Recently some friends and I got together to host a bridal shower brunch for a good friend’s daughter and I thought it might be something that could give you some ideas for a bridal brunch of your own.

It was at an adorable antique mall at a place called Chocolate Angel Café & Tea Room in a precious, tiny little area tucked away in its own little corner of the building.

How charming is this?

And while you may not have access to a cute little tea room like this you could certainly duplicate the “look and feel” in your home or somewhere else.

Of course with this kind of setting it wasn’t difficult to make it look girlie and charming, but we did have our own little touches.

Our friend Joan made this beautiful chair hanging for the bride to be.  It turned out so lovely and looked great on the back of her chair.  She wrapped the heart shaped Styrofoam with ribbon and lace, created the veil out of white tulle and added flowers, feathers and pearl floral picks for a sweet way to honor our blushing bride.  Just perfect for this sweet little tea room.

Connie found this great birdcage for gift cards and Joan made the floral/bow to go on top.  The tea room had this beautiful stand we were able to use to display it.

As the girls arrived their cards were placed here.

Suzanne found these fun wedding rings (actually Christmas tree ornaments – there are advantages to doing this at Christmastime!) and had the idea of putting a little card on them that said “Ring In The New Year” since they are getting married on New Years Eve.  (My handwriting contribution here!) Great idea and it looked really sweet on the table.  And our bride was able to take all the rings with her as her tree ornaments this year.

Fun!

This was our drink and petit fours table.  Joan made the drinks which we named the “Morgan Mimosa” in honor of our bride Morgan.

I failed to get a picture of them made up in their individual glasses, but they were easy and delicious. 

Recipe:

Sliced Apple

Cinnamon sticks (Optional)

Chilled Prosecco (Italian White Wine)

Chilled Apple Cider

Sugar and Cinnamon Mixture (Optional)

Dip rim of glass in water and then in sugar and cinnamon mixture. (Optional) Place one slice of apple in each glass.  Fill 1/3 glass with apple cider.  Fill 2/3 with Prosecco.  Add a cinnamon stick if desired.  (We didn’t dip the rims at the shower simply because it was a little too much to mess with there.)

Yummo!

My job was to make the flower arrangements.

I’m used to working with synthetic flowers, but not so much with fresh flowers so I was a little nervous.

I went to Kroger where I do my grocery shopping and perused the flowers there to try and come up with what I wanted.  They usually have a beautiful selection of colors to choose from and their prices are reasonable.  The floral lady assured me that there would be plenty of colors to choose from on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, which was the day before the shower.

But, when I got there they were completely picked over from Thanksgiving and my selection had dwindled to mostly red roses…

.

And pink roses.

Both beautiful, but I sort of panicked.  I didn’t want it to look too “Valentine-y” or too stuffy and “old lady”, but I didn’t have a lot of choice.

I bought the roses and my sister (who was here in town for Thanksgiving) and I experimented with different things like this:

But we decided they just looked a little too “serious” or something.  I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but they needed some “happy”, more youthful, less serious colors – if that makes any sense.  So after hitting a couple more stores to no avail we went back to Kroger later that day and found they had put out some more flowers with more of a color selection.  Not a lot, but enough to do something with.  I grabbed some small purple flowers (not sure what they are) and minty green hydrangeas.  I plucked out the pearls you see here (decided not to use them) and added the new colors which was just what they needed.

But, I still needed to come up with a way to cover up the unsightly stems in the vase.

At Hobby Lobby I found some self-adhesive moss.

I forgot to get a picture of it, but this is similar to what it looked like and it had a sticky back that adhered directly to the glass.

I cut the sheets of moss into strips to fit each vase and wrapped it around them to cover the glass.

Then I wrapped a green ribbon I had on had around the top to give it a more finished edge and hot glued the edges together.

This worked perfectly and gave them a more youthful, sort of casual air.

Adding the extra color and moss wrap was just what they needed.

I’m so glad Kroger had more color to choose from when I went back up there.  Whew!

(A little tip I learned – if you want the flowers to open up for an occasion sooner rather than later you place them in warm water. Hmmm…..who knew?)

My father-in-law actually sent this to me for Thanksgiving and it was so beautiful that I just added some more color to it to match the other arrangements, changed out the rust candles to this soft green and brought it with me to add to the table.

Perfect.

I added some extra ribbon and leaves to the table.  It turned out “happy”, youthful (like our bride to be) and complimented the little tea room atmosphere.  I didn’t know they were going to use a soft green tablecloth, but it worked perfectly with the green ribbon.

If you are doing this at a less “girlie” location or at someone’s home you can bring on the “girlie vibe” with a sweet old fashioned table cloth, mix-matched flea market plates, cups and saucers, adding vine or flowers to an overhead chandelier, and adding a sweet (but much simpler) chair hanging to each guests chair.

Hope you’re inspired to have some fun with your own bridal brunch!

Happy Decorating!