Here Comes the Bride

Noah's mom and Aunt K asked me about a bridal shower for Caelan, so I decided to ask Caelan what she thought. "What's a bridal shower?" was her response. Being the first in her crowd to experience the wedding traditions, I explained, "Well, it's when you invite your closest friends and family and you have a girly couple of hours eating cute food and dressing up a little and opening presents." She immediately said, "Yes, I want a bridal shower!" Ha! 

She attended Aunt K's luau a couple years ago, but didn't realize that was a shower, given the presence of the guys and the large scale of the event. Actually, several of the younger girls who were invited this weekend had never attended a bridal shower either, and asked their moms, "What will we do there? What happens during a bridal shower?" A bit of tradition training for the next round of future brides . . . including the pastor (who will perform the marriage ceremony for Caelan and Noah)'s three-year-old, who decided she wants a bridal shower now, because she wants some mixing bowls, too! Lol! Too cute!

The day before the shower, my friend Sydney brought her two little girls over to help me food prep. My goal was to have some cream cheese mint making assistance. Her 2.5-year-old selected the colors for the mints and with her 9-mo.-old strapped to her front, Syd flew through the mint making (once we got the powdered sugar ratio figured out :) I was super grateful for her help! I spent most of the rest of the day washing fruit, cutting ham, pickles, and cheese, and making indoors smores (don't stack them, marshmallow creme melts--even in the fridge :)

On bridal shower morning, I continued loading up the necessities while Caelan worked on the flower arrangements she'd planned. Once everything was ready, we packed ourselves into the van and drove out to the Acres. To our surprise, Noah's mom and sisters were already there setting up the welcome table! To my even bigger surprise, K had transformed her house into a pretty, pink, shimmery bridal shower venue :) It was lovely!

My helpers started arriving just after noon, including Gabby who made the prettiest sign for photos with the bride-to-be! My hope is to print individual pics to include in thank you notes for those who attended, a little keepsake :) 

Syd and Jo worked on my million kebob ideas--fruit kebobs, Cuban sandwich kebobs, Caprese salad kebobs . . . and then my twin cousins arrived with a box of homemade lemon, chocolate, and carrot cupcakes wrapped in pretty floral paper holders. K found rose gold cupcake toppers, so Linda added those as she arranged the sweets on the counter. K made fancy egg salad and turkey sandwiches and a beautiful veggie tray--everything was just so colorful and special!

When all the guests arrived, K took the lead and welcomed everyone then led us in prayer for the event and for the food. Time flew by so quickly, Noah's mom looked at me and said, "We should probably start the games!" One game was to guess how many kisses were in a jar, the winner got lots of kisses (the chocolate kind :) Another had each guest pick up a jeweled toy ring. If they caught anyone saying "wedding" or "bride" they could claim the sayer's ring. The person with the most rings at the end of the game, won a prize! The little girls loved this game :) My NGF's littlest came up to me and said, "What does that thing Caelan is wearing say on it?" I caught on to her plan and said, "Something about 'to be'." I got a groan and then laughed and gave up my ring anyway :) 

Another game was a list of questions about how well everyone knew Caelan . . . one of the questions was, "When is the wedding?" Caelan read this aloud, and then a little girl came up afterwards, stuck out her hand, and said, "You said wedding." Ha! We later got a picture of our pastor's daughter with five rings on each finger of each hand and the caption, "Came home from the bridal shower looking like Tom Brady, over here!" Too cute! (Also, we, as a family, agreed that Caelan got a few of the questions about herself wrong; as did Noah who, later that evening, awarded himself bonus points when Caelan figured out he was correct about a numerical answer that she for sure got wrong--no surprise there; Noah knows numbers! :)

Where did Noah propose? "Was it on one knee???" my cousin, Laura asked. "Possibly in the woods or near an open field?" Linda grabbed her paper and said, "I'm crossing that off, those are two completely different places." Those girls make me giggle!

Gift opening happened next, with the little girls taking turns handing Caelan presents. Gabby wrote down the names of the givers and what Caelan received. My NGF's youngest absolutely loves to organize anything and everything, so she put herself in charge of stacking all of the opened gifts neatly in the corner. So helpful!

Beautiful presentation, as always, by my NGF :)

My gift to Caelan was a complete Narnia box set of books and a few of her Princess favorites from childhood . . . it's time to start building her own library 💕

Noah's mom told his dad to pick out something manly from the gift registry as his gift to Caelan at the shower . . . he picked this meat tenderizer (Noah uses ours ALL the time when he's cooking :) A friend captured this picture of Caelan looking like she's got a Marvel movie prop in her hand, lol!

Caelan received so many beautiful and practical gifts! She told me afterwards that she was a little overwhelmed by it--people's generosity in helping them gather the things they need to start filling their future apartment; things to cook food in and then wash the dishes up afterwards, basics! One of the guests, fondly known as Dodo (because she's a one-of-a-kind grandma to her grandkiddos), told Caelan that after she shopped for Caelan off the registry, she was so impressed with Caelan's selections that she did some shopping for herself, too! Love it :)

Throughout the shower, guests had an opportunity to add a line of prayer to a "prayer board" idea I had. You know how someone starts a story and then the next person adds a line, and then at the end you read the words altogether and see where the story goes? But how cool to have a prayer, written by your family and friends, at the beginning of your marriage that you can read over and over as the years go by? So, that's what everyone did (in lieu of a guestbook) . . . they asked God for blessings over Caelan and Noah, and at the end of the bridal shower, we bowed our heads in prayer and I read their words over the bride-to-be. It turned out beautifully!

As guests prepared to leave, we took some last-minute frame photos and the little girls gleefully stuffed their bags with rings and jeweled pens :) Our clean-up crew was quick, especially when my brother and M returned home and could move tables and chairs and heavy boxes of gifts (more my brother than the five-year-old on those tasks ;) The van was bursting with boxes and gifts and leftovers! K sent home the remaining delicious sandwiches she'd made for the party . . . and Graysen ate two bags of them and the rest of the fruit kebobs before Caelan and I got the kitchen put back together at home. The remaining large bag of sandwiches disappeared when Buck and Brennen arrived home from work--and they won't know until they read this that those were the gluten free ones! I still have some mints left, and my out-of-state friends have requested I freeze these and save them for this summer when they all arrive for the wedding (I should really go do that!)

We missed the grandmas and our relatives who couldn't be there for the shower, but we know they were thinking about Caelan and her special day, and she has reminders of their love stacked up in the classroom right now :) Here are a couple of videos of grandma gift openings . . .

I'm not sure why that second video cuts out before the actual opening, but it's the cute blue bowls in the picture above :) Also, it's the only video I have that sweeps the crowd, so you can see the room and who all was there!

When we arrived home, Caelan found this sweet treat at her place at the table--a bridal shower gift from Brennen. Awwww!!! 😍