An Octopus's Garden......Party

Way, way back in the blogging day, I mentioned that my very first idea for the theme and style of our wedding was a pink-and-green garden party. When the botanical garden venue I loved turned out to be way too expensive, that idea quickly went out the window, and I moved on to new plans.

But MOH/Sister Lauren and Bridesmaid Cousin/Katie remembered my first love, and over the weekend, they threw me.....







a pink-and-green, garden party bridal shower!

Can you believe it?? I was so surprised and touched at how they took the idea and ran with it!



I didn't take any pictures of the food because I was too busy eating it, but it was delicious and plentiful. We had a fruit platter, cute little tea sandwiches, a few different types of salads, and lots of other snack-type things. In another sweet gesture, Mom Octopus brought up bottles of delicious riesling from my beloved homeland, the Finger Lakes wine country (holla, Miss Locket!), and Bridesmaid/Cousin Katie whipped up a slammin' batch of sangria (seriously, it was ridic, PM me if you want the recipe).

Check out the cuteness we had for dessert:



Thematically-appropriate cupcakes, mini-pastries, and oh yeah, those would be hollowed-out strawberries filled with cheesecake filling and drizzled with hot fudge. Not telling you how many I ate.

After we ate, we played Jeopardy!


Check out that board, lovingly crafted by MOH/Sister Lauren.

Now, if you recall, this shower took place in my mom's hometown, and the invitees consisted of my mom's sisters, my cousins, and a few of my mom's old friends. My mom's family is a rowdy bunch, and our game of bridal shower Jeopardy quickly turned into quite a ruckus.



They were competing for this bouquet of glass flowers, also brought up from my hometown by Mom Octopus, and they were bloodthirsty.



The game included quite a bit of screaming, swearing, and mildly inappropriate answer-giving.


Question: What is Mr. Octopus's favorite reading material?
Aunt Cathy: Ooh! Ooh! Porn!
Cousin Cailin: Aunt Cathy, that's not reading material. What's it going to say? Once upon a time, a lady came to the door.....
Eventual correct answer, from Aunt Margie: Comic books.




Cousin Meghan, stumped by a question about the bridal party.


Made up for it by screaming random guesses louder than anyone else, though.

I also laughed wildly at the answers to the 100-point question under The Bride category: "What is Miss Octopus's favorite activity?" My family shrieked out in unison, "READING!!!" But they were wrong! Aunt Ellen came up with the right response after a few tries. What is, 'laying on the couch', Lauren Trebek?


Don't count my elderly grandmother out of the game. Look how enthusiastically she's raising her hand (and, although you can't hear her, YELLING), despite not knowing ANY of the answers! What a competitor.

Then, I opened the extremely generous gifts my family had brought. Not pictured here: one of the gifts brought my extraordinarily sassy and irreverent grandmother. I will give you a hint. The box was covered in notes written in her crazy chicken-scratch handwriting: BEWARE! Too hot to handle! This is what I wore on my HOT night! (?!?!). Inside was something very lacy, silky, see-through, and red, and because that wasn't embarrassing enough, two strategically-placed oranges. And, as she gleefully informed the entire party, no pants! I still cannot believe she actually had the stones to enter Frederick's of Hollywood, by her eighty-two-year-old self, and purchase it. On the other hand, I don't know why I allow anything she does, ever, to surprise me, so there you go.


I am now the proud owner of a gravy boat!


A surprise from Aunt Ellen: a Pampered Chef pitcher with a stirrer so your juice doesn't separate!


"EEeeee! I hope there's a down comforter in here....!" (There was.)


BM/Cousin Katie begins to construct a ribbon bouquet....


....while MOH/Sister Lauren keeps a detailed gift record.

At the end of the party, MOH/Sister Lauren and BM/Cousin Katie handed out the favors, which were another incredibly cute and thoughtful little touch: chocolate buttercream truffles from my very favorite chocolate shop evaahhh (Burdick's in Harvard Square, aka PARADISE). But not only were they delicious.....



....they were shaped like BEES, in a little reference to my current status as a blogger for this very website!



LITTLE ALMOND WINGS! I could have died.

Also, I want to mention that I must be on some kind of psychic wavelength with MOH/Sister Lauren and BM/Cousin Katie, because I didn't know a single thing about the party plans, yet chose these pink-and-green, garden-themed necklaces for them as shower hostess gifts...





as well as mouse-shaped truffles from Burdick's (the same place they bought the bee-shaped favors). In fact, Katie (who also lives in Boston) picked up the chocolate bees all of fifteen minutes after I went in to buy the chocolate mice. Wouldn't that have been an odd run-in to try to explain to each other?

It was an incredibly beautiful party and a really fun afternoon, and I felt so totally grateful and flattered by how carefully they thought about and planned each little detail to be something that I would notice and enjoy. On top of that, my Aunt Cathy and Uncle George (BM/Cousin Katie's parents, whose backyard was the party site) worked their tails off prepping their yard to host us all, and Aunt Cathy and Katie made virtually all of the food themselves, from scratch. A lot of hard work and planning went into making this shower come together, and I am so, so lucky to be part of a family who loves me so obviously and so much.


The bride and mother-of.



Did you have any special or personal details included in your bridal shower?