A bridal shower for a book worm

A few weeks ago I was a co-hostess for a bridal shower for my cousin, Heather. In thinking about Heather and what she's all about, watching her grow up, and spending time with her over the years, I decided to throw her a themed shower and the choice was obvious. Heather loves reading. When she had her Senior pictures taken a few years ago, she had some really cute poses with books. She has been an avid book reader, devouring hundreds and hundreds of books.

One search for book themed showers on Pinterest and all sorts of ideas are out there. I decided to keep it simple, on a small budget, and not go overboard.

I started with invitations. I wanted invitations made out of actual library cards in a jacket, but for the number of invitations I needed, it was too expensive. But I found a great designer on Etsy.

The link to these invitations on Etsy is here: http://etsy.me/1QFD8gH

It is a pdf file and the seller was very easy to work with. After a few correspondence back and forth, she sent me the pdf and I printed them myself on cardstock, cut them down, and tossed them in envelopes I already had in my craft stash.

I stuck a note in each invitation and asked that each guest bring their favorite book to the shower. I assured them that the book would be returning home with them. When guests arrived to the party, we stacked up the books. When it was time for Heather to open the gifts she had to chose a book off the pile and try and guess which guest had brought the book. Then when the owner was revealed (if she didn't guess correctly) she opened the gift from that person. It made the gift opening interactive, but after getting a few wrong, Heather was over the guessing. She was a good sport and finished the pile.

For decorations, we tried to keep it cheap and simple, and within the theme of books. I found an old paperback book in my personal library and ripped out pages. Then I cut the pages into about 2" wide strips and made a couple of paper chains. We hung the long one across the living room window and a shorter one across the fireplace mantle.

I made a banner from book pages that said, "Happily Ever After." I printed out a large font, cut out the letters, traced them onto a book page, cut out the letter from the page, cut squares for the backing, glued the letters to the squares, punched 2 holes in each square, and threaded it all onto a ribbon.

I couldn't get a good shot of the whole banner, so here it is in pieces.

We had a couple of tables out on the deck, so to dress up the tables a little, I made simple centerpieces from objects around the house. I took the dust jackets off of hard cover books and stacked items on top of them. All I was looking for were books with a good color...I didn't want all of them to be black or gray. Snoozeville!

Simple Spring arrangement on top of a couple of books.

Tea light candles inside Ball jars. Dried split peas were my filler. All stuff I had around the house!

In the kitchen, we placed a small Spring arrangement on top of a couple of books.

The final decoration to pull our book theme together was a dessert stand I made. 

Do you think there may have been a little bit of butter in those cookies?

It cost me a whopping $2.60 to make the dessert stand, thanks to Goodwill. I bought three books for 20 cents a piece and two glass taper holders for a dollar each. When looking for books, I looked for books that were a nice color under the dust jacket, and I bought a large for the base, a medium for the middle, and a smaller one for the top. Then I used Gorilla Glue to glue the candle holders in between the books. Otherwise the stand would have been far too tippy. 

We put the dessert stand on the food table as the main centerpiece. I found the letters and ampersand on the top at a boutique. They are made from books! Someone just took old hard cover books and used a saw to cut the books into letters. Genius! This was my gift to Heather for her to keep for her new home. 

I toyed with the idea of having the food be book themed, but I decided I had enough of the theme tied in so we just made food we thought would be good. Hot ham and cheese sandwiches, veggie platter with dip, a cheese ball and crackers, a seafood pasta salad, fruit salsa with cinnamon pita chips, brownies, fruit puffs, small cookies, and little fruit tarts. A big thank you to my aunt, my cousin, my sisters, and my mom for making the food and punch!

We played only one game, and of course it was book themed. I came up with a list of 20 pairs from literature and the game was to match them up. Some pairs were romantic, some were friends. Some examples were: Jay Gatsby & Daisy Buchanan, Scout Finch & Dill Harris, Katniss Everdeen & Peeta Malark, Huck Finn & Tom Sawyer, etc.

Congratulations to Heather!