"Love is sweet" dessert bridal shower

My little sister is getting married this week! So last week I threw her a bridal shower, because “it’s what I do…it’s what I live for…”(name that little quote….*cough* disney nerd *cough*) I went with a colorful palette of pink, teal, and yellow with some touches of black and white…and lots of vintage touches because I can’t stay away from the vintage. I’ve tried. Anyways, I decided on a dessert buffet and had SO much fun making most of the treats for it! She and the guests had a great time, I think! I’ll walk you through the party now!

First off, the lovely invites designed by my sponsor, and friend Tara, of Paper Patch Ink! She created this adorable invitation, and I had them printed off through her as well. I got lots of compliments on them! You can find this design and much more over on her Etsy shop!

I hung up a row of these super fun tissue paper tassels across the entrance to our backyard…I borrowed some from my friend Stacie who had made them for her wedding and subbed in some of my own colors mixed with hers-I love these and think I want to use them for more parties in the future! Plus, they’re so cheap to make!

I gathered some funny candid shots of the couple from facebook and hung them up on Ava’s photo display board with a little bunting and gold sparkly initials. The chalkboard-looking sign is a vinyl sign! Isn’t it gorgeous! I fell in love with the font and design and had to have it for the shower decor and after the shower it went home with my sister to hang in her new home with her new hubby!
It’s from the fab shop, Vinyl Crafts and be sure to look for a giveaway with them later this week! It’s going to be AWEsome, don’t miss it.

Next I set up a little table with some photos, games, game prizes, and the favors. Oh, and strung those fun paper lanterns all across the fence line-they add a festive touch and I’m slowly building up a collection to use in lots of future parties!

I grabbed this wooden frame from Michaels, mixed up a coral-pink color and painted it, then painted large polka dots on it and stuck in a picture from their engagement shoot!

I kind of love picking out shower game prizes. It’s soo much fun! I got the gorgeous metallic polka dot journals at Home Goods, and everything else at Target, I think. The dollar section rocks there right now! I paired some Essie nail polish with a manicure set, Burts Bee’s pink grapefruit chapstick (yum!) , with an adorable scarf and the journals, and some sunglasses, and notepads with cute pencils.

You can also see one of the games right above and in one of the other pics above-I glued mustache and lip die cuts to bbq skewers and we played a game where I asked the bride and groom the same questions, read aloud one of their answers, and the guests guessed who said it-and held up the mustache or lips accordingly. It was a blast, and her fiance had some hilariously long answers that got some good laughs!

More tassels! I could stare at this picture all day long. I love the colors so much! I grabbed this vintage sheet on Etsy, and managed to find another matching one, which I used for the table runners. It was the perfect color palette!

I provided some cute little bags and boxes at the end of the party for people to take home some goodies-which they did, thankfully! We had soo much fun stuff but only had a few leftovers thank goodness. I don’t need all that sugar…lol.

Here’s another one of the games-I found pictures of my sister from all stages of her life, printed them out, and played scrapbooker for a night! I hung them up on my inspiration board from my craft room, numbered them, and then had the guests guess what age or year each picture was taken at. This one was really fun too!

I created some printables for the games-we also played a spice guessing game and a wedding dress-decade matching game…that one was my favorite! I scoured the internets and google for wedding dresses specifically from each decade of the last century and put them all together with a decade key and space to fill in which decade they thought it was from. The guests had a blast with this one, and we had a few fashionistas that got them all right! Floral pencils I found at Michaels.

Download the FREE wedding dress game printable here, and answer key here!

For the favors, I made some fun cabochon rings-which you can’t see very well in the tangle of tags and baker’s twine, but they were darn cute. Easy too! I made a quick “thanks for coming” tag and the other part of the favors were the goodie bags!

I made some table runners from the other vintage sheet I found and some fabrics that coordinated from my stash. I planned to hem the edges but then my friend Cassy suggested I sew it up into a quilt afterwards, so I skipped hemming because any excuse to skip hemming that much; I will take.

The flowers were from Costco and my Grandmas amazing garden! I thrifted some of the milk glass, bought some blue ball jars, and borrowed the tall vases, tiny milk glass bowls, and gold glittered votives from Stacie and her adorable mom.

I served lemon water and a white cranberry-strawberry-Sprite mocktail, in these adorable Ball jars and those fun metal cut out lids that fit the paper straws perfectly. I got these adorable birch straws here.

Now onto the sweets table! I borrowed this fabulous gold tablecloth from Stacie (man, I owe you one, thanks lady!) and layered it with a white linen tablecloth.

I made a Love Is Sweet banner and strung it across the front with some sweet coral crocheted trim that Kristin sent me. I added some black paint (since I lost/threw away my black ink pad) on the edges to add some contrast.

I made the challboard sign by thrifting a large frame, painting over the frame with white paint, and the picture inside (it was some sort of mdf I think) with chalkboard paint. I created the lettering in Illustrator, printed it out and taped it together, then used this awesome technique to trace the lettering and then went over it again with a piece of chalk. It looked so profesh, I think! I’m definitely using this again!

Me and my other sister Julia also made a quick doily bunting and swooped it behind the sweets table and sign.

Now for the treats! I made quite a few things and will link to the recipes and candy sources!

Gummi lemon slices, strawberry puffs…(we had a lot of lemon and strawberry flavored stuff since the colors fit the scheme well!)

I made a chocolate cake with caramel swiss meringue buttercream and frosted it with ruffles galore!

Grabbed some meringues from Home Goods since they were also the perfect colors! and some gold chocolate hearts!

Swoon. I loved these amazingly soft (and addicting) cookies with this fabulous buttercream frosting!
I piped it on in a rose pattern-so cute!

I made more macarons! Using this basic recipe I made two batches, one tinted yellow, the other pink. In the pink I piped some strawberry buttercream (recipe below)

  • ½ stick butter
  • ½ cup powdered sugar
  • 5-6 tablespoons homemade strawberry freezer jam (or fresh pureed strawberries)

….and the yellow, some lemon buttercream. Both were delish!

I made some strawberry lemonade bars-these were a little bit sour for us, so next time I’ll use less lemon juice…they were still delish! I used more strawberries than the recipe called for too, and added some pink food coloring to the mixture before baking it.

For the plates, I had to get these gorgeous scalloped plates and some of these adorable yellow napkins from Target.

I bought some wooden forks in bulk and stamped them with a large polka dot stamp, in aqua, yellow, and pink!

I made some nutella fudge (which is my most favoritest fudge in the history of fudge), and bought some blueberry taffy as well!

I made some banana cream pie bites-the whipped cream kind of melted, but I heard they were good!

It was such a fun shower to put on and I think we were all stuffed with treats by the end! What do you think? Would you have been on a sugar high too? ;D

Comments

  1. Adorable! I wish you were MY sister. It looks like it was an amazing party!

  2. Wow it looks amazing. You are definitely the hostess with the mostess – your sister is very lucky indeed. Enjoy the wedding – if it goes off as well as the shower its already a hit.

  3. Amazing!!!

  4. What an incredibly beautiful shower!!! Every detail is just so very lovely. I bet the guests and the bride were so thrilled. Thank you for sharing all of your wonderful ideas. Love. Love. Love. Have fun at the wedding!

  5. Love this theme! So simple and yet perfect!

  6. So adorable!! I’m throwing my little sister’s bridal shower next week and HAVE to have that wedding dress game! Would it be something you wouldn’t mind sharing with me? You are such an amazing party thrower!

  7. oly cow, you are cray cray! It’s all sooooooooo amazing and fabulous and beautiful! I love everything. Bravo!!
    p.s. those tassels are calling my name…

  8. Wow! Everything looks amazing! I’m going to have to tuck away your mustache game idea for later. It sounds fun!

  9. How perfect!

  10. Kristen-I’d love to-email me and I can send you the image I made!

  11. Super cute!

  12. Fabulous, as always Jess! You have one lucky sister.

    Are you going to share your game printables?

  13. This is the cutest party ever. Love the color palette and all the cute and yummy things you created. Amazing!! Have fun at the wedding, and best wishes to the bride and groom!
    Ledys

  14. “…To help unfortunate merfolk like yourself. Poor souls with no one else to turn to…”

    This is the most beautiful party I have ever seen. Well done!

  15. It looks absolutely amazing-I can’t imagine stamping forks!!!!

  16. Wow, wish we had this tradition in Holland! It all looks so nice, you really did a great job. Your sister must me very proud of you and you definitely love her so much. It was a party to see all the cute pictures and I’ll definitely will look at them again (and again…!). So inspiring and so full of love and happiness.
    Thanks for sharing!
    Wishing you, your sister and your family a very happy wedding dag!
    Best regards,
    Nathaly

  17. Oh My!!!!!! So much prep and planning for a gorgeous shower! I am in love. My mom and I are very detail oriented and spend a lot of time on the little things. I really appreciated all the fun ideas! You go girl!!!

  18. There are so many amazing details in this party that I can’t begin to tell you how much I love it.
    The decorations are beautiful, the games look like great fun, and the dessert selection… wow. Great job! =)

  19. wow! What a beautiful shower. How do you find the time to do all of it?

  20. This is all so awesome, I don’t even know what to pin! You amaze me! And congratulations to your sister!

  21. You are the best ever! Great attention to detail. Those birch straws! {swoon}

  22. This is gorgeous! Thanks for sharing! Do you have a tutorial on how you made the tassel banners? I would love to make on for my daughter’s first birthday.

  23. I am planning my daughter’s wedding and shower. So glad I came across your blog – what awesome ideas. Thanks for sharing.

  24. I love all of your parties! You are totally my inspiration for my daughter’s birthday party coming up. Going to have to plan a summer party more ahead of time just to get some party planning practice in! Thanks for sharing all of your pretties. 🙂

  25. Rachelle says

    I’m loving all of your creative ideas!y daughter
    Has her 1st birthday in a month and I’m using some of your creativity to help!!! I was also reading the invite, do you stay near Roseville!? Just curious because I’m right near you I’m Citrus Heights! Crazy!!!

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