Party Planning: My Cousin's Wedding Shower {Part 1 - Invitations}

Hosting a shower for a friend or loved one before a wedding or a new baby's arrival can be a tad bit on the overwhelming side. Do you cook or have it catered? Use disposable plates & utensils or the real deal? Do you buy decorations? Or attempt the DIY trend - even if you aren't the craftiest individual in the world?

Earlier this year I was struck with some of those same questions. My cousin was getting married to her long time boyfriend in March. I hosted the shower at the end of February. Her only request was that it was a "high tea" type theme.

When I heard her desired "theme" my first thoughts…."Ummmm. OK."  I'm not a big tea drinker. I don't go to steeping rooms or teas. I'm a good ol' fashion coffee drinker (maybe a latte from time to time). So I did some heavy duty googling for tea themed showers. Here's the images that popped up as a result of my search….pink, pink roses, big hats, doilies….and did I mention PINK? That's not exactly what I had in mind…nor does it really fit my cousin's personality. She really didn't have any set colors of her wedding. But a deep purple and hints of red were to be used so I went with those colors as a starting point (vs. the pepto pink splashed all over my search results). I had to do some thinking of what other ideas could be incorporated in to this "tea" that would highlight my cousin's loves. Here's what I came up with:

1. Library & Reading: She's always had a love of reading and in particular libraries. She received her masters in Library Science & Academic Libraries.
2. Flowers/Nature/Gardening: She has a love for all three of those things. In fact, she's going to be doing organic gardening on her honeymoon throughout Europe this summer.
3. Her Colors: Deep Purple & hints of red
4. Her honeymoon destination: Europe

And I was determined to do as much DIY as possible. Part 1 of this Party Planning Series will be on the {simple} invitations:

INVITATIONS: 

I went to Hobby Lobby and got some toile-English countryside looking paper that had a natural brown print as well as a deep purple and made my own invitations. I downloaded some cute fonts from Fonts for Peas to use. (LOVE THAT WEBSITE). It was pretty simple - I printed the invitations on white card stock, distressed the edges with brown ink after I cut them to size, then attached it to the toile. Inside I also inserted a request for each person to contribute to a group gift for the bride using the same brown toile paper and added hints of a deep purple card stock. (More on that later). 

The invitations were simple…but made with love and turned out pretty good. I made about 20 invitations…I got the paper for the invites at Hobby Lobby in the scrapbook section. 12x12 sheets at $.59 a sheet. They were 1/2 off. I could fit about 2-3 invites per sheet of paper. I already had a ton of white card stock, printer ink and the font download was free. So the invitations for 20 people were less than $10! (The address & contact info has been shaded out for privacy reasons.)