Bud's Bridal Shower

First let me say that being Liz's Matron of Honor is very important to me. It means a lot to me and having been through several weddings, I have specific ideas about what my duties are and how they should be done. The most important job a MOH has is to make the Bride feel special.
I got my first opportunity to do that with Liz's Bridal Shower. I wanted to host one because my favorite thing in the world is to throw a party, but I didn't know who else would want to throw one and when, so I waited. The perfect opportunity came when Mrs. Martine called Liz about the shower situation, so Liz called me, and I called Mrs. Martine. We were the perfect team!
She provided the sandwiches and petit fours (she has people for that), and the location (her house). She also hunted down 27 pairs of teacups/saucers and probably 30 champagne glasses, because it was important for us to use real china and things we had so we didn't have to create trash with plastic stuff. It was one way to honor Donna by recyling. I also insisted that we use cloth napkins, so she spent a full day ironing all of her white and pink table cloths and napkins.
I got to handle the invitations- picking them, addressing and mailing them, and following up with RSVPs. That's one of my favorite parts! Mrs. Martine was happy to give up that task. I also worked on decorations and extras like a candy bar in the shower's colors, scented sugars to go with the tea, a scrapbook with sweet notes from the guests, and a surprise from Liz's fiancee.
Mrs. Mary also helped bring some fun to the preparations! The theme was based off of the invites, which were gray with white and pink peony outlines and a stripe of blue with the information on it. I ordered them from Wedding Paper Divas. Here's a link if you want to check them out: Posh Peonies.
Everything turned out beautifully. Here's the sandwich table with the tissue-paper-balls I made:

We had cream cheese sandwiches, and a couple of others that were really good but I don't know what they were. I made mini strawberry cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and silver-gray sprinkles. I think everyone preferred the petit fours to the cupcakes because there were a ton leftover!

Now, I don't know if you know this, but gray food is not very appetizing and it's also very hard to find. Same goes for gray candy. I improvised and used silver instead, which brought out many more options! We had marshmallows, pink sixlets, hershey's kisses, pink/white french mints, pink rock candy, silver (gray) m&ms, white m&ms, pink jelly beans, and york peppermint patties. Here's the candy bar all set up:

It's on a table just below a large Martine family portrait. Mrs. Martine asked if she should take down the picture because she thought it looked like a shrine to Donna. I told her to leave it and maybe Donna would be happy that her shrine was made of candy!

Here's our tea serving station, with various tea pots- check out the pink one. I thought it was gaudy, and so did Mrs. Martine but she could also see how some people would love it. We decided to let Mrs. Mary decide. When she came in, she said, "Aww! Look at that cute pink teapot!" and we cracked up and decided to just put it out there. Wouldn't you know, that was the Bride's favorite also? I couldn't believe it.


Here's a closeup of the scented sugars. Super easy to make- you just layer plain sugar with lemon peel, orange peel, or vanilla beans, seal them up for a few days, and the sugar smells and tastes like the flavor you made. Of course I had to make little gray tags for each one!

All of that work on tea, sugars, teacups, and how to keep hot water hot, and I don't think one person had a cup of tea until after the party was over. We stood around and had a few cups while we were cleaning up. The lemon sugar was pretty good! I guess it's hard to resist champagne with hibiscus flowers in it because that's what everyone wanted. If you've not tried that, buy some hibiscus flowers at the liquor store and put one in the bottom of a champagne glass, top it with the bubbly, and sip. Even guests who don't like regular champagne loved these, and they are beautiful.

The guests arrived right on time and the Bride was super excited! Here we are:


We all had our snacks and champagne, then gathered around the big comfy chair and played a game. Each guest wrote down the story of their first kiss, I read them aloud, and Liz had to guess who wrote each story.
The funniest one was Liz's sister-in-law, Christell. At first, Liz guessed that hers was some random story about a girl in a closet, and that wasn't hers, but it was the last one. It was a sweet story about how they were studying, then took a walk on the beach, and it just happened; it included a quote, "and since my mother-in-law is here, my husband was my first kiss" and the whole room said, "AWW!" Funny that it was the sweetest story and Liz originally guessed the craziest!

I'll spare you all of the gift-opening pictures, but here's a veil that came in one of the gifts. It was a set of silverware from Connie that was wrapped a million times in that stuff!

Now do you know the thing about breaking bows at your bridal shower? How ever many bows you break is how many kids you will have! I think the stores figured it out because all of the ribbon that came from Crate & Barrel and Bed, Bath & Beyond was silk and unable to be broken.

Here's my gift, the last one. She's already managed to break 4 ribbons, and I'm hoping she will break mine. Then I have second thoughts and try to warn her when the audience yelled for her to 'just cut it!'


So that's 5 kids for Liz and Louis! Oh my word.

We got her their toaster oven and she seemed surprised. Then she said, "But this is a fancy one!" I said, "I know, you registered for it!" Pretty funny.

At this point, I'm wondering what time it is. I asked Louis to bring a bouquet of flowers for Liz right around the end of the shower, between 4-4:15 to surprise her and meet anyone he hadn't. She finished up with gifts right at 3:55, giving me between 5-20 minutes to stall before people started leaving. I jokingly asked if she wanted to give a speech, and she said she didn't, but thanked everyone for coming.

Then I pulled out my last resort, something I hadn't planned on, which was to read aloud a component of the scrapbook I had planned. With the invites, I mailed a pink flower to guests with instructions to write their favorite memory of Liz (in black ink! for the anal-perfectionist in me) and bring it to the shower. Everyone brought them, so I pulled them out and tried to read them aloud as slowly as I could, hoping the doorbell would ring at any time.

I finished, then asked if I'd missed anyone's. The doorbell didn't ring. Luckily, I did miss a few, so I read those aloud. The doorbell still didn't ring. Then Liz suggested we go outside and take group pictures. Everyone started to bustle around, and the doorbell rang!

All of the ladies oohed and aahed over Louis and that beautiful bouquet. I didn't realize it until later, but asking him to do that was a big deal because he's a little shy sometimes, and it might not have been the most comfortable thing for him to walk into a room and be in the spotlight like that. But he did it for Liz and that says a lot about him and what a great guy he is.

Then we went outside for a few group photos:

Louis stayed and helped load up all of the gifts, and us girls sat around and chatted for a little longer before heading out.
The shower was a complete success and I had the most fun helping to plan it. I feel so lucky to have Liz as a friend, and even more lucky to be the one making sure some of her most important days go perfectly! I couldn't ask for anything more.

Next stop: the Bachelorette Extravaganza! And then I should probably work on a speech.