Bridal Shower for Rachel

For most of my clients, I only have the honor and privilege to help plan their wedding and to coordinate their rehearsal. However, for Rachel, I was able to work with her sister and maid of honor to plan her bridal shower.

This was my first request to plan a shower and it was a lot of fun! Although this event would only be for a few hours, it still took quite some time to plan, but definitely worth it in the end since Rachel was very surprised and happy with the shower.

Her sister, Lilian, asked me to help plan the shower since she's always working, has children at home, and was also in the middle of being in other weddings and planning a birthday party for her son. I gladly accepted, and finally, last Saturday, the bride Rachel was "showered!"

We decided to go with a "Sweet" theme since Rachel loves sweets. We created a huge dessert display:
We had petit fours, cheesecakes, eclairs, cannolis, chocolate, m&ms, and cupcakes (although not pictured). My wonderful husband picked up the cupcakes from Brown Betty's and delivered them right on time! We had 30 cupcakes, with chocolate, purple, and yellow icing, with red velvet, almond, and vanilla as the cake flavors.

To continue with the theme, we went with cute personalized hot cocoa mix with mini whisk:

I thought they were cute, and a favor that would be used (my pet peeve are favors that go to waste). These were purchased through Favor Studio. We also got a matted frame with a photo of the bride and groom for all the guests to sign, and a nice takeaway for Rachel.

Now, onto the food! About 30 guests were expected, so we went with a catering company to ensure we had enough food. I believe the only issue was we didn't have enough bagels to accompany the lox spread, but otherwise, everything looked and smelled great!

The food included bagels and smoked salmon platter, pita with hummus and other dips with vegetables, a vegetable crudite, cous cous, mini crabcakes, tea sandwiches, caprese salad, and spinach salad. All catering was courtesy of Cote and Co. Catering.

One of the great things about bridal showers is the bar! Girly drinks galore!

I made a pink lemonade cocktail (recipe below). We also had prosecco, which could be mixed with guava and/or apricot nectar for bellinis.

Although hard to see here, I had purple cocktail napkins and luncheon napkins made through For Your Party. The cocktail napkins had yellow matted print with a diamond ring design, and the luncheon napkins had silver monogram print.

Rachel's wedding colors are "metallic" so we decided to incorporate her wedding color scheme with our bright colors. We eventually chose purple and yellow, and my wonderful friend and florist, Mary Elizabeth, made these centerpieces to match. She did a beautiful job using whole lemons to bring out the yellow in these irises.

I sprinkled metallic hearts around the centerpiece to bring in the "metallic" theme, accompanied by two crystal dishes with jelly beans and purple and yellow personalized M&Ms.

I only stayed until everything was set up, although Lilian and her mother were so nice to invite me to stay. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see Rachel's expression, but from Lilian's email, it appears that she loved it.

After the shower, my husband and I headed over the state border to NJ to meet our new family member.... to be revealed in a later post!

For now, here's the pink lemonade recipe:

1 part vodka

2 part lemonade

1/4 part cranberry juice (to make it pink)

1 part gingerale

add ice and stir