breath with a purple and blue blow, and for the grandmothers, I made corsages of a single mini blue rose bud and fresh baby’s breath. The fact that I made these was not my original intent either, as I have never done anything like that before. However, the woman at Hobby Lobby who said that she could make them for us the day before the shower was out sick that day, and there was no one else there that knew how to make them. While I wasn’t thrilled at this last-minute problem, I quickly learned how to make them myself out of necessity. I’m sure a professional could have done better, but I actually thought they came out nicely. In fact, I would do this again now that I’ve done four of them. For the table flowers, we opted for silks in a tall crystal vase, as we found the perfect colors in the silks. We also added water to the vase to help with the illusion of real flowers, which actually worked! Unfortunately in my haste to get things ready, I failed to take pictures of the corsages, but they were very pretty!
Food – Since there were only two of us hosting this shower, I decided to do all the baking myself to save money. My other hostess friend provided a cheese and cracker tray and fresh purple grapes, strawberries and pineapple, and I baked lemon bars with a fresh blackberry on top of each one, blackberry-raspberry linzer cookies with center heart cutouts, white wedding mini-cupcakes in dark purple papers with buttercream icing with either a pearl candy or mini-heart almond cookie on top (the center of the linzer cookies that I baked separately), blue candy melts in floral and rose shapes, and chocolate mint cream cheese truffles in white serving papers. I made the linzer cookies, the lemon bars and the candy melts ahead of time and froze them, leaving only the chocolate cream cheese truffles and the cupcakes to do the night before the shower. I was so pleased at how the shower guests just loved all of the food, too. Seems that many of the showers that I have attended lately have opted for purchased food rather than homemade, so I think our food stood out in that regard.
We also found those pretty plastic forks at Party City, too. In fact, they looked so nice with our other crystal serving pieces that I decided to wash them afterwards and keep them for possible future parties.
The challenge of the purple and blue combo turned out to be a fun little thing to work on for me, especially where the food was concerned. I used the Smuckers blackberry-raspberry jam in the linzer cookies instead of red raspberry jam for the color, but it was also very tasty, too. Of course, the purple grapes were a nice inclusion in the pretty crystal pedestal bowl, and the addition of a fresh blackberry on the lemon bars really made a difference in both appearance and taste – a good combo that I will most definitely serve again. I wish I had taken a closeup photo of the precious little mini cupcakes, too. They were so cute in the dark purple papers that I found at Michael’s.
I’m leaving my setup in my breakfast room for Easter weekend, too. It will be nice to serve up desserts on that pretty display! I’m thinking those yummy lemon bars will make another appearance. 😉
My Five Fs 