Showered With Love… The Action!

Yesterday I showed you all the wonderful details from my bridal shower, and today I’d like to share with you all of the fun action shots!

All of my ladies arrived early to get everything set up.  Pictured below are my three planning superstar bridesmaids: T. (future sister in law who made the lovely invitations and floral arrangements); C. (my dear friend from college who DIY’d many of the special projects and found the bachelorette barn too!); R. (a dear law school friend and brainchild of the equine donation, along with master arranger of logistics, which, with ten bridesmaids was no small feat…).

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Showered with Love! The Details…

I may have mentioned once or twice that the women in my life are amazing, but it bears repeating once more.  And here’s the main reason why- they are thoughtful, caring, and made me feel like the luckiest girl in the world yet again.  They also happen to be incredibly talented and creative, as you are soon to see.

The shower was held at Sayen Gardens in Hamilton, NJ, in a historic house that might just be the cutest house I’ve ever seen.

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Barn Bachelorette

Its true in real estate, and its true in the world of bachelorette parties.  Location matters!   Which is probably why so many ladies I know have opted to travel to Vegas, Miami, etc. for their bachelorette festivities!  But not me.  My good friend C. and my sister B. were already flying in from out of town, and let’s face it, the economy stinks, so jetting off to a foreign country, however appealing on paper, wasn’t a good idea.  Rather, I asked my ladies to plan something a little closer to home, and to keep things on the lower-key side.  And they deeeelivered.

My bridesmaids found literally the most perfect possible place for us to stay- a converted historic stone barn on an 88 acre farm in the hills above the Delaware River.  It had a dramatic living room with a glass ceiling that kept us warm while allowing us to enjoy the feel of the original high ceilings.  The ground floor (former home of the animals) had an enormous kitchen with a barn-beam table, and the entire place used reclaimed barn wood for things like doors and cabinets.  Ping pong, rocking chairs, musical instruments, tennis courts, swimming pools, hiking trails, wood burning stoves- I’m telling you, it was country swank like I’ve never before seen, and the most supremely appropriate place for a relaxing ladies weekend.

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Shower Power: Saying Thanks!

Oh my goodness, I just had the BEST weekend!  My ladies planned the most amazing bachelorette weekend possible (which I’ll describe more fully with recaps just as soon as I get some photos), and then yesterday, it all culminated in a spectacular bridal shower at Sayen Gardens (recaps forthcoming as well).  I was completely overwhelmed by the absolute generosity of my family, future family, and friends, and was touched by the thoughtfulness that went into every single detail.  I knew in advance they were planning something good, but what took place was more than I could have ever dreamed!  So of course that is what I’m going to write about this week!

While I wait for photos, I thought it would be fun to start by sharing the gifts I made for the ladies who took the lead in the planning.  I really wanted to say thank you to them in a way that was meaningful and heartfelt, without going too far over the top.  And I hope they liked them as much as I liked making them!

I started with plain white gift bags (I ordered these in bulk for a variety of wedding gifts from Paper Mart).  I then printed the words “Thank You” on my home printer and added some coordinating scrapbook paper.

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Mapmaker, Mapmaker Make Me a Map!

I love me some wedding maps.  A quick browse through the blogosphere and you will too.

For example, this map from Laura Hooper has me drooling.  Its not just a map, it’s art!

Or this map from Trial By Cupcakes.  Amazing!

Sadly, a custom wedding map was, let’s just say, so far outside our budget that it wasn’t even something we were going to think about. Not even a little bit.  Not even after I begged J.

Enter the wonderful world of Weddingbee with its amazing tutorials.  Where do all these creative ladies come from?  It is through them that I discovered, and used, this tutorial for making your own map by Mrs. Ballet Flat (and here’s another good one by Mrs. Spring Roll).

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Naming the Tables

Now that J. and I are starting to get closer to the wedding, I have been focusing on wrapping up easy projects that can be done in advance so that it can all be done by the week of the wedding.  So one of the easiest things I have gotten out of the way is making signs for various wedding elements.

The first set of signs I made were our table numbers.  J. and I have done a bit of moving around as adults,  so early on, we decided to name the tables after places we have lived.  It seemed like another easy way to add personalization to the wedding.  So I hit my local dollar store and came up with a plan.  Now I admit, I’m very fortunate to have a dollar store with an entire aisle of scrapbooking supplies, which is where I found gold rub-on transfer lettering in a lovely font!  I ended up buying ten packages along with a supply of cream colored card stock, and used both for many other wedding elements too.

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I also found inexpensive gold frames from the same store at 2 for $1, so I snapped up 16 of them.  The quality wasn’t great, but it didn’t have to be for this project, so I decided not to worry about it.  I set to work as soon as I got home, first applying the lettering to plain white card stock to spell the names of places.  I then cut out the table name and applied it to a rectangle of gold wrapping paper I had on hand using my trusty glue stick.  Finally I added a third layer of cream card stock and put the whole thing into the picture frame.  Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

(PS, sorry about the photo quality, it was raining when I took the pics and the lighting was terrible!)

Are you doing anything nontraditional for your tables?