DIY Literary Wedding: Crafting a Bridal Shower

Te Bridal Shower is not supposed to be the Bride's responsibility because friends and family often help, or better yet plan the entire party. I have a friend, sister and mother who have been helping with securing the venue, taking care of some RSVPs buying food and bringing flowers for decoration to the event. I have been in charge of the invites and favors. The invitations I found were on Minted.com which offers some adorable cards designed by different independent designers. Alethea and Ruth were the designers of my card. Here is an example of the card I sent:

I originally had the idea of having a theme based shower. Since the wedding is literary themed I had thought of choosing a particular book, and even a particular scene from the book. It was Alice in Wonderland and the Mad Hatter's Tea Party. I have always liked that scene because I feel like it promoted creativity and the acceptance of difference and diversity. I even had the idea of having guests have the option to donate to NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness in lieu of giving a gift because we were dealing lightly with the idea of "madness", but I wanted to bring awareness to real mental illness since it is an issue close to my heart from working with people in my life and career who have severe mental illnesses. And I was surprised there were so many great ideas for using Alice in Wonderland in General as a theme for an adult or children's party. I am not going to have this theme after all because the people throwing the party would not have the time to even begin such an endeavor and I am out of town busy with all kinds of other wedding stuff, but I wanted to put the idea out there. I am going with a "generic" tea party theme though. (See the bottom of this blog entry for more about Alice in Wonderland themed parties).

Generic Summer Tea Party
- Bright colors
-Lots of random flowers for décor
-Food ideas I have shared that might happen like little sandwiches, cupcakes and miniature cupcakes, mini quiche, colorful food, and tea (hot or cold based upon the season). Some tea parties can be British themed and some can be Asian, while mine has no national/cultural theme.

Favors
-Tea bags are a cheap and easy favor, but you have to use individually wrapped tea bags so I can't use my favorite tea Celestial Seasonings.
-Tea strainer which I got from Party City (not everything is DIY)

-Bookmarks are great for summer reading and are a tie in for the literary wedding.

-Dish clothes- I am also making dish cloth favors for the wedding, but these fun summer colors were more fun to make than the wedding ones that had to fit in with the grey and black wedding colors.

-Then I bought Summery Bags (10 for $1 at the Dollar Store) and colorful duct tape. I had never bought decorative duct tape before. There are so many fun designs now! I bought a decorative punch at the craft store to make the name tags that will come in handy for many future projects.

A note to people not invited-
I have been planning this wedding all alone and don't know all the wedding etiquette. I apologize for that. With that in mind I didn't invite every woman who is invited to the wedding. Since I am having the Shower in my home town I have decided to invite those friends who live there in town and family, whom most live out of town and probably won't be able to make it. I didn't do this to exclude anyone. I love you all!

I wrote the above before the Bridal Shower. Now the Bridal Shower has come and gone. I just want to thank my friends and family who helped to throw it!

Alice in Wonderland and Mad Hater Tea themed party crafty stuff
check out these from etsy:

LePriss- Silver Teapot Charm