DIY Bridal Shower Favor: Photo Chocolate Bars

Make inexpensive and personalized chocolate bar favors for the bridal shower! The too easy to be true instructions:

1. Choose a few favorite photos (we love baby photos of the bride), then print them using an ink-jet printer or photocopy onto lightweight paper. (Enlarge or reduce images if needed.)

2. With a paper cutter, trim so photos are slightly shorter than candy bars.

3. Remove outer wrappers but not inner foil.

4. Wrap each candy bar with a photo, and secure in back with double-sided tape.

5. Adorn with waxed twine tied in a small bow.

Voila! Custom photo favors!

DIY Cupcake Bachelorette Party Flags

Pretty Chicky has a great freebie-DIY Bachelorette Party Cupcake Flags.  Each flag has a saying like so good, naughty, or sinful.  So cute and perfect for a bachelorette party!

FREE Bachelorette Party Invites: Glam Girls Night Out

Betsy White has a great downloadable DIY bachelorette party invitation-a stylish Glam Girls Night Out template available in four colors.

FREE Printable Bridal Shower Invitations

We found more FREE printable Bridal Shower Invites for you.  You can download the pdf file of the one above and another similar one at Free Printable Greeting Cards. The pdf file is free, but you can purchase a premium version that allows you to edit it for $4.  For more FREE printables look here.

DIY Chocolate Bridal Shower Favors

We scoured the web for the best chocolate bridal shower favors that you could do yourself. Chocolate? Saving money? Who wouldn't want these to be front and center at the next bridal shower.  Just be sure to read the instructions thoroughly and plan some time for making them.

1) DIY Chocolate Covered Pretzels from Style Me Pretty-Yum! These pretzels look so good-the guests may not be able to wait until the end of the shower to enjoy them.  Get the step by step instructions here.

2) DIY Custom Chocolate Bars from Wedding Window-Find out how to take regular candy bars and jazzy them up for bridal shower favors. Customize the wrappers to say anything!  Easy step by step instructions can be found here.

3) Dark Chocolate Drizzled Mints-Taking Altoids and covering them in chocolate? Our first thought was how unusual and refreshing.  Get the instructions here.

4) Chocolate Gobbler Cobbler Recipe-Send your guests home with a recipe and the ingredients for a tasty cobbler. (We love the idea of doing this for your favorite recipes too!) Guests get to make a tasty treat at home and you did the prep work for it.  Find the template and instruction here.

5) Chocolate Covered Fortune Cookies-From Martha, learn how to make chocolate covered fortune cookies.  Fill the cookies with sayings or thank-yous from the bride for attending the bridal shower.

(All photos are copyrighted from their respective blog.)

DIY: Hot Pink & Zebra Bachelorette Party Invite

For her friend's bachelorette party, Kate made these incredible hot pink, black, & zebra bachelorette party invitations. 

What's needed:

Gluestick
Bonefolder
Hole puncher
Cardstock (Black, Hot Pink, and Zebra)
Envelopes
Ribbon (Zebra)
Envelope liner templates

Get the rest of the easy step-by-step instructions on her blog. 

Image copyrighted-http://kkarsten.blogspot.com/2009/06/kristies-bachelorette-party-invites.html

Coffee & Tea Tasting Bridal Shower

What a great idea for a brunch shower- a coffee and tea tasting.  The City Cradle did this wonderful shower using the theme "a perfect pair." A perfect pair coffee & cream. A perfect pair tea & sugar.  A perfect pair her & him.

For the tasting, they served a sampling of 2 types of coffee and 5 types of tea, all chilled and ready for sipping. For great iced coffee recipes try this one and try the iced tea recipes found here. (A sample menu: Thai Iced Tea, Peach Iced Tea, Russian Iced Tea, Black Currant Iced Tea, and Iced Lemon and Ginger Mint Tea.)

They also served a brunch selection of muffins &scones which they wrapped in personalized pastry paper for an extra touch. In addition they personalized the muffins with the words muffins & tea on one side and A perfect pair written on the other. To make these she simply cut down parchment paper to an 8×10 size, made the word sheet to match, and sent the whole thing through an inkjet printer. 

As favors, they handed out custom pomegranate-green tea bags as favors to be brewed later that day. Each had a personalized label saying thanks and directions on brewing the tea over ice at home.

To top this shower off, there's FREE printable labels for the iced beverage bottles, the cups, and the tea bags.

DIY: Bridal Shower Scrapbook

Tina over on Elizabeth Anne Designs has a great example of a bridal shower scrapbook. With the shower invite, guest list, menu, list of games played, and extra pages for memories of the shower and guest's signatures, this post had some great ideas for what a scrapbook should have. Every bride should have one from her bridal shower (and bachelorette party!)

DIY Bridal Shower Contest

DIY projects are huge-they're a great way to add some originality and creativity to a bridal shower.  And here at The Perfect Bridesmaid, we're always looking for more (and so are our readers!) That's why we're  proud to have our first DIY Bridal Shower contest.

What are we looking for? Anything related to a bridal shower-invites, centerpieces, favors, decorations, cake-toppers, etc. Be creative-did you use something for a bachelorette party or engagement party that would also be great for a wedding shower? A craft for a wedding that would work for a shower? Submit it! 

To enter the contest:

• Email me (dana@theperfectbridesmaid.com) 4-8 images that are each at least 600 pixels wide (you can submit the photos as attachments or in the e-mail text);
• A list of supplies with links to where to find them;
• Step by step instructions
• Description of the project

The Rules

Everyone is welcome to participate. Brides, bridesmaids, event planners, florists, DIYers, anyone! 

You can submit as many projects as you would like to increase your chances of winning-please send separate e-mails for each project.  

If you have a blog where the project is featured, please include a link to it but still include the above information too.

Entries close on April 22, 2010. Entries will be posted in the order they were received. The best projects will be chosen and posted. Voting will begin April 26, 2010 and end May 4, 2010. 

The Winners

First-place gets $100 cash! That's right $100 smackeroos!

Unique Bridal Shower Guestbook or Decoration-Postcard Banner

Image copyrighted-Design Sponge

After seeing this amazing postcard banner from Design Sponge, I began thinking that this could be a great guestbook idea or decoration for a shower too.  All of the instructions can be found here.  (It's a different variation from the lingerie ones people use at lingerie showers.)

So many ways to use this idea!  Some ways:

• Use photos (the engagement photos, wedding pictures if the party is post-reception, photos of the bride when she was young) as postcards. Or try vintage photos of the couple's relatives.  (Try Zazzle where you can add your own or use pre-designed ones.) 
• Use postcards of where the couple is planning on honeymooning or getting married if its a destination wedding.
• If you're collecting recipes for the bride, use the recipe cards for the banner.
• Have guests sign the cards/photos/postcards and use it as a guestbook for the shower. Just hang it up later after everyone has signed it.

DIY: Bachelorette Party Veils

 (Image courtesy of Bachelorette.com)

We've all been to bachelorette parties where we outfit the bride in embarrassing shirts (Buy me a shot, I'm tying the knot!) and of course give the bride a veil to walk around in so everyone knows she's the bride.  Well thanks to this great DIY tutorials, you can make the bride her own bachelorette party veil which means you can make one that matches her leopard print dress or that is hot pink. The choice is up to you!

Miss Pug's blog has a great tutorial where she made her 80s themed bachelorette party veil in pink and orange tulle-of course, you can easily change the colors if you want to.  The DIY Wedding has a great tutorial for making a bridal veil so nice you could actually use it in the wedding.

Of course if making a party veil is not in the cards, you can always buy one.  Look at Bachelorette.com for a ton of bachelorette party veils like the one pictured above.

DIY: Plantable Seed Matchbox Favors

Matchbox favors have always been popular at weddings but from Martha Stewart comes a fresh, eco-friendly favor-seed matchbox favors that guests can plant after they leave the shower or event. All of the instructions, including the clipart, can be found here.  What a great favor for garden showers.

Claim: TU7MYKE5N4GD

DIY: Candy Bar Favors

Create your own favors using miniature candy bars that you decorate and use as favors. You can make candy bar favors using comic books as the wrapping paper.  This tutorial at Intimate Weddings used vintage comics but any comics will do. Or take your favorite photos of the bride and use them to adorn the candy bars.  Going for something more classic? Do a simple monogram for a classic wrapper or use the black damask candy bar labels. The candy bar wrapper found here is also a classic-love the dotted design.

DIY: Wedding Gown Favor Boxes

 (Image copyrighted -the hybrid chick)

Create these fun dresses to give out as bridal shower favors.  Best of all, you can use them as unique favor boxes to fill up with candy from a candy buffet or fill them ahead of time with favorites like Jordan's almonds, Hershey's kisses, or little candy bars.  They would also make great place cards for fancier showers.  All of the instructions can be found here. 

DIY Fabric Bridal Shower Invitations

This great DIY find from Wedding Chicks and Paper & Thread Studio is sure to excite everyone. Take a look at these creative fabric bridal shower invites that are super easy to put together (no sewing required-we swear) and are ridiculously creative.

DIY: Free Vegas Bachelorette Party Invites

YumSugar has a great freebie-a template for DIY bachelorette party invitations! The above invite can be found here. The invite is obviously perfect for Las Vegas bashes but can also be used for any casino themed soirees like ones held in Atlantic City or even Harrah's Grand Biloxi.

Bridal Shower Centerpiece: Faux Wedding Cake

Image courtesy of bhg.com

Take a look at one of Better Homes & Garden's adorable DIY centerpieces-faux wedding cakes that look like the real thing. The directions are super easy to do and of course this would be easy to adapt to any theme-just change the colors and flowers.

DIY: Matchbook Favor

Remember the good ole days when every club or restaurant gave out cute little matchbooks. Well, now for your best friend's bridal shower you can do the same thing and make these adorable personalized matchbooks.

Offbeat Bride featured this great DIY-best of all its super simple. The instructions: take cheap blank matchbooks, print out designs on sticker paper, and then trim and adhere to make cheap, custom favors. Sticker paper is easy to design and customize so the options are endless!

DIY: French Wedding Favor or Dessert

(Image via ParisianEvents)

Having a French, Parisian, or Marie Antoinette bridal shower? Then consider serving these delightful treats-French meringue hearts. The recipe can be found at Parisian Events.These would be great for dessert, as part of a candy buffet, or to serve as favors and quite frankly just look absolutely amazing.

DIY Doily Bridal Shower Invitation

Wow-take a look at this bridal shower invite. We never would have thought of using a doily in this manner (to make a bridal gown) yet the whole DIY project is both easy to do and looks great.