Today’s post is going to be a little different for two reasons – the first being that it’s a pretty personal post and second being that the post will not involve anything fashion, beauty or travel related.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you probably know that I’m getting married very soon. By very soon we are now talking a mere 36 days. With weddings also come things like bachelorette parties ( mine was in New York and you can read more about it here) and bridal showers. Last weekend, I got to have the pleasure of being “showered” with love and gifts from my family and friends at my bridal shower.

My bridal shower had an Italian theme to it. Why? My fiancé and I got engaged two years ago in Florence, Italy so I thought it would be a fun theme for a bridal shower. If you’re interested in our Italian travels you can read our Florence guide here and our overall Italy itinerary here. So in today’s post, for those also interested in either throwing a bridal shower in the future or any party with an Italian theme, I will share the ideas that my mother in law, my mom and I came up with for this theme. This will also have some general comments about the games played at the shower and other ideas.

The Food

Italian food is loved by many ( I am yet to meet a single person that doesn’t like Italian) so we knew the food at the party would be a hit. There was bruschetta, Italian meatballs, pasta salad and a ton of fruit laid out on the table for our guests. When it came to dessert, tiramisu and mini raspberry tartlets  were the main attraction. Wine, of course, was also abundantly  flowing at the party. You can’t have an Italian themed party without wine.

The Decorations

I have to give my mother-in-law a big shout out for the decorations because they were perfect. We had a center piece on the food table that made the table look like a miniature lemon grove. The fireplace had a banner that said Mr and Mrs with a heart dividing the two and the tables where people sat had potted roses with pictures of different Italian cities in them.

The Games

We had three games at the shower – Guess the Age, What’s In Your Purse and Trivia about the Bride and Groom.

For Guess the Age we had my mom and my fiance’s mom make a board with 9 pictures of each of us and the guests had to guess how old we were in those pictures. I’ve played this game once before at a bridal shower and it is usually surprisingly low scoring.

For What’s in Your Purse, you can find so many print outs on Pinterest if you don’t want to come up with your own point system and just use that instead. This game is fun because it involves everyone at the shower and doesn’t require people to have a really in depth knowledge of the bride and groom unlike the next game, which was trivia.

For Trivia we had questions like what was the bride and groom’s first date, how long have they been together, etc. Mine even had the question of what is the bride’s blog called 😉 which thankfully, everyone knew.

There was one other way to win a prize at the shower and that was by writing out your name and address on an envelope (for me to have pre-addressed thank you cards) and a name from those envelopes got picked for an extra prize.

For prizes we had an Italian food themed gift bag (raspberry jam and Italian chocolates), a S’well bottle with a peacock feather design, a planner w/ some beautiful pens to go along with it and a black currant scented candle with lemon drops.

Favors

This was one of my favorite things about the shower. For favors, we had mini limoncello bottles for the signature Italian drink. These were a big hit with all the guests and looked so adorable in the little bottles. Another big shout out to my mother-in-law to be for these. She did an amazing job with them.

My Outfit

I know the bride is usually supposed to wear a white dress for her bridal shower but I wanted something with a little more to it than just white so I found an embroidered dress from Lulu’s (that has unfortunately since sold out) that I thought was perfect for the occasion. I paired it up with blue heels (although, I wish I had something open toed for a more summer look) and some dainty silver jewelry.

Let me know what you guys think of this kind of post as I’ve never done anything like this before. Sometimes though, I think it’s nice to step away from the usual routine and get a little more personal. Again, thank you to my mom and mother in law for throwing me such a perfect shower! I hope you guys were able to get some inspo from this!

As always, thanks for reading!