Bridal Brunch at the Beach (Beach themed wedding shower)

I love decorating, love entertaining, and I love food so I guess a fun job for me would be to plan parties revolving around food.  Which is exactly what I get to do as the shower coordinator at our church.    So thankful that I get to use my love of decorating to minister in this way to others.   

This year has kept me busy with showers – 5 wedding showers and 1 baby shower will happen by the end of this year – 3 more wedding showers to go!  This was the most recent couple to tie the knot and they had a small wedding on the beach the day after she graduated college.  Once they got back from their honeymoon we were able to throw a wedding shower for them – this time it was hosted my house.  We vary the locations – sometimes it is at the church on a Sunday afternoon, and other times it is on a Saturday in a home – all depending on the honoree’s schedule and church schedule. 

I had a lot of fun with this shower in my home.  This is how my dining room usually looks but as you can see in the above picture I rearranged it all and pushed the table up against the wall.  Don’t be afraid to rearrange furniture if you can and it would work better when you host a party or a shower in your home! 

And this how my yard sale find of a chest turned buffet usually looks…

But for the shower it became a beachside “make your own yogurt parfait bar”!

So let’s talk a little about the menu.  This was a brunch shower hosted at 10 am so we served breakfast/brunch style foods.    The make your own yogurt parfait bar was a hit and was so easy!  Homemade granola, blueberries, cut strawberries, and vanilla yogurt. 

I used a scrap of beadboard for a backdrop and just added a DIY scrapbook paper and burlap letter banner.  I wish I had a blank wall to display all of this against but at least my curtains blended in with the right colors. 

I do have help when I do these showers – ladies in the church sign up to help provide food, someone in our church usually makes the cake or cupcakes, and I even get someone to volunteer to wrap napkins. 

Mini blueberry muffins served on my $3.50 yard sale plate stand.

Here was our menu:

• Yogurt Parfait Bar
• Sausage Balls
• Mini blueberry muffins
• Fruit
• Hummingbird Cake
• Coffee Punch
• Orange Juice

I also rearranged my eat-in-kitchen a bit pushing the table back and moving all the chairs into the living room for seating.  It became our Beachside Coffee House with coffee punch (oh so good!) and orange juice served in mini mason jars with fun chevron straws. 

The longest ever living goldfish (my nephew’s from a fall festival last YEAR!) became part of the décor along with some houseplants.  Use what you have, borrow from friends, repurpose! – my favorite motto when it comes to hosting parties and showers!

We had a sweet time together visiting while they opened their gifts. 

Oh and one last idea I found on Pinterest and loved was making a starter date night jar for the new couple!   Instead of bringing a recipe to put in a recipe book for the bride or writing down a piece of advice or many other traditional shower/wedding ideas, we all wrote down 1 or 2 date night ideas that they could do together on the craft sticks and gave them this cute mason jar with more blank sticks for them to add their own ideas.  I plan to blog all about a date night jar in a later post so stay tuned if you are confused as to how this works.

Hosted any parties at your house this summer?  Ever hosted a wedding or bridal shower?  Would love to hear your ideas!