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!
Tag Archives: engagement party
Tori’s Bridal Shower
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 😦
Diamond in the Rough
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?
Better put a RING on it!
The request was for a tray of engagement rings to sweeten up a bridal shower. And I did make rings, putting my little twist of a heart shaped cutout in the middle. But , as always, I couldn’t leave well enough alone. I wanted to include just a few designs to personalize the platter. I had seen some beautiful wedding photos where the couple had their hands in the shape of a heart so…. this is my cookie take on that theme.
This is the platter before it got wrapped up for delivery. Late night photo so not the same quality of light. Got to make a photo booth one day…
Engagement Party Platter
The mom of the bride.to.be had seen a couple of designs on line that she wanted to mimic so we met to cruise the world.wide.web of cookies. In the end, she choose 3 shapes and ideas: a save.the.date square, a silhouette to match the invitation, and a double heart with the couples initials and a mini-engagement ring. It is all about making the customer happy! The bride.to.be was completely surprised (cried when she saw everyone) and the mom was kind enough to follow up with lovely comments like “big hit” and “very, very tasty as you said they would be.”
Matching the invitation…
On a side note, I was satisfied with how the silhouette and the save.the.date cookies turned out but not thrilled by the double heart. Woof. Learning is constant and style is (hopefully) ever improving. It is a tough lesson for me that the road to the consistently fabulous cookie is long. A worthy goal to be worked toward, for sure…
Mama Mayer Bakery 