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

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~

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

~ 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.

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.

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.

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!

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!