Earlier this week, I showed you the Rustic Bridal Shower that my sisters and I threw for our soon-to-be sister-in-law. I promised you more details and they have arrived. Because we can never talk too much about food, amiright?!
We had an entire meeting over what Bridal Shower food should be served. Okay, okay… we also talked about games and favors and such, but we all knew the meeting was just about the food.
A biscuit bar was pretty much a given at a rustic bridal shower. I tried for a waffle bar or just a bar, but we kept coming back to the biscuit bar.
I made a pecan praline ham, chopped up a smoked turkey breast using my mandoline, had a cheese tray (Havarti, Farmers, Sharp Cheddar and Smoked Gouda), and then various spreads (cranberry mustard, strawberry preserves, apricot chutney and a dijon mustard). And then some good ole fashioned, homemade southern biscuits!
And because there’s no such thing as too much cheese, my sister made up a cheese and cracker tray. The board is a homemade Christmas gift I made my sister a couple years ago. I followed Shanty to Chic’s instructions and it really could not have been easier!
We tried to stick with a color pallet of whites and wood with a few touches of green thrown in.
A friend of mine had these wood rounds that she let me borrow because friends are the bestest things ever! For a few of them, she had pieces of styrofoam for the stumps that she hot glued moss around to make it look natural. Keeping things at different heights is the key to a nice looking table!
Well, that and having everything in individual bowls. I found these plastic bowls at Dollar Tree… a 12-pack for $1!!! Note to self: GO.BUY.ALL.THE.BOWLS.
Seriously, they were the perfect size for individual servings of peach cobbler and small cranberry spinach salads.
The stand that the salads are on started as this thrift shop shadow box that had a heart cut-out on top. Blech. I paid 85 cents for it and I wondered if that was too much. But I took a hammer to those 2 top pieces and just popped them off.
I just wanted the square box shape. Cleaned it (yes, those are cobwebs in mid-air that you’re looking at), sanded it and re-stained the whole thing.
We turned it on its side, and it was a great way to give the table some height for only 85 cents and a little elbow grease! Plus, it takes up much less valuable table space than if we had to fit all those salads in somewhere else!
I know, I know… everything’s all pretty and then I throw in a log on a driveway.
But look how pretty that log turned out!
I used my circular saw to cut the log into small pieces for placecard holders. Then I used my Ryobi drill with the smallest drill bit I had to drill a small hole in the center to insert a piece of craft wire. I just twisted my craft wire around a pencil about 3 times and then insert your chalkboard label or photo right in it.
If you don’t feel like going to the trouble of cutting a log up (my husband still looks at me like I need to be committed), I saw some really cute pre-made ones on Zulily for super cheap! These would be great for Thanksgiving and Easter too! Any party really! Just search for “rustic stump placecard holder”.
The cake was a carrot cake with cream cheese icing that I went super simple on. Just trim the top of each cake layer after it cools to make it flat. Using an off-set spatula, spread the icing between each layer. Don’t worry about perfection, you want it to look rustic!
However… and this is something I saw all the time when I owned a bakery… don’t keep going back and forth over the frosting with your spatula. The more passes you make, the more crumbs you’re going to pick up and it just starts looking way past rustic into messy. Plop your icing on your cake layer, make 2-3 quick passes with your spatula (turntables go a long way into making this easier), and you should be done!
I used my Silhouette to cut out some gold cardstock into perfect hearts. Tape them onto popsicle sticks, add a couple flowers and you have a perfectly rustic bridal shower cake!
The only other touch we really added was to dress up the table itself. Instead of using a tablecloth, I used a roll of kraft paper I bought at the Target Dollar Spot and made two runners. It tied in perfectly with the rest of the theme and I probably only used 50 cents worth of it! Much cheaper than those plastic tablecloths and it looked tons better!
Source list:
Yellow 2-tier basket: Zulily
Wood placecard holders and slices: Homemade but sold on Zulily
Plastic bowls: Dollar Tree
Biscuit Menu Board: Canvas painted with Rust-Oleum chalkboard paint
Eat, Drink & Be Married Sign: See original post