Margaritas and Monograms

My cousin and best friend, Caroline, is getting married this coming May. Last year, she was the maid of honor in my wedding, and this year the roles are reversed and I'm one of her matrons of honor (sounds so old...). It's been so exciting and it's hard to celebrate and do as much as I want to do from far away (she lives in South Carolina), but I've been able to be a part of a lot of things so far. A couple of months ago, our mutual good friend Liz, another of Caroline's maids of honor, reached out to myself and Kim, Caroline's college roommate and bridesmaid to see if we'd like to host a shower in honor of Caroline. I was super excited because Liz, Kim, Caroline and I used to all be roommates and a reunion was definitely in order. Of course, we all share a love of monograms, so it was instantly decided that needed to be the theme of the shower.

I've never been a bridesmaid before, let alone a maid of honor, so I've never hosted a shower. We've all been planning Caroline's bachelorette (more to come on that later), so I was finally getting the hang of things. When Liz mentioned the shower, I got really excited and visions of decorations and Pinterest inspirations danced in my head. We decided the theme would be "Monograms & Margaritas". Kim set us up with a secret Pinterest board, and we started posting ideas immediately.

Our "secret" Pinterest board - so the bride couldn't see our ideas!

We came up with a few decor ideas, food ideas, and more - and being the Google Docs lover I am, I started a Google doc and spreadsheet to keep track of our ideas and our budget.

All the sudden March 2 started getting closer and closer and we realized we needed to hurry up and get the invitations out. I designed the invitation and sent them out while Liz and Kim ran errands grabbing all the decor and food items back in Greenville. So helpful!

The invitation

Finally the weekend came, I made one last run to Party City for a few decor items I could fit in my carry on, printed out some other paper items I had created for the showers, and came home to finish some last-minute DIYs. I got really cute acrylic placecard holders, printed out blank mini-versions of the invitation, and planned on using a dry erase marker to write food labels on. $8 total!

Packing for Greenville - yes I fit it all!

More monograms!

After a bit of a long layover in New Jersey (because flying from DC to NJ to SC totally makes sense...), I finally arrived in Greenville at 1AM the night before the shower! Caroline picked me up and we decided we needed to hurry home and go straight to bed. Well, we like to talk... and hadn't seen each other since Christmas... so we ended up staying up until about 4AM. Oops! I had plans to eat breakfast with my in-laws the next morning, but I needed a couple more hours of sleep instead. (Oops!! Next time!)

The morning of the shower, Liz and I met at Kim's beautiful, new house to start getting ready for the party. We did a few last crafts, one of which was my favorite. We put cute duct tape around water bottles in place of a label (thanks Pinterest!). Then we headed to the venue to start setting up for the shower.

Cutest/easiest DIY ever

The venue was my absolute favorite part of the shower! Kim's sweet friend Mary Sims just started a business called Wedding101. It's a wedding planning venue where newly engaged brides can go, entirely for free, and get help finding and picking vendors for their wedding. Talk about a dream job! It's a new concept that recently opened in Nashville and Columbia, SC. Definitely check it out! So, we were able to use this gorgeous, already-decorated space for the shower.

Mexican-themed food and monogram cupcakes

Kim's photo wall

Monogram gifts!

The buckets I decorated and carried on the plane with me

Liz's cute idea: write down a date for the newlyweds

Funfetti and red velvet monogrammed mini-cupcakes

The margarita/daquiri bar

We set it up, the guests began to arrive, and we had a really fun time watching Caroline open all her gorgeous presents.

Welcome! 

The beautiful bride-to-be

Current and former roommates

Pretty girls at the pretty venue

Obviously Kim and I really liked this gift

This shower was so fun and easy to plan, mostly because I had two awesome co-shower-throwers (whatever it's called!) who did most of the heavy lifting since I was 500 miles away. Thanks so much girls, and WE LOVE YOU CC!

Fun times with fun girls

The hostesses and the bride-to-be