Just before Thanksgiving, I co-hosted a high tea baby shower at Hotel Bel Aire and the holidays got in the way of me sharing how lovely it was! This was a small shower for a second baby, so the mother-to-be wanted something intimate at a restaurant…which was a strange new world for a DIY party gal like myself! I was put in charge of invitations, favors, and simply making the table more personal. It has been a long time since I threw a small party, so being able to spend a little more money and time on these things was a nice change. Here’s the intimate tea shower round-up:
For the invitation, I printed an “S” in gray on vellum and machine stitched it to a floral kaleidoscope image I created from some royalty free clip art. I mounted it onto a 6 x 9 gray flat card from Paper Source.
I printed the back of the invitation on a high quality matte photo paper to make the colors pop and also mounted that to the gray flat card. Using this layering and mounting technique allows you to achieve a higher quality invitation weight and feel with your home printer.
I bought a teapot, creamer and sugar bowl from World Market for the base of the centerpiece. Clementine Floral Works created a stunning, wild arrangement in the three pieces and I topped it off with a glittery “S” for a little visual height.
I tied place setting cards onto the restaurant’s white napkins to make it feel more like an event and I used waterslide decals to make a monogrammed mug for each guest. The mugs were filled with toile printed cookies to round out the tea party theme!
These are the sugar cookies I made for the favors. You can buy printed and cut edible rice paper wafers from Queen of Tarts Cakes and apply them to royal icing with a little light corn syrup. Really simple but so impressive looking!
I can take no credit for this beautiful sight…this is the savory course for the high tea at Hotel Bel Aire. Delish.
I ate the scones too quickly to take a photo, but this is the dessert platter AFTER those wonderful scones. After the dainty little guests picked one or two each, I ate the rest of the plate. Just so we didn’t waste anything. I also class-less-ly took a doggie bag home to my husband! You can take the girl out of the trailer park…
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