After weeks of planning, today was my daughter's bridal shower. I think the most amazing part the planning is finding out the number of people who are truly invested in my daughter and her fiance. So many
people helped out, and everyone seemed genuinely happy to do so. The bridesmaids and my sister spent an entire evening at my house helping to make 80 invitations. The groom's mother and sister cut, pasted, and put together 60 cupcake wrappers made out of book pages. My SIL make the most delicious cupcakes. My sister and the Maid of Honor spent most of a Saturday making bookmarks for the favors and the Maid of Honor created games and brought beautiful orchids as prizes. The love and commitment of my daughter and her fiance's family and friends was clearly evident throughout the planning of a beautiful event.
I have explained the details for how we created the decorations for
anyone who is planning their own literary themed affair. If you're not interested in the particulars, you may want to skip down to the last paragraph.
The wedding has a literary theme, so the invitations feature a wedding dress on a dress form cut from book pages. The pages are from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire-the same book Ryan proposed with (though not the actual copy). My copy was falling apart, so I didn't feel too guilty cutting them up. We cut the pages into the shape of a wedding dress and mounted it onto antique-looking card stock (
The Old World Stack) in various shades of purple (the wedding color). Then we added a purple ribbon and a self-stick pearl to finish the dress (see a framed copy in the picture above).
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To decorate the white cupcakes, we created
wrappers out of more book pages glued onto ivory card stock. Then we added tags stamped with, "Happily Ever After" and tied on a purple ribbon. We thread the tags onto toothpicks and placed one onto each cupcake. To display the cupcakes, we placed some on a store bought cupcake tower in the middle of the cake table. The rest were displayed onto stacked hard-covered books that had been covered with purple or white paper and tied with ribbon.
The centerpieces were made of wrapped books tied with ribbons. A purple tag with the bride and groom's names and the date of the wedding printed onto book page hearts was tied onto each stack.
Then a romantic quote in a white frame was leaned against each stack of books. The quotes were printed onto card stock from the
Once Upon a Time Stack. Each was also accented with a heart die-cut from book pages. *Note: The cards needed to sit a while for the ink to dry before putting in the frames.
The quotes I used are:
- “I love you, not only for what you are, but
for what I am when I am with you. I love you, not only for what you have made
of yourself but for what you are making of me.” Roy Croft
- "Once upon a time there was a boy who
loved a girl and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life
answering." The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
- “Whatever
our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” By Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
- “For the two of us, home isn’t a place. It is a
person. And we are finally home.”ANNA AND THE FRENCH KISS By Stephanie Perkins
- “A short story is a
love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a
film.” Lorrie
Moore
- “I would rather share one lifetime with you
than face all the ages of eternity alone.” The
Fellowship of the Ring
My daughter's lovely Maid of Honor created 3 games for the festivities. Everyone received a blank Bingo card. They had to write in gifts they thought my daughter would receive. The first person to get five in a row won an orchid plant. Next, she placed pictures of handsome hunks under each chair. She pasted faces of famous actors onto a picture of a tuxedo jacket. The person who had a picture of the groom received a prize. Finally, people had to match the love quotes with the correct author. The person who knew the most was the winner.
Finally, the favors were homemade bookmarks. They were made from a 6" x 8" length of card stock from the
Once Upon a Time Stack, then folded in half to be two-sided. We cut rectangles from the book pages that were about 2 1/2" by 7". We used a
heart hole punch to make a heart at the bottom of the book page. Next we pasted the book page onto the card stock. On some we placed a picture of the bride and groom behind the book page so their picture showed in the heart cut-out. On some, the color in the picture clashed with the color of the card stock, so we left the picture out. They actually looked very pretty with the colored card stock showing through. If I were to do it again, I would print the photos in black and white. It
would have added to the old world feel of the bookmarks and the color wouldn't clash with the card stock. Then we glued a diagonal piece of card stock with the quote from Lord of the Rings across the upper part of the bookmark. Finally, we tied an ivory ribbon at the top of each one. The bookmarks were placed at each place setting.
As the host, you try to make sure everyone is taken care of, that the decorations are just so, and the food meets the needs of everyone there. Overall, you just want everyone to enjoy themselves. You also want to make sure everyone feels like an important part of the celebration-to feel genuinely appreciated for their participation. I know I appreciated all of the love and support that was shown for my daughter and her fiance. The fact that so many people genuinely care about their happiness made me very proud of the woman my daughter has become and the choices she has made. I know she has touched each of these people in special ways for them to want to be an integral part of this moment in her life. I hope they all know how much their kindness was appreciated in return.
