Bridal Shower | Love Story

It seems as if from the first day she walked into our lives she became family. Corynne’s first time meeting the family was during our family portrait — yikes! Of all situations to meet your future in laws, I am sure this may be one of the worst, but Corynne was gracious, loving, and won over our hearts. There could not be a better girl for my little brother and I am so happy for their upcoming wedding in July.

We started the wedding festivities off with a “Love Story” themed bridal shower. My Mom, sister, and I started planning this bridal shower months ago, but we do not all live in the same town so coordination was key!  We wanted to incorporate many vintage details because we had leftover decorations from my own wedding so it would save on costs and fit perfectly with the venue, my parent’s home which is modeled after French country influences.

The chalkboard frame was purchased from the Santa Monica flea market. The actual chalkboard was made using masonite and chalkboard paint purchased from Home Depot. (If you measure your dimensions beforehand Home Depot will even cut the masonite for you!)

From the beginning, I knew I wanted to work with vintage books. I fell in love with the cupcake liner pomanders and decided to incorporate books into the design.  Here is a tutorial on my pomander process.

As for the books, I searched several antique shops in the area and came home empty handed. I tried a used book store and found  several linen covered books with the dust jacket still on and therefore not the “old” look I was going for. To give them the vintage distressing they needed, I used sand paper to give the edges a worn look. This saved me a lot of money because I was not paying antique prices.

The bride arrived driven by her fiancé in my Mom’s 1940’s MG TC. An MG TC is actually the car that Ryan O’Neil drove in the movie “Love Story.”

One of the games we played was titled “Crazy Little Game Called Love” in which celebrity wedding photographs were used and the faces of the celebrities were replaced with the face of the bride and groom using Photoshop (Yes, they take as long make as the sentence to explain it!). Each guest received a packet of “playing cards” and a sheet in which to write down their guess.  It was great to see the Mom’s who all knew Grace Kelly’s wedding but were completely clueless when it came time to guess Carrie from Sex and the City.

I spent the first part of the year learning to master the craft of french macaron’s so that I could make for this event. My Mom bought Annie Rigg’s Macaron book from Anthropologie for me and I am proud to say I successfully made 30 vanilla ganache macarons!  

Each guest’s place setting was set with a vintage paper flower. I bought the flowers from Jardin de Papier on Etsy and assembled them myself. My Mom purchased the pink “Love” plates during Valentine’s Day from several TJ Maxx’s around the area.

Instead of a “Marriage Advice for the Bride” we decided to make a “Love Story” book where guest were asked to describe their own love story or write the love story of Corynne and Nick.  This was really sweet for the bride to be able to have all of her guests, including her Moms’ Love Story on paper for her to look back on. 

The best gift of the day goes to Michele, the bride’s Mother, who decided to give her daughter this book…naturally it provided for some good show and tell and lots of laughs!

I also wanted a champagne infusion station where guests would be able to mix together their favorite champagne drink. My Mom bought champagne and peeled the labels off to make our own “branded” bottles. I made labels which read “Love Story”, “Once Upon a Time”, and “Happily Ever After”. We used old wine bottles for the peach nectar and orange juice and used a corresponding design on the juice labels.

We ended the day with mini homemade chocolate mousse desserts and a 3-tiered pink cake masterpiece created by Shirley a San Juan School District’s ROP bakery teacher!