My little sister is getting married in May, and as maid of honor, it was my job to plan her shower. There were lots of possible directions I could have gone with the theme, but I finally settled on a beachy ocean theme. We do love the beach, and we've collected plenty of seashells from our many family vacations together!
We hosted the shower at my parents' house when my husband and I were at home in Virginia over his Christmas break. Nosiness may or may not run in the family, so it was a little challenging to keep things sufficiently secret from the guest of honor.
While I wanted to have a sit-down lunch at the table, there simply wasn't enough table space for all our guests, so the living room it was! I had fun decorating the tables in there. My mom conveniently had some ocean-theme coasters, and even though you can't really tell, the white lace centerpiece has a seashell design (underneath the seashells on top of it, that is).
For food, we served a full luncheon because it started at noon. I couldn't seas the opportunity of serving seafood, as my sister is allergic to most things that live in the ocean, but we were able to decorate the counter top with seashells and ocean-themed décor to keep with the theme.
We served sandwich items and chicken salad, so guests could create their own sandwiches and people with special dietary concerns would have some options to choose from. We also served a homemade pasta salad and a lettuce salad with toppings on the side. I made mini cheesecakes because one can't have a celebration for my sister without serving cheesecake. It simply isn't done.
Watercolor was a perfect medium for creating the signs. To paint them, I used a large paintbrush to dampen a sheet of watercolor paper. Then I applied greens and blues in large strokes and used more water to blend the colors together. Once they were dry, I used my brush pens to letter the words. I pulled a few frames off the walls and evicted the current artwork so I could put a sign in each frame.
I covered simple card tables with tablecloths in colors that were more or less in keeping with the ocean theme. That gave me space to decorate with seashells and beachy decorations from around the house. We used these tables for the game, shower favors, and gifts.
I made about 30 soaps for the favors in Ocean Breeze scent. I don't really know what "Ocean Breeze" smells like, other than that's what flavor my soap scent said it was.
[Read an easy method of making your own handmade soap here]
For the game, I didn't want anything too elaborate, and I also didn't want to be buying too much, so I found a free wedding-theme Mad Libs game to print. I put the games and a stack of pens in a basket by the front door.
Of course, there's always something that goes wrong at something like this to make it memorable! In this case, I failed to notice that the printer had cut off the edge of most of the Mad Libs, making them nearly impossible to read.
This also happened to be right at the start of the shower when guests were just arriving, so I had to rush to print out more (some of which also misbehaved). There were enough to go around, and no one was salty about them.
All in all, it was shore-ly a wonderful, oceany time. Let's just hope I'm not in charge of printing out a bridal shower game again!
Have you ever planned a bridal shower? What are some of your favorite tricks?
Love it!
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