Tea Party Dream Team

I feel like tea parties are one of my core competencies, so when my girl Amanda asked me to be her Main Lady for her upcoming nups and requested a fancy tea party shower I said, "Yes. Yes, I can do that." Ma P-P volunteered her ample baking services and bam: Tea Party Dream Team.

I spent many an hour on Pinterest gathering conceptuals for the decor and grub and curated a fête fit for a princess bride (which Amanda is, natch). Wanna hear all about it? Read on, dear reader!

THE NOSH:

Here is our menu in full:
-Marie Antoinette tea from Ladurée (thanks for sending it, Nick and Kelly!)
-Honey-lavender lemonade
-Roast beef and horseradish sandwiches
-Smoked salmon and herb butter sandwiches
-Cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches
-Deviled eggs with caviar
-Dates stuffed with goat cheese and hazelnuts
-Pistachio macarons with salted caramel sauce
-Thumbprint cookies with raspberry jalapeno jelly (a Ma P-P specialty)
-Raspberry rose meringues
-Lemon lavender shortbread
-Mexican piggy cookies
-Lemon curd in phyllo cups with candied violets (Ma P-P said it was the best curd she's ever made. I will cosign.)

The spread.

Raspberry rose meringues

Lemon curd in phyllo shells with candied violets and raspberries

THE PRETTIES:

I don't dabble much in the floral arts due to ye olde pollen-averse sniffer, but I went to the Minneapolis Farmer's Market yesterday with a wish and a prayer and left with 48 roses and some mums. I follow a professional florist on Instagram so I felt like I kind of knew what I was doing. Sort of. This was the end result:

I made colorful tissue poufs and a construction paper garland to add more pops of princess color. To make the former, I aligned eight sheets of tissue paper and accordion folded them into one-inch segments. I wrapped wire around the middle, and then snipped designs on the end. I then carefully separated each layer to fill out the pouf. (Here's a toot from The Martha if you want more explanation.) For the garland, I used my 2-inch circle punch to cut out various colors of construction paper, and then lay them out in a straight line. I ran a glue stick down the center of each, and then pressed a length of string atop the glue. After adding additional glue to the tops and bottoms of the circles, I added a second batch of circles to the first so that the string was between two circle layers.

Tissue poufs

Construction paper garland

THE FAVOR FAVES

I was noodling around on Crate and Barrel's website, and found pretty little tins of Wedding Tea! Could you imagine a more perfect favor? I got the favor bags and adorable pink polka dot ribbon at JoAnn Fabrics and added little bits of leftover tissue paper from the poufs. Boom.

THE GAMES:

I was most nervous about the entertainment portion of the afternoon, as shower games are notoriously awful. Even a Google search of "Bridal shower games that don't suck" returns a truly pitiful selection of blah. I did three games/activities, one of which was fun, one of which was meh, and one of which hit it out of the park.

Fun: Celebrity Couples Guessing Game. I wrote the names of famous historical, political and fictional lovers on notecards and taped them to the guests' backs. (Some examples: Santa and Mrs. Claus, Sampson and Delilah, Barack and Michelle Obama, Madame Butterfly and Pinkerton.) Each person had to ask yes or no questions to try to figure out who they were. The kicker: Amanda's card said, "Whatever I ask, say no." Ha! Hijinks. Hilarity. The ice was broken and a grand time was had by all.

Meh: I tried to create a version of Catchphrase using true-life Amanda facts. It was clunky. After three questions I somewhat smoothly transitioned to gift-opening by saying that Amanda won and her prize was to open presents.

Out of the Park: I sent Amanda's intended a questionnaire about their relationship for him to fill out. The goal was to ask her the same questions before hearing his version. We decided to up the ante a bit by having him film his responses, which were funny, sweet and touching. He even made the Scandanavian bride leak a little emotion out of her eyes. Impressive.

SUCCESS

Aside from a brief Freddy Freedom Run at the tail end of festivities (pun), everything went off without a hitch. Most importantly, Amanda wore a truly gigantic hat.