Showers Galore!

I absolutely adore Mark's fiance.  When Meghan asked me to be her maid of honor I was so excited to be part of their wedding.  A few of the other bridesmaids and I threw her a personal shower and bachelorette party in Dallas over Memorial Day weekend.  And we had the best time!  You can read her post about it on her darling blog Getting Our Ducks In a Row.

We opened her shower gifts at one of the bridesmaid's home.  She'd ordered dinner from Whole Foods and another bridesmaid had carried Meghan's favorite cupcakes all the way from Nashville for us.  I think they had more icing than cake to them - so yummy!  We also played the Newlywed Game.  I was pretty impressed with how many questions she got right.  I guess they were both paying attention in their pre-marital counseling classes!  

I made these based on some I'd seen on Martha Stewart

Then we headed out.  We didn't make Meghan wear anything too embarrassing.  Just a sash and a HUGE ring that glowed.  We danced and had a great time and like the old people that we are, were done by 12:30 before it was even getting crowded.  Mark picked us up and even got us Taco Cabana on the way home.  

The next morning we all got up and got ready for a more formal shower thrown by Meghan's mother's friends.  It was absolutely lovely.  We had a fabulous lunch and she received lots of beautiful gifts.  

There are seven bridesmaids, but 5 of us are from out of Texas 

and 2 of the girls couldn't make it for the weekend.

The beautiful tables

Mom and I

Showered...

I mentioned that my mom has been here for the last couple of weeks. Other than being great company and Luke's personal assistant, (He pretty much thinks she is at his beck and call.) she is fabulous at putting together a beautiful shower. It worked out perfectly for me because I was helping to host a shower for 3 girls at my home last Saturday. All three moms are due in April or May and it turned out beautifully.

There are few things that my mom has taught me and I have learned doing showers:
1. The little touches make the difference. We had a mix of boys and girls, so we chose to use all yellow and white. So I found small yellow ducks to place around my house to add touches of "baby". I also used some of the boys old gifts to decorate with. I wouldn't regift them, but they are perfect for using in decorations.
2. Consider hosting a display shower. This doesn't work for every occasion, but when it works, it can really make your shower pleasant. If you have a large number of invites or multiple guests of honor, you can make the shower "display only" and not open presents. We made a note on the invitation that you could choose to bring your gift unwrapped for display or wrapped for each mother to open later. Each mother had her own table for her gifts and there were a mixture of gifts to look at and gifts that were wrapped. The mothers-to-be loved not being the center-of-attention and the guests were relieved not to have to sit through opening 30+ gifts.
3. Elegant most often is simple. We tried to keep our food and table very simple. We chose to make double recipes of several dishes instead of making 6-8 different items to serve. It made the food easy to arrange tastefully on the table and easy to serve. We also chose to stick with a simple color scheme. White and yellow were mixed with clear glass and silver pieces. Not everything was "matchy-matchy" but it still looked as if everything belonged on the table together.

What do you think ?

Use serving pieces of different heights to add interest to your table. We even used a box and a second table cloth to elevate our cake.

Placing all your beverages in a different room than the food helps traffic flow and keeps people mingling.

Wooden blocks that my boys already had added an extra touch to several areas.

I replaced my usual coffee table items with toys and a hurricane full of blocks.

For my gift, I made each mother a diaper cake using their nursery colors and theme. It helped to distinguish each table and personalize their gift. I also made closet dividers that I'll be detailing on Today's Housewife this week.



I created a baby carriage from a watermelon to help dress up the table.

Tim sent me daffodils the week of the shower that were perfect for our color scheme. (He's so good!) And we filled a small vase with seasonal candy for guests to guess the number of pieces. The closest guess got to take them home as a prize.