Real Showers: Indoor Vintage Garden Party

Having a vintage garden party indoors in February in Illinois can be difficult to pull it off but this amazing bridal shower featured on Hummingbird Tales did just that.  

The invites-the invites really set the tone for the shower and these adorable invites from marta writes are just the ticket.  The invitations really display the couple's love of cycling (and are just plain cute too!)

The Theme-The perfect touches for a garden party-a new bike basket for the bride filled with spring flowers by Julie at growing grounds in Bloomington, IL. along with  multiple large mason jars all throughout the shower filled by Julie as well. 

Welcoming guests to the shower were two adorable easy DIY crafts: a welcome sign (inspired by the Gossip Girl bridal shower on  hostess with the mostess) and handwritten name-tags on punched scrapbook paper. Of course a happy picture of the couple also greeted guests.

The next sweet touch-mod podged mini clipboards inspired by m.writes with bridal shower notes to the bride that each guest filled out and read to the lucky bride and the rest of the attendees before the bride opened their gifts detailing their history together and offering support and marriage advice to the bride. Best of all, the notes are available for free in 4 different color palettes here.  

Tip: Activities like this help break up the monotony of opening up gift after gift while also being an excellent way to not only get to know the bride's friends and family a little better, but also allow each woman to reflect on her own friendship with the bride-to-be.Cute idea-save the notes after each guest reads them and put them in a scrapbook with photos of the shower for a cute souvenir.

Another personal touch for the couple-a congratulations banner written in Hawaiian since their destination wedding will be on Maui.  The DIY instructions: 

1) Cut hearts out of thick scrapbook paper

2) Print the letters in a font you love and cut onto smaller circles of paper, 

3) Glue the two together and mod podge over it to give it a little resilience

4) Punch holes in the top

5) String a ribbon through.  

This was also inspired by m.writes and her diy party banner.

More finishing touches-vintage mason jars collected up by the bride's grandmother and stuffed with homemade cloth napkins cut and hemmed from cute vintage-looking fabrics. The easy instruction-just cut 18 inch squares of fabric and hemmed around the edges 1/4 inch. 

The shower favors-tiny tins filled halfway with potting soil and planed with daffodil bulbs just starting to bloom. They then put them in little plastic bags, stuffed some easter grass and candies in the bottom around the base of the tins, and tied a ribbon around the edge to finish it off with little squares of paper that had a little hand written note of thanks.   

Tip: Looking for ways to save money on favors? Take some tips from this shower-look for tins from local craft stores (here it was Hobby Lobby) and fill with flowers from the local grocery store. Or try our idea of a floral potluck from before and use the decorations for shower favors.

Food-a wonderful chocolate fountain station and homemade sugar cookies with the bride's grandmother's recipe, frosted in pink and red and hand piped with sweet little sayings for the bride and groom as well as white cupcakes with white frosting and white/clear sprinkles in sweet tulip wrappers found on etsy.com at Cupcake Social's shop.

There's even more to this beautiful shower including the creative gift given by the hostess here.  It certainly looks like it was a wonderful time and we can't thank them enough for sharing the shower with us.