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Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Erin's Bridal Shower

Surprise, Surprise. This post is weeks late :)
Back in June (the same weekend we attended a wedding) I also cohosted a bridal shower for my old college roomie, Erin.
She lives in Chicago right now while she gets her masters and works full time from their city apt.
You may remember me posting about her engagement- it happened after a Red Sox game last summer. We helped her fiancĂ© get her down to our University neighborhood, and to the door steps where she met him 10 years ago :) He had people waiting there playing music and he proposed right there!
Well, she is from Massachusetts and that's where we went to college. We also lived together in Boston  the year after college while we all worked and I planned my wedding. 
She moved to Austin, TX the year after I got married and that is where they will move back to at the end of the summer. The wedding is in Austin in December.
Since she is from MA, we had a bridal shower there with her mom,  family and MA friends.
 
My other unrelated friend, C, who lives in Chicago as well gave me the idea of making truffles as favors!  You may remember Anika and I went to Chicago to visit  Erin and C last fall :)
C told me the truffles were easy! She gave me two recipes: Chocolate chip cookie dough truffles and blackberry truffles.
The cookie dough part was easy to make- Recipe is HERE.
I made the dough weeks in advance so I could do a run through.
I have never dipped chocolate before, and let me just say- what a mess I made!! I bought the Wilton Candy melts from Joann's fabric and used a coupon.  After lots of frustration and even help from Andrew, All my dipped truffles looked like piles of shit. Literally.
So, we ate this batch and then tried again.
And again.
Then, when I finally got them right, there wasn't enough, so we made another batch. Practice was making me better at dipping though! Instead of dreading it, I was almost enjoying it. But, we have a bottom drawer freezer and someone kept trying to get into them : ) They were tempting to Andrew and myself as well. One day my mom dropped Anika off and Andrew told me my mom came in the house to bring Anika's stuff in, and came out with chocolate on her face. lol. He was kidding and trying to wind me up.
I kept them in the freezer and then on Friday night we boxed them up and stored the tray in the fridge. The shower was on Sunday, but we had the wedding Saturday.   My cohost got the purple and white boxes at Michaels and shipped them up to me from MA. My Michaels didn't carry the purple ones.
 
I got some purple chocolate too and melted it, put it in a plastic frosting bag thing and used my cake decorating stuff to drizzle the purple on!! Wow, I was getting fancy! haha.
 
 The other truffle recipe was THIS one. The blackberry ones were easy, but were too soft, so we ate them and didn't use them :)  I stuck with the cookie dough ones. OH, I also made about 8  Gluten free truffles for the bride.  I used coconut flour instead of regular. They weren't as tasty, but did the trick :)
Andrew helped with making boxes and tying them up.
 
 
I also needed to do flowers for the tables. The shower was at a restaurant that is special to the bride's family. She grew up going there.
I wanted to use flowers from our yard, my mom's yard and my Gram's yard, but I had no idea what would be in bloom that weekend!
So, I ordered some stuff from the florist the week before. I already had the round and tall vases, so I put the purple ribbon on the tall ones and added the white/clear rocks.
My mom picked up the flowers for me that morning. They were in a florist bucket.  The florist had explained how to put these leaves around the round low vases. It was harder to do than I thought it would be. My mom, Anika and I drove 2+ hours down to the shower location that morning. We had less than an hour to make all the arrangements before guests arrived.  Good thing we brought our flower cutters and supplies! In fact, my mom and cohost ended up making most of the arrangements because Anika was being super clingy and grumpy when we got there. Remember, late wedding the night before!
 
 
 
 
Me and the Guest of Honor!
 
 
 
This purple wire around the stems wasn't quite working like I thought it would either! haha
 
 
It was SOO hot that day. 100.  The room had AC units. Anika liked sitting in front of the wind :)
 
 
 
 
 
Me, Anika and My Mom :)
 
The restaurant is Italian so yummy Italian food.
 
 
 
 
 
A lot of the presents were shipped to Erin's house and/or people brought gift cards, so there weren't too many gifts to open. BUT, Anika was there to help with the gifts that were there!! haha.
PS. Anika is the flower girl in the wedding.
 
"ohhhhh"
NEXT! Anika, kept saying "NEXT!" after they opened a gift.
 
 
So, the gift I had already picked out for her was a customized/personalized cutting board.
I was having it shipped to her house. Then, she opened like 5 cutting boards as gifts! haha.
I still went with the cutting board. I am having it shipped directly to her house from the maker, so Ill have her take a photo and post it for you to see later. 
 
 
 
The hosts and the bride.
So, there are a lot more people in the bridal party, but they live in other parts of the country, so it was just the two of us on this one. And, the Bride's mom :)
 
 
Anika's balloon in the way on this one. 

 
 
I think she had a great time!! My mom helped take photos and there were about 150 photos of all the guests that I put on disks and sent right to the bride and her mom. I also emailed her the spreadsheet with her gifts on it. 
Now, we are onto the bach party planning!! That will be taking place later this summer on Cape Cod! It will be my longest time away from Anika.  I will also be about 30  weeks pregnant. It will be nice and relaxing.

4 comments:

  1. Are you in the wedding? How old will baby be???

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  2. Love the truffles!! What a great idea!! They look great.

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  3. Now that's called a complete bridal shower surprise! All the colors and food arrangements done are fantastic. Went for my neighbor's baby shower treat at one of the high rated Chicago wedding venues few days back. Flowers and balloons were pretty. Liked the food served. Starters and soups were of excellent taste.

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