Weddingbee Blog

A few weeks ago this cute little card arrived in my mailbox:

An invite to my very first bridal shower, hosted by Gina Sprinkle and my boss/neighbor/friend Annette. Now, when I write “my first bridal shower”, I do mean first. I have never been to one before. Most of my friends aren’t married, and those that are were married long before I met them. It was a new experience for me!

I was so extremely nervous leading up the shower, I couldn’t even think straight for the whole week. I just kept concentrating on the good: my mom and aunt were flying in, Gina S. was flying in, and all of the moms from preschool were coming to hang out and celebrate with me!

The party was a good excuse to package up some cute gifts for my wonderful hostesses, as seen here:

Did you notice the yellow stain from Gocco ink and the giant roll of brown baker twine? Invite supplies! And um, my “thank you” is upside down, but it is printed on both sides of the tag, so that makes it okay, right?

Despite all the nervousness, I had a great time at the bridal shower and all weekend. Before I talk about the utter embarrassment of opening gifts in front of people (how do normal, not shy people handle birthday parties year after year?!), let’s go over more important matters. Like cupcakes. And wine.

I made all of the cupcakes for the shower the morning before. They were perfect. Is it weird to make food for my own shower? Probably. At least my mom thought so. Fortunately, I love to bake, love cupcakes, and pretty much insisted that I would make them all myself. Just another trial run before the actual wedding. I made 48 vegan red velvet cupcakes with a simple buttercream frosting. It took under an hour to mix and bake all of the cupcakes, and about 20 minutes to frost them all. My skills are improving! Even though there were only 24 people at the shower, ALL 48 cupcakes were gone-gone-gone within two hours. I love it!

The tasty white wine sangria. This was totally destroyed within the hour and the hostesses had to keep refilling the jar. At one point I saw people dipping their cups in to eat the fruit floating on top. It was amazing. I was a key player in this whole sangria business… I had two cups before any guests arrived and about four more during the party. I wanted to be good and tipsy to get through the day, and it totally worked.

Gina made salads. Annette grilled food. I obnoxiously took photos for the blog.

Can you guess how many peppermints are in the jar? I love simple games!

(Answer: 63!)

So many ladies wore such fantastic dresses! I love all of these shades of blue and green together.

Looking back on the day through photos, I definitely had a good time! I am smiling in all of the pictures, and my whole body didn’t turn red until I had to sit down to play a game and open things. At that point I was covered in a shiny glaze of sweat and my face was crimson red. The gift opening process seemed to take hours but I think it was just about 15 minutes. Several people commented to me that I handled it just fine, but several others mentioned that I better get used to the attention with the wedding only a few months away!

Let me leave you with this lovely shot:

That would be me sitting in the chair covering my face, Gina S. holding up a silly lacy thong and my mom laughing hysterically at my embarrassment because she bought me said thong. So ridiculous!

For months I worried about the shower but when the day came it really wasn’t anything to worry about. It was a group of people who were sweet enough to come to our preschool on a Saturday morning to party with me, that shouldn’t ever be scary!

Did you get super nervous before your bridal shower? For all you married ladies, did that nervousness repeat itself on your wedding day or was it a totally different experience?