Thursday, January 21, 2016

JANUARY 2016!! My Sisters Bridal Shower Tea

I thought I lost this post, I couldn't find it anywhere and then today, January of 2016, I found it.
So here, in no particular order, is my sisters wedding shower tea I threw, with the help of my mom, sisters, sisters in law and some friends.
Lots of gifts. Lots of them.

They got 4 ironing boards.

I don't have closeups, but having tea cups for 100+ people was doable but stressful to be responsible for, so I printed tea cups on clear labels and we stuck them to all of the paper cups. Besides tea, we had coffee, lemonade, and a friend made raspberry cordial and rose milk.

My new favorite cheap party decoration trick is to grab a package of miscellaneous doilies and stick them on the wall.
For desserts we had cream puffs, tea cakes, thumbprint cookies, cake balls, cake rolls, strawberry shortcake, chocolate covered strawberries, and brownies that I baked in a mini muffin tin and topped with whipped cream and raspberries.

My sweet niece Claire. Oh my goodness, you guys should see her smile, it is the best thing!The quilt on the wall was made by a friend and it was amazing! It chronicled all of Anna and J.'s dating and engagement in photos. 

I baked for what felt like years. The day before the shower, my mom, sisters and a friend came over and helped assemble the sandwiches. I made pumpernickel bread for cucumber sandwiches, oatmeal bread and white bread for chicken salad (I also made all of the mayo because homemade beats the pants off store-bought.), a rollup sandwich on homemade roasted red pepper tortillas, and we had peanut butter and jelly as well.

we also had 3 kinds of tea bread, lemon, banana, and zucchini, crackers and cheese, grapes, scones with mock devonshire cream, lemon curd (homemade) and jam (these were in tea cups on each table to help keep the line moving and to keep with the tea party look) and salami with cream cheese and banana peppers rolled up inside.


That crooked table cloth is making me crazy.

I had originally printed up, cut out and laminated tea pots to stick on the ugly industrial coffee pots, but we were afraid the tape and the plastic would melt so we skipped it.

This is the entry way to the church fellowship hall. And a dandy reflection of me.

All of the tables had cloth table cloths, a tea pot for a vase (we nicked daffodils wherever we could and bought a couple of bouquets to fill it all out), a vintage glass luncheon plate withe the tea cups of scone fixings, candles, and a tea quote.


I never got a good picture of the favors, but I made lime cookies, cut them into teabag shapes and dipped them in white chocolate. Then we attached a little tag on a string to make them look more like a tea bag.




My sister said that her husbands family *still* talks about how much they enjoyed this shower, so I guess we did alright.

8 comments:

  1. You did a wonderful job!! Everything looks so lovely!! Thanks for sharing. It hard to believe that she is a married women now haha!! Now for the next one!!
    God bless Kelly (Jellybean)

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  2. Thanks Kelly! It was a ton of work, I've not done that big of a shower before. The pictures really don't do it justice, I was so happy with how it all turned out. Cara's will probably be a big one too, it's going to have an Anne of Green Gables feel to it.

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  3. Wow. That is really amazing Bonnie! I am so glad you wound up finding the post- I was hoping I would be able to see your work. You know how much I love a good theme party!

    Every little detail was so sweet- from the 'tea cups' to the vintage tablecloths (seriously swoon!) I can't even imagine how long you were in the kitchen- it felt like you baked for ages because...well, you did! ;-) For large parties I usually justify storebought as time savers but that is the lazymans' way. Kudos to you! And roasted red pepper tortillas?!?!? OH.MY.WORD.

    The idea to have scone fixings on the table was absolutely brilliant. And I love the favors! I planned on making those after seeing them on Pinterest to go alongside tea kits at Christmas and then....never did. Ah well- now I can ask you...were they worth the effort in making? They don't seem TOO finicky, although tying string onto cookies might be a bit mundane.

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  4. If it wasn't for the fact that I knew you wanted to see this, I would have given up looking : ) I spent about a month watching pricing stuff and finally concluded that for over 100 people, it was cheaper to make all the bread myself, since a bag of flour from which I could get 5= loaves was only a little more than a loaf of good quality bread. The flour tortillas were soooo good! I'll find the recipe and send it to you on Pinterest. The tea bag cookies were totally worth it but not the recipe I used. It was okay but not wonderful. And oh my gosh, Rebecca, the Lord was totally working miracles while I was baking. I prayed "loaves and fishes" the whole time (my biggest fear for throwing a party is running out of food, we only ran out of cups, but I swiped some from the church stash). The cookie recipe only made 5 dozen and part of the reason I chose it was because I would only have to make 2 batches. I got 11 dozen out of one batch. I made strawberry jam for the scones and only expected 1 and 3/4 quarts and got 2 and 1/2 (that was quadrupled, it was a small batch recipe), the lemon curd made a ton more than expected, and so on. We had so much food leftover that we were sending leftovers home (except for the chicken salad- we tossed that since it was turning yellow and had been out most of the day. No need to send people home with food poisoning .)
    I'm so glad you enjoyed this, now I have to get cracking on my next sisters shower!

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  5. 11 dozen from a 5 dozen batch?!? Wow. The Lord knew and multiplied your efforts. Again and again! Amazing.

    And wait a minute- I believe (but I could be wrong!) that you said NEVER AGAIN to the enormous wedding shower throwing in a certain letter to a friend? Fact is- I totally knew you were lying. ;-) It's like when a mother who has just given birth says NEVER AGAIN...no one actually believes her. ;-)

    So...does this next shower have a theme? And more importantly, how can I befriend your sister in order to score an invite? ;-)

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  6. You can come because I said so : ) the next shower is sort of Anne of Green Gables themed, but not exactly. And it will not be as detailed as the tea. Probably. That said if you have any good big batch crockpot/reheats well soup recipes, pass 'em on!

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  7. What a beautiful shower. You did an amazing job! Everything is so pretty & feminine!
    Have a lovely day
    Renata:)

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