My Baby Sister’s Bridal Shower- Country Style

Throwback post! I told you that I would come back to all of the wedding festivities from the past summer, and our first stop is at the bridal shower I threw for my baby sister Tanya.

I have been calling her Tets for as long as I can remember. I am not sure if it developed from one of those, I couldn’t  pronounce her name as a kid so I came up with my own name for her, but Tets has stuck her whole life.

Isn’t Tets such a beautiful bride-to-be in this photo with her wedding party?  She was just beaming all day long.

She also for some reason needed to hold a vase of flowers in the photo. I am not sure why. I think one of the moms suggested it would “add” to the photo.

The theme for the shower started with the invitations. While creating the invitation I wanted the “Country” theme to come across in a subtle but clean way.  A few years ago I thought I was going to scrapbook each event in my life and have these amazing scrapbooks to show my kids some day. Turns out, I just have boxes and boxes of tools and supplies.  These really came in handy this summer when creating invitations.

After spending hours perfecting the layout, I then spent a few more punching out boarders. As you can tell from the photo, I am not perfect with the paper punch. Don’t worry, practice makes perfect, and most of them looked perfect! I love Love LOVED the way these invitations turned out. I really wish I had taken a better/ more photos of them and the process….

For the day of the shower I did my best to include the moms in the planning and execution. I can be  sort of a perfectionist who needs to do it all :: cough, cough::, so the small amount I did delegate was a huge step for me!

The cake was something that the groom’s mother Debbie contributed, along with her home! Having a place to host the 55 people we invited was key. You can just say both Tets and her groom have big families!

Thank you again Debbie for use of your home!

My mom, aunt and I created give aways for each of our guests. To keep on theme we filled mason jars with ingredients to make Cowgirl cookies!

Assembling each of the jar was a little tedious , but it was such a fun day hanging out with my mom and aunt.  I am the bossiest of all of us.

 ::Please do not tell them that:: 

I had a vision and set them to helping me execute it with my Costco sized bags of oatmeal, sugar, flour and chocolate chips.  My aunt was a little annoyed with me for making her cut out perfect fabric squares for the 60 jars we made. I think she has forgiven me by now…. Let’s hope!

These were the perfect addition to help the theme come alive! They were just too cute, I still haven’t made my jar of cookies!

I dressed the long tables up with white table cloths, burlap runners and handkerchiefs. The morning of the shower, I stopped by the Minneapolis farmers market and purchased large freshly cut sunflower bouquets and divided them among a few mason jars for centerpieces.  

I normally love buying flowers at the farmers market each week to have at home.  They are cheap and each week new flowers come into bloom offering a fun variety all summer!

For some of the smaller tables and the buffet I sewed together a few handkerchiefs to make tablecloths.  

We served Sloppy Joe’s, Fresh Cut Fruit, Green Apple Snicker Salad (Tets’ favorite!), Grandma’s Potato Salad, Corn Bread and Potato Chips.  All simple picnic style foods.

For refreshments, I put together an Ice Tea and Lemonade Bar. Complete with Mason Jars  for drinking out of and pureed strawberries and raspberries to mix into your drink.  Mint and Sugar to sweeten things up if needed.  My little cousins were so excited about mixing stuff into their drinks, and mixing lemonade with ice tea. They loved making their own concoctions and asking everyone to try them.

My favorite part of the shower was the TP Wedding Dress competition.  Everyone broke off into teams of 4-5, and were given 1 roll of tape and 1 roll of TP to make a Wedding Dress to be modeled for the bride-to-be.  My Aunt was one of the models.  Her team couldn’t stop laughing while wrapping her in TP.

The cousin of the groom was fashioned in a mini length TP Wedding Dress.  Her aunts sure had fun dolling her up! I think that is a train they are creating to add to her back side.

Finally, the winner was the groom’s grandmother! She had a veil, perfect bow, necklace and nice full skirt! I was super impressed by the construction of this dress!

Aren’t you??

She is too cute!

Our other game involved me dressing the bride-to-be up this time! I filled an apron with kitchen gadgets and sent her to parade around the ladies of the party. Then they each needed to write down as many items as they could remember from the short dance she did around the living room.

Best part of this game, the bride-to-be gets to keep the apron and all the fun gadgets!

Last were the gifts! And there was no short supply of them either. I think she now has enough pyrex to store a years worth of food! 

My mom and I bought her a wide variety of Paula Dean pots and pans, in addition to the box set below. I think the next step will be to show her how to use them 🙂

 Well, one Bridal Shower story down, one more to go!

Stay tuned to hear about the British Tea Party Themed shower I threw for my Best Friend Amy!