My daughter’s best friend is getting married. She and my daughter have been best friend’s since they were five years old. She had spent as much time at our house as my daughter has. My daughter is going to be her maid of honor and wants to host a bridal shower for her. My daughter and her husband have relocated to a different state so she asked if we could plan the shower at our home. I was excited to help plan and host this shower.

How about a BBQ for your next picnic ?

My daughter told me that the bride was having several showers because she was having one from where she works, one from where her fiancé works as well as her church group. We were going to invite her neighborhood friends as well as the aunts from her side of the family. We decided that we should have a theme for the shower. We printed off the list of gifts that she had registered for to see if we could find a theme. She had listed several things for camping, because she and her fiancé do a great deal of camping during their time off. We decided that we would have a picnic theme and plan the shower for our backyard. We liked the picnic idea for several reasons. There were going to be many people and we would be more comfortable in our backyard than in the house. The flowers and plants in my gardens would be at their peak so the setting would be very pretty for the picnic idea. The main reason we thought that the picnic idea would be great is that our backyard had hosted many tea parties, camping sleepovers, and ball games over the years and it held many memories for the bride as well as several of the guests.

We decided that our picnic idea would also make the food preparation fun and easy because we would have my husband and the bride’s dad barbeque like they have been doing for the girls for years. We decided we would serve gourmet hamburgers and salads to keep with our picnic idea. We bought the classic red and white checked table clothes to place on the tables. We borrowed picnic tables from several neighbors so we had enough seating for everyone. We have a bar area on our deck so we set this up to serve wine and soft drinks. We ordered daisies and baby’s breath to make small arrangements on each table. The yard looked very festive for the party. Several people commented that they enjoyed the picnic idea for the shower, because this created a relaxed comfortable day. The bride was very happy with the picnic idea for her shower. She said that it was the only shower that she felt relaxed and had fun. It is fun to host an event that people enjoy. You do not have to follow traditional ideas to have a fun wedding shower.