DIY Wedding Project: Make Your Own Bridal Shower Favors

100 Layer Cake - Certainly you’re all familiar with the superduper talented Mimi of Mika78. And clearly we’re all going to want to be a little MORE familiar with her after this post is over. Because if you’re more familiar, as in like friends with her, she puts together an amazing bridal shower for you, complete with a little box of handmade goodies for your guests. Here is how you can make your own bridal shower favors for about $50. Here are the materials you'll need for this DIY project:

Vintage tea cups
Your favorite Tea
Vintage hankies
Paper, bakers twine, cardboard box, and doilies

Mimi created this whole suite for one of her closest friends Christina’s bridal shower. Christina is, in Mimi’s words, "an unbelievable woman and friend," and Mimi wanted to create something really, really special to celebrate her bridal status. She and the rest of the bridesmaids planned an afternoon tea party at a cute restaurant in NYC's West Village, which turned out to be exceptional inspiration for the invitation.

Because Mimi is so incredibly talented, thoughtful, and design-obsessed, she scoured the city’s vintage flea markets for weeks looking for the perfect tea cups and napkins to incorporate into her design. Sigh. Does it get much more heartfelt? (Not to mention absurdly cute.)

She worked with our now friend and DIY contest winner of Bryn of Paperfinger (we didn’t know her when she won the contest, we swear), for the pretty calligraphy. Bryn wrote a bunch of different messages, including a quote Christina is using in her invitations, on the vintage tea cups using a gold pen. And Mimi also included tea bags with little handmade tea tags in each guest gift.

And Mimi made little fill-in-the-blank notes for guests to give to Chris at the shower. Everyone read theirs aloud at the shower and it turned out to be an excellent way to not only get to know Chris’s friends and family a little better, but also to allowed each woman to reflect on her own friendship with the bride-to-be. At the end, Mimi collected each note and put them into a scrapbook for Chris. Such a cute idea!

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Little Kids Put the "Awwwww!" in Weddings

There is a surefire way to please every wedding guest, and that's by having adorable little girls and boys serve some kind of function - most commonly, throwing clumps of flower petals onto the processional path or nervously holding a ring. Little children are indispensible parts of any wedding party, and it's particularly important to include youngsters if the bride or groom already have children; including them in the festivities will help them better adjust to the new marriage status.

And let's face it: it gives children a chance to dress up in something fun and fancy and show off in front of a lot of people. Here are some of my favorite little kids from recent weddings; click on each picture to see more photos from the weddings themselves.

Thanks to 100 Layer Cake for their beautiful photographs, posts, and wedding and event inspiration. 100 Layer Cake is a unique, comprehensive wedding and event planning resource for and by thoughtful, crafty modern women. Their vendors, projects, weddings, resources, sponsors, and marketplace are hand-picked and thoroughly researched with the hope that every single one is a truly unique addition to both your wedding and your planning process. Visit the 100 Layer Cake website today.

If you're interested in learning more about wedding planning, we encourage you to explore the Sheffield School, New York, NY. Sheffield began as an Interior Design school in 1985, and then expanded our course offerings to train people in other design-related fields, including Feng Shui, Wedding and Event Planning, and Jewelry Design. With thousands of active students and more than 50,000 graduates, Sheffield has trained more design professionals than any school in the world.

Request a free Sheffield School catalog describing our distance education courses.

Subscribe to the Sheffield Designer newsletter.

5 Favorite Wedding Reception Settings

What I love about memorable wedding venues is that they can be simple locations, like an outdoor space under a huge tree. The top photo shows a country wedding, and the venue matches the wedding themes perfectly, right down to the cowboy boots that the bride and bridesmaids wore. I've selected other great wedding reception photos, too, and you can click on each one of them to see more photos from each wedding. 

 

Thanks to 100 Layer Cake for their beautiful photographs, posts, and wedding and event inspiration. 100 Layer Cake is a unique, comprehensive wedding and event planning resource for and by thoughtful, crafty modern women. Their vendors, projects, weddings, resources, sponsors, and marketplace are hand-picked and thoroughly researched with the hope that every single one is a truly unique addition to both your wedding and your planning process. Visit the 100 Layer Cake website today.

If you're interested in learning more about wedding planning, we encourage you to explore the Sheffield School, New York, NY. Sheffield began as an Interior Design school in 1985, and then expanded our course offerings to train people in other design-related fields, including Feng Shui, Wedding and Event Planning, and Jewelry Design. With thousands of active students and more than 50,000 graduates, Sheffield has trained more design professionals than any school in the world.

Request a free Sheffield School catalog describing our distance education courses.

Subscribe to the Sheffield Designer newsletter.

5 Favorite Real-Life Wedding Dresses

Front and back views of dress by bcbg

Bridal fashions always look one way on professional models when the seasonal collections first debut, but sometimes they fall flat when worn by real brides. I picked five wonderful wedding gowns that passed the real-life "looks great" test.

Front and back views of dress by Mara Hoffman

Which one is your favorite? (Click on each photo to see more scenes from the bride's wedding day.)

Dress by Justin Alexander

Dress by Vera Wang

Dress by The Sample Rack
 

Thanks to 100 Layer Cake for their beautiful photographs, posts, and wedding and event inspiration. 100 Layer Cake is a unique, comprehensive wedding and event planning resource for and by thoughtful, crafty modern women. Their vendors, projects, weddings, resources, sponsors, and marketplace are hand-picked and thoroughly researched with the hope that every single one is a truly unique addition to both your wedding and your planning process. Visit the 100 Layer Cake website today.

If you're interested in learning more about wedding planning, we encourage you to explore the Sheffield School, New York, NY. Sheffield began as an Interior Design school in 1985, and then expanded our course offerings to train people in other design-related fields, including Feng Shui, Wedding and Event Planning, and Jewelry Design. With thousands of active students and more than 50,000 graduates, Sheffield has trained more design professionals than any school in the world.

Request a free Sheffield School catalog describing our distance education courses.

Subscribe to the Sheffield Designer newsletter.

Perfect Fall Wedding Color Palette - Indian Summer

Recently Antiquaria Vintage Registry captured mid-summer perfectly with the colors in this meadow tabletop inspiration board. Today the color palette gets softer, a little more romantic and fall-like with the addition of blush and dusty rose. Fall brides, if you haven’t already picked out your colors, this is a great start if you want to avoid the deep colors that often come with autumn.

Don’t know about you guys, but we’re so ready for fall and this inspiration board has us excited for all the pretty fall weddings we’ll be seeing in the coming months. It’s also the perfect reminder that we’ve got just four days left of summer before the official start of fall says hello this weekend!

top left: Jose Villa / top right: Rug from Charley’s Navajo Rugs / middle left: Bliss and Chic Photography / middle right: Jose Villa

place setting: Kelly of Studio Austin Weddings

Thanks to 100 Layer Cake for their beautiful photographs, posts, and wedding and event inspiration. 100 Layer Cake is a unique, comprehensive wedding and event planning resource for and by thoughtful, crafty modern women. Their vendors, projects, weddings, resources, sponsors, and marketplace are hand-picked and thoroughly researched with the hope that every single one is a truly unique addition to both your wedding and your planning process. Visit the 100 Layer Cake website today.

If you're interested in learning more about wedding planning, we encourage you to explore the Sheffield School, New York, NY. Sheffield began as an Interior Design school in 1985, and then expanded our course offerings to train people in other design-related fields, including Feng Shui, Wedding and Event Planning, and Jewelry Design. With thousands of active students and more than 50,000 graduates, Sheffield has trained more design professionals than any school in the world.

Request a free Sheffield School catalog describing our distance education courses.

Subscribe to the Sheffield Designer newsletter.