The Daley News: Holly's Bridal Shower: Behind the Scenes

Holly's my sister in law, John's younger sister, but we're soul sistas. Ifyouknowhatimean. Or, if you're an Anne of Green Gables fan, we're kindred spirits.

Anywho, Holly's finally found her prince. In a few weeks she'll be getting married for time and all eternity at the Nauvoo L.D.S. Temple. If you want to know more about our church's temples and eternal marriage, check it out in this article and video.

Here's a behind the scenes look at Holly's bridal shower. Her wedding colors are dark purple, light pink, and silver.

So with that, I set up my cricut and tissue paper and got busy.

First, I ordered 4 by 6 prints of Holly's engagement pictures. Seeing as how I took the pictures back in December, that was easy. Then I cut out 4 3/4 inch frames from the Accent Essentials cartridge. Taped the picture on the back of the frame, then put a large piece of packing tape to secure to the wall. This is definately not a permenant way to hang pictures. They fall after about 5 hours. But it works.

Next I made small tissue paper flowers, with 10 by 10 inch sheets of tissue paper, stacked 5 deep. Tissue paper pom flowers can be found on Martha Stewart. I then stuck a piece of wire or wire clothes hanger in the back, like this:

And put them in sundae dishes and glasses with some glass pebbles. Dollar store is great for those.

And then we put the glasses all around- on book shelves, hallway table, on top of the piano with some tulle.

And of course we had large pom poms hanging all over the party space.

As a gift to Holly, I asked the guests to bring a recipe to share. Then I took an 8 " by 8" DCWV stack, Sweet, and punched holes with my bind it all. Then cut out fancy shapes for everyone to copy their recipe on.

This was my cover, with Storybook cartridge, tall lettering:

Below is a picture of the papers and cut out shapes. It was fun to sit all around the table and do something as the small talk commenced as people arrived. As Meggan put it, "I think all parties should start out with craft time." Well said Meggan, well said.

Next came the food.

It was quite the spread:

Cheesy Spinach Artichoke Dip with French Bread
Paula Deen's Pineapple Fruit Dip with fresh pineapple, strawberries, and blueberries.
Cranberry Pineapple Punch
Spicy and Not So Spicy Salsa (basically pico de gallo)
World Famous Oatmeal Squares (secret Daley family recipe)
and White Cake with cheesecake filling, from Costco (no picture, dang it!- the cake read: She found her Prince! Congratulations!)

For the table I used the cricut to cut out 1 inch and 1/2 inch flowers for confetti, and 3 inch frames to go with the food signs.

Last but not least was the favors. Holly and I made a mix cd of some favorite love songs. I used labels from the dollar store to label each cd. The trick to the dollar store labels is to download a free 15 day trial of AMF cd labeler software. They have the dollar store brand template in their database.