Reception: Erin & Tony's Wedding Reception

The bride and the groom....they were married in Florida and had their reception after they returned from their honeymoon.

The bride loves Gerbera Daisies so that was the primary flower.

The bride and her maids.

The head table fully decorated. Her bridesmaid's wore yellow dresses as you can see above and the bride asked that the reception be full of color - dark pink, orange, lime green and yellow. The backdrop was a wall of lights covered with yellow organza draped with dark pink satin. The table was draped in yellow organza and lined with buckets of flowers, white candles, and lots of shells.

The theme of the reception was the "Beach" since they were married on a beach. So I used a lot of sea shells, starfish & sand dollars and of course how can you do a beach theme without sand.
I saw these cute boxes filled with sand and candles on an online site but they were 1) extremely pricey and 2) the wrong size for a round table. So I made a quick trip to Home Depot and with the help of Dad, we built my version of the sand box.

....very,very happy with the way these turned out - tabletop sand boxes filled with sand, candles and shells! Can't wait to use them again.


I wanted to do a bucket of flowers but couldn't find silver metal buckets that I liked. I did however find red ones, unfortunately red wasn't one of the wedding colors. So I had to spray paint them. Love the Hammered Metal paint from Rust-Oleum.

.....and this is what they turned out like.

The three table designs:

The wedding cake, isn't it adorable!

Thanks for allowing me to decorate your reception!
Hope you have a wonderful life together.

Bridal Shower

I helped decorated my cousin's bridal shower earlier today.

Her primary color is orange accented with pink (fushia), lime green, and 'pool' blue. I used potted orange gerbera's and they became the door prizes for the guests. Above is my present to her - an 11x14 thin canvas wrap from their photo session with me last week.
Below are a few pics of the table decorations (my part of the shower).

Unfortunately when it stops raining I'll have to plant all of those pink and orange flowers.

Jamie & Chad's Wedding

This is my suv on the way over to the reception hall....I had a few flowers in there! I used varying shades of pink and white for the flowers. This was about 1/2 of the flowers - they wouldn't all fit in my vehicle at one time.

The men wore grey pin striped tuxes and the bridesmaids were in pink.

The were places set for 320 guests. The bride wanted the tables in the palest pink that I could find so I used pale pink organza overlays on top of white linens. We had two different short centerpieces.






The wedding and reception were at the same venue. The alter/ceremony was set on the stage for the wedding. I made a floral aisle that is later used in front of the head table.





After the wedding ceremony was complete and the formal family pictures were taken, I moved the fully decorated head tables that were hidden behind the backdrop around in front of the ceremony background, moved the floral aisle in front of the head tables and plugged in all of the lights. The crowd literally cheered when I plugged the lights in. I'll admit it was pretty cool.....



The cake table

Grandma's 80th Birthday Party

We threw a party in my back yard for my Grandmother's 80th birthday. Due to the mass amounts of family traveling from out of state (Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, Texas, California), keeping the party a surprise just wasn't possible. What we did keep from her was the theme. She has a "thing" for flamingo's - I'm not saying it's a good thing but it grew into a constant source of ribbing and luckily she takes jokes well. We coordinated the entire party around flamingo's without her knowing anything about it!!!

My grandfather died 2 months after the "baby" of the family was born, leaving my Grandmother to raise 11 children by herself. All 11 children have children and some of them have children. Needless to say there are a LOT of us when we all get together (just over 100!). 168 family members and friends turned out to celebrate my Grandmother's 80th birthday. All four of her siblings along with two of my grandfather's sibling were present along with most of her children, grandchildren and great grandkids! I wish I had so many more pictures from the day, somehow the day FLEW by - one minute we were waiting for Grandma and the next it was 9pm (and we still had a yard full of people).

The birthday invitation is handmade from Stampin' Up products. The glitter didn't show up well in the scan. In fact the card looks sooooo much better in real life.

The Birthday Girl!!!

Several Aunts, Uncles and cousins came over to help raise the two tents in the back yard.

We smoked 250 chicken halves.....thanks so much to the men who "offered" to do the grilling.

My Aunt made this cake - isn't it awesome and it's three dimensional!





I designed tee shirts to celebrate the event. I had them printed on bright pink, light pink and black for all the guys afraid to wear pink. MAS are my grandmothers initials. There were 125 people in the custom designed t's that day!

I also made name tags - it's not like my family is small and people do tend to get us all confused.

My Aunts and cousin's provided all the the sides. We'd thought about catering the event, but decided that we're just too good of cooks to have someone else fix our dinner!! hehehe
Of course Grandma had to make her famous potato salad herself.

I spent 2 months re-landscaping the backyard in all PINK.

The theme.....



To help people keep track of the cups and not go through several hundred, I made tags to place on everyone's flamingo glass so they'd know which one is theirs. They got to keep their cup as a suvenior!

The centerpieces....

A quates competition is a tradion in our family. It's a cross between horse shoes and washers - east coast thing. The winners of the competition were Michael & Todd.



The little kids wishing they'd be allowed to play.....