Kathleen’s Travel Cafe, Breakfast and Coffee Bridal Shower

Oh man have I been excited to post about Kathleen’s amazing shower. Down to the smallest detail, I loved every little bit of it!

And it was quite a combination of decorations starting with quite a few DIYs, Amie’s upcoming wedding (thanks again Amie!), my travel themed living room, the Rooftop BBQ trailer (recognize that chalkboard above?), and even a potato sack from Lauren’s Central Park shower (see that “coffee bean” sack above?)!

Let’s start with the invitation though, shall we? While driving home from the hospital on the day Parker was born, Lauren (Kathleen’s wonderful matron of honor) and I were brainstorming about shower decoration possibilities. We had long ago settled on a travel cafe theme and with the spark of the idea of a muffin and coffee mug sitting on top of a suitcase, the invitation came to be.

Funnily enough, when talking with the bride about her wedding invitations, we went with the tall and slender business size for those as well!

And speaking of the bride… look how beautiful she looked the day of her shower!

Okay, back to the details of the shower. Our bride, loves to travel. She studied abroad in both Jerusalem and Germany while traveling to Ireland and a few other European countries as well. And not only does she love travel, she is fueled by coffee. Literally.

The shower was held at our church office. It really was the perfect location, not only does it have a coffee bar, but it is also beautifully decorated with travel inspired elements and worked great as a cafe!

We served up Kathleen’s favorite coffee brand, Intelligentsia. As well as DeJongs chocolate milk, a local dairy favorite, and a variety of juices.

Lauren even had the idea to create custom labels for our to-go cups! And I was happy to oblige with a custom graphic that said “Love is Brewing” that we also applied to the potato sack turned coffee bean bag as seen in that first photo.

Coffee Bean Favors and Mug Guest Book

For our favors, we stocked up on quite a few pounds of chocolate covered coffee beans from none other than Winco! That was a fun shopping trip for Lauren and me! 🙂

We then bagged them and attached a tag with a clothespin, looking somewhat like a bag of coffee beans from the store.

On our entry table, we also had the counting jar for the first game of the day. Count the coffee beans, I think the grand total was 1,800?!

Our guest book were two mugs that were signed with a permanent marker and then baked to last the bride through many a cup of coffee. Thanks to one of Kathleen’s favorite blogs, A Beautiful Mess, for the idea!

Waffle and Breakfast Bar

Breakfast was served to include a variety of quiches, muffins, and fruit; as well as a waffle bar with more toppings than your stomach could ever want!

Succulent Centerpieces

Our centerpieces were another genius idea of Lauren’s, a succulent potted in a giant colored mug sitting atop a stack of books! We used these mug planters as game prizes… and I even made it home with two as well

Donut Cake!

This was probably my favorite table of the day! We used one of my suitcases, opened up, displaying a cake stand atop a stack of books, piled high with a bakers dozen of donuts! The table also included some globes, photos of the happy couple, and of course some more succulent filled mugs.

You may even recognize that cake stand from Grayson’s party! It’s sure come in handy, thanks Jamie!

And our last set up from the shower was the backdrop for the bride to open her presents.

We used Jessica’s photo backdrop equipment to hang Jamie’s yellow blanket. Then we made a few banners, a fringe banner (DIY link here) and a chevron pendant banner (chevron ribbon can be found at Hobby Lobby along with the stencils).

 

Unique Bridal Shower Game: Pin the Beard on the Groom!

And of course we had a very Kathleen-ish game. Her fiance has quite the infamous beard, one of the qualities in a man Kathleen had always hoped and dreamed of.

So of course we had to play “Pin the Beard on Allan” game. More thanks to A Beautiful Mess on the engineer prints at Staples!

Invitation Details

Here are some additional close ups of the invitation which is for sale in my Etsy shop! I just adore how it came out, from the striped edge to the pops of yellow!