Keep Calm and...Throw a Budget Friendly Wedding Shower!

The wedding shower. The party that everyone remembers. So why did I decide to give one when I had a choice? Well... About a month ago, I decided that I should give a wedding shower for my church's youth director. It was the least I could do for a guy who has done countless things for my church. I mean Pinterest makes party planning seem really easy right? Wrong. I found myself a little over my head. Who wants to spend $100 on just cake? Not me. So, here are my tips on really giving a low budget wedding shower that is not unmanageable.

Here's the finished dessert table. We were in the church fellowship hall, so it's not stunning, but it did it's job! The shower also included a main dinner, but that was in the kitchen. Everyone just wants to see the desserts right?

On a second table, I had all the gifts. If you can see the sign, it's an old whiteboard covered in tissue paper. I bordered it with dollar store ribbon, and then printed off all of their photos together in black and white to give it a more formal look. This was one of the party favorites and it cost 2$ max! Yay!

Here's some of the food. I just had pretzels and nuts out, nothing special there, but they provide easy, cheap snacks.

I used an old chalkboard and ribbon to create the Wedding Countdown! The couple had no idea how soon the wedding was! This served as a cute reminder and decoration. 2 for 1? Yay again! Oh and can you tell purple was her favorite color?

Here's a far away view of the dessert table. The tissue paper flowers I made on my own! You can get a tutorial here, but I just used scissors to cut the edges of the tissue paper and spare wire from around the house.

The little white cookies on the silver platter are known as Mexican Wedding Cookies, so they fit the occasion perfectly. I don't want to post too much about these cookies because I'll be posting a recipe soon, hint hint! All I can say is they are light and fluffy and oh so good!

I made mini vanilla cupcakes with purple frosting and sprinkles. They were just from a regular ol' cake mix, but I had quite a few people ask for my recipe. We forget about the cake aisle sometimes don't we?

Sam's Club has AMAZING hershey brownies in a big box of four, and at this shower, we needed every box. I just popped the mix into the oven for around 20 and sprinkled purple sprinkles onto to make them seem somewhat elegant. Bam, easy dessert done.

For a cheap yet pretty dessert, dip pretzels in chocolate. I dyed some of the chocolate lavender, but it wasn't working too well. The chocolate got too thick. If you leave the chocolate white and just add color sprinkles, the pretzels still look really tasty. Everyone at the party was excited about the sprinkles! Ah, childhood memory lane...

For the base of this giant marshmallow stand, I used floral foam from Walmart (it cost around $5) and wrapped it in tissue paper and tied it off with extra ribbon. I put marshmallows on lollipop sticks (You can get them at Michaels or any craft store!), then dipped them into store bought block chocolate. I stuck them into the floral foam and sprinkled them before the chocolate cooled. I actually didn't have many drips, and it took around 10 minutes to make all 4 blocks.

Well, good luck and may God bless you if you are planning something to this extent. I hope I provided some somewhat useful ideas for you!