shower of style - part one

I'm a little slow on blogging but I knew this entry would be a lot!

My sister's bridal shower was last week and while I am certainly biased (I'm the Maid of Honor), it was really a spectacular shower.  Momzilla and I, along with my sister's future sisters-in-law and future mother-in-law, put a lot of hard work and effort into it and it certainly paid off.

Sister Bride is quite the fashionista.  She's always loved clothes and jewelry and the high life.  She currently works as a manager at a very well-known and high-end retail store.  She has more designer bags than I have underwear.  So it was only natural that we plan a shower around her love of fashion.

First, we ordered the invitations from Tickled Pink Design and I penned an original saying that catered to the theme.

Next, we ordered favors.  We wanted to give guests something that was relevant to shopping but was still useful.  So I searched high and low until I found a great deal on these adorable purse valets from Sincerely Ann Marie.  Since the party, we've received a lot of compliments on them!

The restaurant was already giving us a wishing well but I had something else in mind.  I envisioned a large "shopping bag" in which guests could throw their little gifts.   

I bought a presentation display board from Staples and covered it in brown mailing paper (also purchased at Staples).  Then I glued a twine-looking wire around the top of the board that I bought from Michaels.  And last but not least, Lyndsey's future sister-in-law used her nifty Cricut to cut out large letters to glue on the front of the board.  It wasn't perfect Bloomingdale font, but came out really cute!  Then we surrounded the presentation board around a hamper in which people could put their wishing well presents.

This was the final product:

For the centerpieces, we collected small to medium-sized black shopping bags from high-end retail stores like Sephora or Guess.  We then stuffed them with hot pink tissue paper and wrapped a tag around them that indicated table number.

Here's some of them lined up:

And then one of the most creative things we did for the party was the placecards.  People are still talking about them!

I am in no way a graphic designer but I took an image of an American Express credit card and played around with it in GIMP, a free photo editing program.  I found a font that looked similar to the fonts on credit cards and added everyone's names and table numbers to the credit card.  Then I printed, laminated and cut them to look like real cards.  We stuck them in mini shopping bags with hot pink paper and set them out on the table.

They came out really adorable!!

So not to overwhelm you with an extremely long entry (which I'm sure it already is), I will dedicate my next entry to revealing what sorts of games we played and just how cute everything looked at the shower.

Stay tuned!