Wedding Shower Planning

Last Saturday I threw my first ever wedding shower, and I am so happy with how everything turned out!

My brother-in-law, David, is getting married in July and J and I are both standing in the wedding. In a short period of time David's fiancée, Tracey, has become one of my favourite people. They've decided to have their wedding in our church which is older and hasn't had many updates over the past 15 to 20 years. In order to get the church ready for the wedding without spending a fortune David and Tracey have been doing a lot of the upgrades themselves. The church is looking amazing, but it's taking a bit of a toil on them and their wedding planning/preparation is a little bit more stressful than it is for the average couple. Because of the added stress I really wanted to make sure Tracey's shower was perfect and something she would really enjoy. (I like to think I was pretty successful.)

I decided to go with a morning shower and serve breakfast type foods. I think this surprised some of the guests, but it worked really well. Months ago Tracey had pinned an image of a yogurt bar to her wedding planning board on Pinterest but in the end they decided to go with a candy bar. Since I knew she liked the idea of a yogurt bar I knew that was something I wanted to incorporate. I served vanilla yogurt with three different types of berries and granola. I love the chalk board easel and galvanized pail that I picked up at Micheals. The serving dishes all came from Dollarama. It was a big hit! We also served four different types of muffins made by my mother-in-law, some fresh fruit, and mini cinnamon rolls.

For the decorations I tried to go with a bit of a rustic theme. I made two banners (one said "Thank you" and the other said "From Miss to Mrs") using a free printable. (You can find it here.) It was so simple, and I love how they turned out. One of the other bridesmaids painted the "62 days" canvas and I just love it, it worked perfectly.

I also made a display of pictures of David and Tracey using paper doilies, twine, and clothespins. (I totally got that idea from Pinterest, you can see the original post it came from here.)

I painted mason jars and filled them with artificial flowers for centre pieces, and I covered water bottles with pretty duct tape so they'd look a little classier sitting on the tables. (I used this tutorial for help painting the mason jars. I ended up deciding not to distress them because I liked how they looked as they were.)

For the favours I bought little bottles of shower gel and stuck tags on them that said "From Tracey's shower to yours" and for the guest book I had everyone sign a white plate with Sharpies. (I used the oil ones as I've found they tend to fade less than the regular ones.)

And of course we played games! Tracey's sisters created a "Who Knows her Best" game and a "He said, She said" game that used their past Facebook statuses. We also played wedding pictionary,  "What's in Your Purse" and of course we played the clothespin game. I put all of the prizes in brown paper bags with purple tissue paper so they would match the theme of the shower.

I will admit that the shower may have consumed my life for a couple months. I work full-time so it felt like every day off was spent doing something shower-related but I didn't mind in the least. It turns out I really love planning events like this! Luckily one of the girls at work is going to need a baby shower soon and my brother is getting married next year. ;-)

I hope that this post helped a little if you're planning a shower! Let me know if you use any of these ideas, or if you have any ideas for the next shower I'll need to throw.