bridal shower design

Well, the wedding is over and done with, and the shower is a distant memory, but I wanted to get a post up about it, because it was really fun to do the design and planning for this shower. The bride was using red in her wedding as her primary color, so I wanted to tie that into the shower. Now, red is not a favorite color of mine, so it took me a while to figure out how to enjoy this color as I planned this shower.

A couple of us had talked about chocolate brown and teal blue as a great color combo to use, but that pretty much didn't tie into the wedding theme, and I like things to be coordinated. Along with the chocolate color theme, we decided to do an actual chocolate theme for the shower. So then we had red and brown. Not really such an appealing color combo.

There are a bunch of design/crafty blogs that I frequent, and a color combo that I kept seeing was red with a robin's egg blue. It wasn't anything I would have thought of, but the more I looked at it, the more I loved it.



Given that the wedding was planned for the 4th of July, a red white & blue theme seemed logical, but I really dislike red and blue together...when it's a dark blue. Sorry, I know it seems un-American and anti- all the multitudes of sports teams that use that pairing. But that's just the way it is. Red & blue are both strong colors, and they just fight when they're married.

But this pale, crisp blue with the red: it's lovely! Fresh & Springy...a great color scheme for a May shower.

So I played around with a logo/monogram of sorts...their first names both start with "J" so I kept it simple. Drew a simple flower and I had a launch pad for invitations, decorations and favors.

I wanted to do really nice invitations, so I splurged on some great paper. A really rich red and a metallic pale blue...with red envelopes...worth every penny!



Those Martha Stewart flattened marble magnets were really making the rounds in blogland, so I decided to make some of those for favors. A friend had some Kraft boxes we could use, so I packaged them up with custom stickers, a couple of magnets and a piece of chocolate in each. yummy fun.





I picked up a bunch of red stuff and chocolate at Valentines Day clearance sales, and ended up with just the right amount of stuff for decorating. Each table had its own fondue pot, so not everyone would steal chocolate from the bride's fountain. It only worked for so long.



And lastly, we have a blurry photo of the mantle with monograms & flowers hanging from bags full of geraniums and tulips. A smashing success all around.



Now, I must say I'm curious if anyone even made it to the end of this post…not really very interesting to people not into design or party planning...don't worry, the whales are next. I think.