Planning a Simple Wedding Shower
This has been an interesting month. A couple at Church announced their engagement and subsequent wedding. I volunteered to help plan the shower and the next thing I know I'm coordinating the entire shower, wedding and reception with a month notice before the wedding. What a challenge! I thought I'd share my experiences of planning a simple shower. The shower was this past weekend and was well received. The wedding is yet to come, this weekend, and I'll have to let you know how it all turned out later.
One thing I hate is unorganized...... long meetings. So first off my volunteer status was contingent on not participating in any of our previous three hour planning sessions. That was just for the shower. I haven't planned a wedding since my own first wedding over 20 years ago so this was a refresher course first hand.
First things first, I wanted to know who all was going to be involved in this process. It was the bride-to-be, two of her sisters and I. I know them all well and think I can be pretty up front with them. We met for breakfast at a local restaurant and talked through what the bride wanted. Of course that's most important.
As she talked I saw dollar signs rolling and suggested we go simple yet elegant and made a few suggestions. Since the time for both the shower and reception would be after 7p.m. paring down the refreshments to cake, mints, nuts and punch, saved lots of those dollars and made purchasing the items and setting up the refreshment table easy.
Both the bride and groom-to-be were previously married and have their own households. A typical shower setting them up with household items is unnecessary, so we opted for redecorating their bedroom. A nice touch for any newlyweds. After breakfast we went to the groom's house, where they'll be living and took a look at the current colors and what they might want. Of course the bride was there to help us make those decisions. Our initial plans included repainting the walls but happily we saw there was great looking "wallpaper look" paneling already in place. That left us with more options to purchase those neat accessories they wanted. We opted for a new comforter, lots of candles, something new for the wall and bathroom accessories (the bath and bedroom are attached). We dubbed it a "bedroom party." What fun you can have with that. Simple computer generated shower invitations were sent out with information about the major purchase of the comforter (which the bride selected). Since this was a large purchase we indicated it would be great if some wanted to go in on that gift, which folks did. (That makes it easy for everyone.) The invitation also listed other items they could use. It's so much easier shopping for someone when you know what they want or can really use.
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