letters to you: here comes the bride(al shower)

as always, life has gotten in the way of my blogging.

and as always, i'm using blogging as a procrastinating technique to avoid starting my homework. homework, that i might add, that's due today.

i'm so scholarly.

page's bridal shower was absolutely too much fun. the entire weekend was so busy and a bit stressful (i'm surprised how much planning has to go into a three hour event!) but everything totally paid off when everyone showed up.

originally, i wanted to hold the shower at a fancy little place downtown. it was super cute... and super expensive. page told me that she'd rather have the shower in our backyard.

having the shower in our backyard turned out to be better than we expected. it was so comfortable, so relaxing. it was the perfect atmosphere.

the best part of holding it in our backyard was decorating!!

we set up a food table and a little drink station. anne, our dad's cousin who's shooting page and ryan's wedding, took a TON of engagement photos-- i'm talking 200+ photos-- a few weekends ago with the couple in san francisco. they turned out amazing. those pictures were set everywhere on the tables.

i rented some round tables and chairs to make the backyard a little more fancy. considering we spend all of our major holidays (hanksgiving, the golf tournament, christmas, easter... etc.) at dad's house, we had to spruce it up a bit for page's shower.

we had flowers EVERYWHERE. thanks, dad, for planting gorgeous flowers for page's shower.

lauren made a photo clothespin line of page when she was little. the pictures were so much fun to look at.

we started playing games soon after the ladies arrived. ryan's grandma alllllmost won the purse game (those grandmas have everything in their purses!) but tiffany ended up winning.

of course, we played the tp wedding dress game. always a classic. i was so impressed with everyone's dress!

the favorite game of the day was by far the hawaii honeymoon game. before the shower, i hunted through the goodwill to find hawaiian-looking clothes/items. i found some pretty hilarious stuff. like a giant, stretched out one-piece bathing suit. i put the items in a bag for each team. each team had one minute to dress up one member in as many clothes as possible. i honestly didn't think anyone would put on the one-piece bathing suit...

but janae did!! it was hilarious. she put the bathing suit on OVER her dress. by the end of the game, everyone was cracking up.

page opened her presents while everyone moved into the shade. it was SO hot outside.

one of the sweetest moments of the shower was when page opened ryan's grandma jo's gift. the shower had an "around the clock" theme, which means that every guest received a time on their invitation. they had to pick out a gift that page and ryan could use at that time of day. grandma jo got three o'clock. she wrote a poem for page, telling her that she had the hardest time thinking of a gift to give that they could use at three o'clock! she finally decided on a crock pot. that way, page could start dinner at three and eat at eight. we now call the gift the three o'clock crock pot.