Sandy and Adam are great adventurers so it makes complete sense that their wedding would be in a lush, exotic tropical setting. For their bridal shower, I thought of dreamy, soft watercolors accented by their silver rings. The silver was from TMP and the watercolor was various mixings of Americolor‘s moss, leaf and forest green, and ivory with water.
For a happy engagement party, add cookies to bring the bling. Okay, I get it; the RING is the bling. Still, I can’t help but put my own sweet spin on bRINGing the bling. Shine on, you crazy couple!
You get a purple, and you get a purple, and you get a purple. I guess these purple cookies had to stand in for Oprah at this bridal shower. Hey, it’s The Color Purple, one way or another.
There is so much more to being engaged now than when I was going through that moment of my life. Now there are fun ways to ask friends and family to be in the bridal party (ahem, like cookie boxes!) and the wonderful news is celebrated with engagement parties. Definitely showing my age by becoming aware of such norms just within the past year or two…
A wonderful repeat customer’s daughter just became engaged and I was so happy to create the “will you be my bridesmaid” boxes and the cookies for the engagement party. Thanks Jennifer!!!
#Hashtag all things!
That ring got bling!
Just the right size….
So here is a secret that is not such a secret: I love hosting parties! Love, love, love having kids/folks to the house and all the ruckus and preparation that comes with it. So when Tori (our eldest) picked a date for her bridal shower, I was jumping for planning joy. Unfortunately, Denver is a bit too far of a commute from Philly so I flew in for an awesome weekend of food tasting, er, I mean, checking out venues for her bridal shower. Kensington Quarters totally had that rustic industrial feel she was looking for and we couldn’t have been more pleased with the upstairs room, their service, the food, and great atmosphere!
It was a definite given that the favors would be cookies. Thought Tori would like a little bling like the ring…
Since I had to ship things across the country, the prep for the shower could not be too complicated. Tori’s colors are blush, gold and white so I made a bunch of full sized tassels using instructions through Oh Happy Day! (The tissue paper pack was a set found at Target). I spaced the tassels on simple twine and ran them along the stair railings and the gift table. Thanks Kendra for getting all this set up!
I dipped various sizes of mason jars in gold paint (jars and paint from Target) and sent them to Pure Design Florist (Pure Design saved my backside because I had quite the time finding a Philly florist that was close enough to the venue to deliver and also open on Memorial day weekend!).
One of the bridesmaids, Jill, is a graphic designer. She worked her magic to create the templates for the games we played. I asked her to 1) use the rustic look of wood and lights at Kensington and 2) put a &%$)! load of information on small sheets! The cards were absolutely perfect! Game playing was apparently informative, seasoned with splash of competitiveness; thanks to future Mom-in-law, Johanna, and sister-in-law, Melina, for providing the gift baskets for the lucky winners!
Another bridesmaid, Joan, brought bunches of balloons, decorated with witty words. I’m a sucker for clever words appropriately placed.
We brought Byron upstairs for the latter part of the shower. The almost.bride.and.groom got mini white boards (thank you once again Target) to play our version of “the newlywed game”! POSITIVELY HYSTERICAL! SO MUCH FUN! (Google ‘newlywed game questions’ or ‘newlywed game questions bridal shower’ and you will get more ideas than you would ever need). I typed out many questions and the bridesmaids took turns picking a question to ask.
Tori likes clean lined, structured designs with just a kiss of bling. So we got this cake from the wonderful Whipped Bakeshop in Fishtown. Not only was the cake delicious and beautiful, Whipped Bakeshop was super wonderful to work with. The topper came from Communicakeit. I fell in love with it as soon I saw it on Instagram; it had just the right words and shine for the occasion!
Our (not such a) baby girl!
Tori and her sister/maid of honor (so lucky to have these two daughters)!
Thank you to all of the bridemaids and Johanna for such a successful bridal shower! Your help and collaboration made things run smooth as silk! …. sorry Melina isn’t in this picture 😦
Okay. So it’s actually “a hunk,” “a hunk,” AND burning “love.” Should have made them peanut butter flavor for the King. No matter. Elvis has left the building. Special thanks to the great Callye Alvarado (the Sweet Adventures of Sugarbelle) for the original tutorial and hunky torso idea!
The City of Brotherly Love’s (Philadelphia’s) perhaps best-known landmark is LOVE itself — the Robert Indiana sculpture is in John F. Kennedy Plaza, not far from City Hall. As an odd side bar, LOVE was installed in 1976 but briefly snatched away in 1978; popular demand brought it back to where it stands today.
Since the wedding was in Philly (even though ordered and picked up in Buffalo), all was right in the karma world.
The country club/golf fund raiser theme was “diamond in the rough.” The client’s only instructions were ‘we want a diamond…’ I asked ‘diamond?’ …not “rough” like a fairway rough or a diamond sitting in a fairway rough? ‘Nope, a diamond. And put it in a bag with a ribbon…100 bags.’ Okay. What could I do with quick efficiency and (because I am who I am) in a design that I had not seen before? Here are the resulting cookies:
(PS: These cookies would also be great for an engagement party or bridal shower!)
I started with a simple superman “s” shaped cookie cutter and flooded them with white royal icing. That dried overnight before I added the blue.ish accents (which only had to dry a short time…like an hour or so) before I free-hand/penned in the diamond outline. I used an Americolor black pen. Here’s a quick pic of the general steps I took to get it done.
Diamonds were my new best friend.
Perfect size for the setting, eh?
Mama Mayer Bakery 