Cruising Themed Bridal Shower

I threw a bridal shower for my niece Valerie this weekend on April 11.  She races boats

all over the U.S. for a hobby, but is an accountant for her living.  Since her wedding has

a nautical theme, I decided use a CRUISE theme for her shower.  We held it at my husband's office, since it has a large lobby and a kitchen, and a big conference room, and a coffee bar.  You get the idea.  She wanted a sit down luncheon and this let us have

plenty of tables at which to sit.  I used two of the 36" x 65" panels for the ship.

We had an arts and crafts activity, as this was something you would do on a cruise.  I saved brown paper grocery bags for months, so that there was one for each guest.  The idea was for each table's team to roll up the open end, decide as a group how to decorate them, then the whole winning table would win a prize.  My interior designer daughter and talented other daughter and niece, with a few other guests decided to break the rules and design a whole outfit for Valerie.  I thought it was inspiring, and she loved it.

Here she is with a few of her friends.  In the right hand picture, these two girls are wearing the hats from my table's group.  I thought they were quite stylish.

Please note in the first of these two photos, my sister Patty who decided to decorate her hat with things on the table, and not with their table's supplies.  She used paper napkins and my sister Terry's shawl, then continued drinking the white wine based SANGRIA.
I quite like the hats Terry and I created.

 The above photo shows one of the tables busy at work, along with the centerpiece and two of the banners of cities one would see on a cruise, Paris and Germany's Rhine district.

I especially loved this one.

 In this background you can see a Mexican beach town on the left, with London on the right.  You can also see one of the ship's Casino boards sitting on the table.

 Since Valerie loves her dog, I thought it would be fun to include dogs that represented each of the five countries on the posters in a couple of the games.  I own a big wheel that spins.  Each dogs leash matched a color on the betting board.  Each guest chose a dog (and color).  When their color came up on the spin, they moved a penny to the next box.
Everyone with the winning dog's color got a prize.  Since there were FOUR red boxes, but only two of each of the other colors, if it landed on red, Valerie had to answer a question the guests called out to her.  If anyone got bored during all of the present openings, they could earn a prize throwing loops into the dog bowl or around jars full of dog biscuits.
They did.

Since most cruises have some kind of skeet shooting, we adapted ours to shooting squirrels into a nest.  This is my daughter practicing at home.  She is a lot closer in order to get the photo.  I also read to the guests all about how squirrel habits can be compared to choosing the right groom.  It's funny what good habits these little rodents have.

You can see from the photos that we had lots of flowers.  I had an Eiffel tower and a flower bicycle on the buffet table.  My daughter made this arrangement for me.

You can see how big the office's lobby is in this picture.  These are the tables from the
office kitchen.  Some of our staff moved them forward for me.  Some of the husbands who came along (two hour trip for some) helped move them back.  Don't worry.  They spent the afternoon at my house watching the Master's and having "guy" time.

                                                      
                                                    

Above is the buffet table. I ordered from Chipolte catering.  I bought bamboo bowls online and we made burrito salad bowls.  They include the stands and sternos, along with serving spoons and all the fixings.

Second appearance of Sunshine Pole which labeled the drinks.  I made a Dreamsicle punch from cream soda, vanilla ice cream, orange sherbert, sprite, and a splash of orange soda.
I made white wine sangria and had a mimosa set-up with champagne.

The labels have a cruise ship with the words "Thank you for coming along on Valerie's Shower Cruise.  We've prepared something sweet for you from the galley."

We tied up each box I made with raffia.