My Sister's April Shower!

It's almost midnight, and I feel like I have been hit with a tranquilizer dart. I got my ass handed to me this weekend from all the OCD planning of my sister's bridal shower, the military level of organization that I used to set it up, the non-stop sugar and sangria, and then taking care of a demanding yet adorable, fifteen pound little meatball all day today. Guess he didn't care that his mama was a little hungover!

You might remember that I decided to milk the "April Shower Brings Wedding Flowers" theme. 

 Unfortunately, our venue was all Ron Burgandy-esque, an upscale steak house with dark wood paneling and manly bottles of whiskey.  After three hours of putting girly touches everywhere and getting my Dad to hang tissue paper flowers and my mom to help arrange tulips, I was so happy with the results!  The pictures still came out wayyyyy too dark and/or washed out from the flash and don't really portray how fun the atmosphere ended up looking.  I mean, not to toot my own horn, but five of the waitresses came in to ooh and awww over the decor, and then the hostess broke out her iPhone to document everything so she could duplicate it for her upcoming bridal shower!

Toot!  Toot!

I hung tissue paper rain clouds with pink drops, and covered the ugly stain glass windows with fun paper (which, sadly, looked so cute in person, but not as cute in the below picture).  When guests arrived, I had them sign rain drops to hang from a pink polka dot umbrella as a guestbook:

Here's what was in the sign to the right of the umbrella:

Terrible dark picture of one guest using it:

The guests came up with the best "date" ideas, like catapulting popcorn into each other's mouths on a rainy day.  It turned out very cute.  They also dropped off recipes for Bethany to use on cute recipe cards I had included in the invitation.

Next to the umbrella, I set up a candy bar:

Yep, milking the theme dry:

I was most excited about the old-school candy buttons.  Let me tell you, these girls did not disappoint when it came to partaking in this bar.  They're all mostly health nuts, but they filled tons of bags for their husbands!

I somehow neglected to take pictures of tons of areas, but there were pink and orange pinwheels, blowpops wrapped up as dahlias "growing" out of pots, watering cans of tulips, and tissue paper flowers and rain clouds everywhere.  You have to use your imagination because it was much prettier in person, promise!

In the back room, I hung tons of photo garland of Bethany with each of her guests (pilfered from her Facebook page), a banner that read "Bethany's April Shower"), pink flowers, and set up the menu cards and gift bags:

The chevron bags said, "From Bethany's Shower... to Yours!" and had this vintagey looking clip art that I bought:

Inside were raspberry pink louffas and little bottles of cherry blossom scented shower gel.  I was way too excited about these damn favors.  The shower gel bottles even said "April Shower Gel" on them which pretty much gave me a party planning "O" face.  :)

The menu cards I created and put at each place setting:

What else??  We started the shower by dividing into teams and playing "bathroom bride" where each group chooses someone to be a bride and then decorates her using only two rolls of toilet paper. They were divided into groups according to which photo they had on their nametag necklace. Bethany voted on a winner, after she took pictures with each group in my make-shift photo booth:

Prop table for photo booth (way more fun than it looks in this picture):

My parents before the shower started:

I was the "groom" in this picture rocking Dan's t-shirt tuxedo and looking completely like a dude.

All the bathroom brides (this cheesy game was kind of a hit!)

We our decadent three course meal and chatted it up.  

During dessert, I passed out this little game I created (idea stolen from Pinterest):

It was a hit, especially the third fact.  Bethany can't stand buttons, even as a kid.  She used to say they were gross if they were loose, like a tooth about to fall out.  Weird girl, that one!

I guess there's not much to tell about the rest of the shower.  We ate, drank a ton of sangria, played Bridal Bingo while Bethany opened her gifts... you know, the usual.

I'll have to share the survival kit basket I made for Bethany later because I was really proud of it.  Below is her crying when she opened the last package in the basket... her "something old."  It's the hankie that I used on my wedding day from our beloved Grammy.  I also gave her a pale blue thong as her "something blue" and she's using my lace mantilla veil as her "something borrowed".

So that's my insanely long midnight recap so I don't forget all the effort that went into this day.  The bride was happy, so I guess that's all that matters in the end.

 Now I am apparently on planning the bachelorette party... yeesh!  I'm not exactly the "Come on, you bitches!  Let's parrrrty!!!!" kinda girl.  More like a, "Come on, ladies!  Let's drink martinis in our pj's and talk all night!!" so I guess I will need to steal ideas from the interweb for that one.  Although I do love to dance and I do love a theme, so I guess I am beginning to brew some ideas already...

Anyhoo, thanks for your virtual attendance at this one!