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11 Magnolia Lane

Sharing our easy DIYs, decorating, entertaining and more!

Spring Entertaining Ideas {Bridal/Baby Shower/Girls Night}

April 25, 2014 By Amy 2 Comments

This Post Contains Affiliate Links

879 shares

Easy tips from a  professional event planner to make your parties, events, showers and holidays feel more special and elegant.

Spring seems to bring a new round of parties–birthday, baby showers and of course, bridal showers to get excited about. And, since one of our favorite things here at 11 Magnolia Lane to do is throw a party, we thought we’d share some of our favorite spring entertaining ideas from some of our most memorable events and our co-blogger Terry is a professional event planner so we can even claim to have an expert around these parts!

~I N V I T A T I O N S~

invitations

Every great event starts with a nice invitation. We did a post HERE on how to elegantly DIY invitations. You can also use online services such as Evite or Paperless Post as well.

~ D E C O R ~

On to my favorite part…once you know where you are hosting, and how many guests to expect you can focus on the decor. The ideas and inspiration for affordable decor via Pinterest are endless these days. Here are some ways we’ve jazzed up event decor to make it feel special.

It adds so much to give guests a place to sit and eat instead of having a juggling a plate on their lap. If you can’t come up with enough tables and chairs on your own you can rent them fairly inexpensively.

inside-rental-tent-diy-poof

For this baby shower, the decor looked amazing but it was fairly easy to pull together. The tissue paper poofs and IKEA curtains were just hung on a standard 10×10 Easy Up Tent. If you don’t have one on hand {available here for a good price}, they are an affordable rental and are a necessity for hot summer days. The green and white poofs are a fun touch and distract from the less-than-lovely metal frame under the tent. The poofs are easy to make, see HERE.

I think children’s events go more smoothly when they have a place to sit down. For my daughter’s Lalaloopsy birthday party the rental fee for a large table and additional chairs was nominal (especially since we picked it up ourselves and saved the delivery fee) and each young guest enjoyed having seat of their own.

lalaloopsy-table-rentals

You can even rent kid sized chairs, like these friends did for their daughter’s butterfly first birthday party.

kids table

The hanging flower balls to decorate the inside of the tent were made from styrofoam balls with craft “faux” flowers glued on, aren’t they adorable?

Rental companies also provide glassware and china for a nominal fee (in most cases you don’t have to clean it either, a huge plus!) that way you have a pretty table and can offer the same to everyone.

rental glassware

Centerpieces can add up quickly in cost. For this Baby Shower below, we used grocery store (Wegman’s) flowers–hydrangeas, white roses in simple silver julep cups and jazzed them up with rhinestone “tiaras” for our Queen Bee theme.

2flower-centerpiece-hydrangea-with-tiara

Another simple touch is to have a menu card on the table. That way guests know what to expect (especially those dealing with food allergies), it’s a little detail which makes the event feel special. You can just type something on your computer, print on cardstock and make a table tent. In the picture below, I just used a monogrammed sticker with the bride’s initial and stuck it to the centerpiece to personalize the table a bit more. Fresh roses in a julep cup (we had several down a long table) are an easy, affordable centerpiece.

menu card

An inexpensive frame holds an elegant menu for a larger buffet table as Terry did for her son’s Royal First Birthday.

28-Edxd4Tb72AqG21rzEJzC2zZkuullYY9huMR7dg681Hc

Or for a more casual look, you can use DIY chalkboards like Christy did below.

chalkboard-label-sweets

~ F A V O R S ~

I love the thought of providing a favor as a parting gift. It doesn’t have to be expensive or time-consuming, like these cute monogrammed soaps I created for my Mom’s birthday tea last year.

favor in cup

For Terry’s Queen Bee Baby Shower my creative co-hostesses came up with these darling honey pots {via ETSY} to send home with the guests.

baby shower honey pot favors

Or you can DIY something easy, I went a very simple route for my Makeovers &

Margarita party with small cello bags filled with small candy as below.

favors

Or, this was a creative solution Terry provided at this baby shower, instead of a favor for each guest she had a tree planted in honor of the baby. How sweet!

FAvor

So, what fun spring events do you have planned? You can see even more of our inspiration under our “Entertaining” category HERE or on our Pinterest Board HERE.

Happy Spring!

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{affiliate links in this post are included for your convenience, see our disclosure policy here}

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Filed Under: Entertaining/Events Tagged With: entertaining, Events

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Pat Havranek says

    February 19, 2017 at 6:03 pm

    Where did you purchase the black fabric with white dots you are using for the table runner?
    I’ve been looking all overs for some.
    Thank you for your help,
    Pat

    Reply
    • Amy says

      February 24, 2017 at 2:01 pm

      Hi Pat–that party was almost 5 years ago but I believe that the fabric just came from the local Fabric store, JoAnns. They have a good selection of basic prints, also online fabric stores like Online Fabric Store might be able to help you! Thanks,
      Amy

      Reply

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  • MEET CHRISTY & AMY
    • IF YOU’RE NEW HERE…
    • WORK WITH US
    • 11 MAGNOLIA LANE 101
    • DISCLOSURE + PRIVACY (the fine print)
    • BEST OF 11 MAGNOLIA LANE
    • Back
  • TOUR OUR HOMES
    • TOUR OUR HOMES
    • CHRISTY’S MAGNOLIA COTTAGE
    • CHRISTY’S MCC HOUSE
    • AMY’S NEW HOME BUILD
    • HOLIDAY HOME TOUR SERIES
    • SPRING HOME TOUR SERIES
    • Back
  • CELEBRATIONS
    • EVENTS + ENTERTAINING
    • GIFTS
    • HOLIDAYS
    • RECIPES
    • Back
  • HOME
    • CLEANING
    • DECORATING
    • ORGANIZING
    • ROOM BY ROOM
      • BATHROOMS
      • BEDROOMS
      • CLOSETS
      • CRAFT ROOMS + OFFICES
      • DINING ROOMS
      • KIDS’ ROOMS
      • KITCHENS
      • LAUNDRY ROOMS
      • LIVING + GREAT ROOMS
      • OTHER SPACES
      • PANTRIES
      • PLAYROOMS + BONUS ROOMS
      • PORCHES + OUTDOOR SPACES
      • Back
    • TIPS
    • Back
  • SHOP
    • SHOP OUR INSTAGRAM
    • SHOP OUR AMAZON STORE
    • FRIDAY FAVORITE FINDS
    • 11 ML ETSY SHOP
    • 11ML ORGANIZING SHOP
    • Back
  • PROJECTS
    • CRAFTS
    • DIY PROJECTS + TUTORIALS
    • FURNITURE
    • PRINTABLES
    • WINDOWS, DOORS, + WALLS
    • Back
  • LIFE
    • FRIDAY FREE FOR ALL
    • HEALTH
    • SIMPLY ON SUNDAY
    • TRAVEL
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879 shares