Fall in Love

This summer I had the honor of throwing a bridal shower for my sister-in-law. Since she is having a fall themed wedding I wanted the shower to be autumnal, too. Plus, I was really hankering for summer to be over. 

I love looking at what other people have done for celebrations, decorations, and party-planning. I usually don't don exact copies, but I am always inspired by the creativity and beauty of others. So with that in mind, I'm sharing what I did to make my sil's shower really pretty and special, and for not too much money!

To begin with, I designed the invitation on PicMonkey. I had them printed at a local office store and loved how they turned out. 

In case you want to try something similar I used the fonts Geo Sans Light, Jellyka Delicious Cake, and Dead Hardy. I have the Royal subscription for PicMonkey and some of the fonts and pics are Royal - just a head's up.

I also used PicMonkey to make a sheet for one of my favorite games:

You can feel free to use that one if you'd like!

Then, for the shower itself I spent a lot of time checking out Pinterest. You can see my inspiration board here, but in the end this is what it looked like. (My apologies for the grainy cell phone pics - I forgot my camera!)

The menu was caramel dip with apple slices, cupcakes from the local bakery, homemade mints (a family tradition!), cheese, crakers, grapes, and fruit salad. My sister-in-law requested Moscoto punch but because girls would be there I wanted to keep it alcohol free. The punch bowl has the Sprite and pink lemonade concentrate and anyone who wanted was free to add the bubbly wine. 

My mom owns white table clothes - which I borrowed, I gathered her and my fall decorations and Mason jars, my friend Katie made this lovely banner for me, and I bought six plastic table clothes in the party section of WalMart for the back drop. For $6 it made a huge impact. 

Another request from the bride was recipe cards. Guys. I looked everywhere for recipe cards and in the end they were nowhere to be purchased so I could slip them in the envelopes. I then tried making them myself but it was overwhelming for me so I printed these up...

 ...stuck them in the invite envelopes, and found my way to this great Etsy shop, where I purchased, downloaded, and printed up super cute recipe cards.

Winners of the shower games, the bride, and the mother of the bride all took home a little treat: a packet of s'more love with marshmallows, mini Hershey bars, and graham crackers.

The bride-to-be loved the shower and, as a lover of fall myself, I was delighted to throw the party for her.