It's Raining, It's Pouring

Hopefully that song is now stuck in your head like it is in mine! No, I'm not talking about the current weather (which, ironically, has consisted with off and on rain for the last day), but rather Kati's bridal shower. We had decided to do an English-style tea party for Kati's shower, using my parent's spectacular garden as a backdrop. The weather actually cooperated with us - for the bulk of the shower we had partly cloudy skies and it was pleasant. It did start sprinkling on us at the end, so we moved the party inside to open presents!

The day before the shower I went over to my parents where we cooked and cleaned all day. Mom and I had the vision of pretty much baking everything ourselves, which ended up being a ton of work, but well worth it. I found a fantastic scone recipe that we ended up using as a base dough and adding or subtracting the filler ingredients (we ended up making plain, chocolate chip and cranberry orange). Mom also made three different tea sandwiches - curried chicken salad, cucumber with herbed cream cheese and egg salad. They were delicious if I do say so myself! We also served Madeleine cookies, lemon cupcakes, devonshire cream, home made whipped cream, lemonchello candied almonds and fresh berries.

The Food Table

For the outside tables, I also really wanted to stick with the formal tea setting feeling. As favors for the guests, I spent the last couple of months scouring thrift shops to find tea cups... we had a complete hodge podge, but everyone really seemed to like getting their own piece of china to take home! I also used satin fans with the guests names printed on them as place cards at the tables. They were finished off with pink roses (one of Kati's wedding colors).

The Guest Tables

Here are the tables filled with people (and a view of the stunning roses growing on Mom and Dad's overhang!):

Garden Tea Party

Of course, we played shower games. The first was called 15 Questions and consisted of guests answering various questions about Kati, Nate and their relationship. The second game we played was actually a lot of fun. I had to visit my local Costco to get a lot of toilet paper to make this one happen. The ladies were broken into five teams of four to five people and given as much toilet paper as they needed. Each team had to pick a "model" and build a wedding dress for her out of TP. The rules were that they could do anything they wanted with the TP, but couldn't use anything else to aid in their dress making. The results were both stunning and hilarious:

Our Toilet Paper Brides

We then had some sprinkles, so we moved inside for the opening of presents and Bridal Bingo - each guest got a blank bingo card that they filled in with items they thought Kati would receive as presents.

Finally, here's a picture of Kati and some family - I really liked this one! From left to right: Elizabeth (Kati's soon to be sister in law), yours truly, Kati, Cyndy (Kati's soon to be mother in law) and my mama.

Family!

For more photos, hope on over to Kati's Facebook page - I think she'll be posting the remainder of the pictures soon!