The flavors look divine and with Kara’s philosophy that the “little things in life make all the difference”, they are infused with love and joy and are just downright delicious.

Source: Martha Stewart Weddings

For a bride who has a green thumb, or even one who simply loves spring, there are a variety of fun ways to enhance an elegant and fun garden party. For example, welcome guests with a herb garden champagne bar, featuring fresh rosemary and lavender sprigs along with syrups such as lemon verbena and strawberry basil for guests to create their own cocktail. Use organic and raw serving pieces such as wooden cutting boards, wooden crates, wire baskets, and mason jars. Try creating a fun farmers’ market display by arranging fresh vegetables, breads, meats, herbs and spreads in separate containers for guests to help themselves.

Source: Oprah

I also LOVE ‘edible art’. It adds another interesting dimension to any party and will definitely create a conversation piece for your guests. How fun are these potted desserts? Simply use chocolate mousse or pudding with cookie crumbs on top, and “plant” a fresh sprig of your favorite herb! Or, go a little crazy and have a bakery create these adorable chocolate cake pots with sugar flowers.

Source: Oprah

For a fun activity, how about hiring a florist to teach a ‘bouquet-making’ class? Or, arrange a variety of fresh flowers in small containers for guests to make their own arrangement to bring home.  For a bride who does have a green thumb, asks guests bring gardening tools, supplies, or additional plants and vegetables to add to her garden.  Happy spring!

A cooking shower is conversational, a fun learning experience, and is great if you are inviting guests of all ages… not the mention that your end result will be delish! Set the theme by sending out mini-cutting boards or recipe cards as invitations. Either hire a chef to come to your designated shower location, or look into classes at DC favorites such as CulinAerie or Hell’s Kitchen.

Pictures: Martha Stewart Weddings

Try to schedule or create a class that is centered around the bride’s favorite foods, or something new and adventurous you know she would love. Once everyone is satiated, enhance the fun-filled day with gifts such as an adorable apron- who says you can’t be fashionable while cooking?

Lilly Pulitzer on Etsy

Following the planning process for a traditional bridal shower, it is important to keep the bride and groom’s shared interests in mind while planning a couple’s shower.  If they both enjoy the outdoors, perhaps plan an outdoor barbeque with sangria and lawn games, or have everyone come together to rent a beach house for the weekend!  For a thank you take-away, how fun are these personalized BBQ sauce bottles?

Credit: Beau-Coup

What if the couple is honeymooning in Morocco? Use their destination as a party theme- you can apply the location to the décor, food, games, and even gifts that the couple can use on their travels.

Credit: HostesswiththeMostest

As the couple’s shower is co-ed, try to keep all activities gender-neutral and upbeat, so that everyone feels included and has a great time.  What if the bride and groom do not share a similar group of friends? Well, what a fantastic time for everyone to get to know each other before the wedding! Have you attended or planned a fun couple’s shower lately – what did you think?

Now, for all your ladies planning a fabulous bridal shower, why not host a perfume party? I am just too excited by this idea. Kamilyin is a fragrance, lotion and soap company that will actually send you all the necessary ingredients to put together the perfect DIY perfume party! You can create customized labels and choose from over twenty scents with instructions on how to blend the oils. Feel free to take a little direction from Kamilyin or go crazy on your own!

Credit: greenweddingshoes.com

Not only will this fun learning and conversational party for your guests, but it will also create wonderful gifts for everyone to take home – a fabulous signature scent in their own personalized bottle!

***

I cannot believe our wedding is less than two weeks away!  As the March 12 approaches, we — and the bridal party — are in the midst of finalizing a detailed itinerary for the rehearsal day preceding the wedding, and of course, the wedding itself.  The detailed itinerary, much of which involves ensuring that the “little things” are in place, has led me to reflect on the details of the wedding.  Details can be troublesome; they usually need to be carried around, they often seem tiny in the grand scheme of things, and sometimes — perhaps it’s a borrowed item or a family heirloom — you have to take extra care to ensure they’re accounted for.  So what’s so great about details, anyway?

Details, as I exclaimed to my patient fiancé at one point in our planning process, ensure that your wedding is a *wedding* and not something resembling a random party or corporate conference. Details ensure that the wedding you’ve put so much time and effort into planning is actually recognizable and memorable to your guests as *your* wedding. Many of the details we’ve chosen to focus on have enabled us to place special emphasis on the importance of family in our lives. I encourage all brides-to-be to determine what important area in your lives could be shared with your guests through small but meaningful details, and go from there!

Our invitation suite illustrated our love for the beautiful city we now call home, but what about our hometowns? In addition to giving a nod to New York and Texas with signature cocktails, we’ve named each table after a favorite place — be it a bar or a monument — in our hometowns. At least one guest seated at each table will be able to share the story behind the table name with the other guests! To honor our parents and our childhood years, we created an escort table arrangement designed by one of my best friends: blossoming branches in hurricane vases that will display family photos of of us as children, and our parents’ weddings. Our parents even have a role in our attire for the big day! My mom made my veil by hand, and Chris selected a custom tuxedo that is identical to the one his father wore at his wedding.

Credit: Flickr

The details aren’t simply aesthetic; they can also be delicious! Alongside a traditional wedding cake, we opted for cupcakes — a foodie trend I absolutely LOVE — baked by a dear friend who, luckily for us, is a pro. They’ll be in chocolate (my favorite) and carrot cake (Chris’s favorite). My favorite part of the carrot cupcakes is the candied carrot shavings that Adrienne places atop the cream cheese frosting. I’ve found the tiny-yet-amazing, innovative touches to be the most memorable aspects of special events!

Credit: Veil via Wedding Bells Blog; Dessert bar via Manolo Brides

It was our experience that some of the details will be ones you plan carefully in advance, especially if they are DIY projects designed to honor a significant part of your life, while other details will just fall into place. I couldn’t possibly have planned out — or even dreamed up — all the details we’ll enjoy at our wedding, but we’ve been open to others’ creative contributions, and we’ve devoted time to brainstorming by ourselves. The result? A big day, with small touches, that will be meaningful to everyone… Especially the two of us.

This past summer, when a bride who was getting married at Woodend Sanctuary and her sister Kendall were considering what to do, they knew that they wanted to host something that resonated with their values…So, to tie in the bride’s love of nature, and the reason that she picked her Woodend Sanctuary venue, it made sense to center the shower’s theme around the Audubon Naturalist Society…here they are in action, making the venue – and world – a better place…

Don’t you all just love this idea?!

Cookies & Corks, a creative new cookie line from CookieZen™, is offering sweet and savory all-natural bite-sized cookies made with distinctive ingredients that are packaged to be paired with red, white or sparkling wine.

The oh-so-delicious – and unexpected - flavors include apricot, espresso, sage, lemon and sea salt to name a few… and amazingly, they complement to a variety of wines.

Cookies & Corks are packaged in three separate boxes to be paired with either red, white, or sparkling wine.  The tough part is how to decide…so maybe get all three! Here are the options:

- Red Wines: Espresso Chocolate Peanut Butter (5), Shortbread (5), and White Cheddar Rosemary (5)

-White Wines: Peanut Butter Chocolate (3), Ginger Molasses (5), and Apricot Sage (5)

-Sparkling Wine: Iced Lemon (5), Sea Salt Chocolate Oatmeal (5), and Parmesan Thyme (5)

To find cookies in a local D.C. store near you, check out the website.  Cheers!

If you are looking for a unique, timeless bridal shower activity, then I cannot recommend having tea in Peacock Alley enough.  With live music, an array of organic teas, finger sandwiches, and fresh decadent pastries, you and your girls are sure to have an incredible time!

For the month of December, Tea will be served daily! The Hours of Operation are:

Weekdays and Friday:  2:00PM- 4:30PM
Saturday and Sunday: 1:30PM to 4:30PM
Cost of the tea is $39 excluding tax and tip, additional $10 for Glass of Sparkling Wine

For reservation, please call 202-628-9110. Enjoy!!

I think it is safe to say, that almost every woman in America has seen, and loved, Sex and the City.  Today, our bride blogger, Julia, is here to share with us how her love of this adored show was used as theme inspiration for her fun-filled bridal shower…

I am really excited to write this post about my bridal shower.  Not only because I think it was the best shower ever thrown (ok, maybe not ever, but people really told me that!) but because I think it can be helpful to other idea – seekers, too. 

My bridesmaids got together and brainstormed ideas for the shower and decided on a Sex and the City theme; not only because I love SATC, but I can quote just about any episode because I have watched them some many times.  They also knew that I was not into any cutesy bridal love stuff.  I wanted an upscale, classy, adult event. 

Everything got started with the last minute help of my boss, who painstakingly made 40 hand-made invites to the shower.  They were a work of art: a handmade purse made with crocodile/leather paper on the outside and leopard print (wrapping paper) inside that held the hot pink invite. 

It came in a matching hot pink envelope that was lined with paper with a repeating Prada logo, to look like tissue paper.  My neighbor even walked over to my house one night to say how impressed she was by the invite!

When the day of the shower came, I was so excited to dress up and meet all of the women that came together in honor of me.  I arrived and was met at the entrance of my mother’s home to a table with pink flowers, the bridal shower invite displayed and framed pictures of our engagement photos. 

As I entered, I was met with two full tables of homemade food.  My sister is a chef, so she designed the menu and had several of my mom’s friends help her make the food, under her supervision, of course. 

Among more framed photos, there was tuna tartar, mini egg salad sandwiches, a huge cheese platter, heart shaped brownies (I thought the hearts were actually super cute!) and cupcakes with my married initials.  There was so much other food, but it went by in such a flash, I do not remember it all!  The tables had pink tablecloths and the centerpieces were huge martini glasses with pink jelly beans and almonds that looked like olives.

Next, my bridesmaids handed out flower pins for every guest.  Carrie Bradshaw sported several outfits in SATC with flowers on the shoulder.  It was signature, so it was only fitting that we all had the look, too.  My mother-in-law bought big fake flowers from Michael’s and glued on pins.  Even the girls who had never really seen SATC liked them.

Before we sat down to open gifts (one of my favorite parts) my sister made all sorts of martinis.  There were cosmos (of course!), wedding-tinis, drinks with pineapple and cherry, Arnold Palmers and champagne with peaches.  While we all sipped (ok, maybe some of us drank too much) we participated in a SATC trivia game.  

My mom picked out all of the wedding-related questions from the SATC trivia game that she bought from amazon.com.  The winners won high-heeled bottle openers.  And of course, everyone at the party got to take home their martini glass.

I received so many thoughtful gifts and so many from the registry.  I had serious fun opening all of the gifts, even if it may have been boring for all of the guests.  It was a once in a lifetime event and I will never forget it.  I got to hand it to my bridesmaids and both my mother and soon-to-be-mother-in-law for all coming together to put on such a well put-together shower. 

What did you all do for your bridal showers? Does anyone have creative, special ideas? Please share!