Bridal Shower for Soon-To-Be Wife, Merry!

I was so happy when I heard that Merry, one of my close friends and certainly one of my first friends in the US, got engaged to her boyfriend, Jefry. Merry has always been that boyish kinda girl, which is cool. I still remember the time when all of us with her brother and sister and my twin sister (did I tell you that I have a twin?), would hang out together after school and we'd go to a bubble tea places, cheap Chinese restaurants and all. We don't do that (at least not that much) anymore since we've all grown up now, but we would still go way back.

So, imagine how excited I was when I heard this, so excited that I started thinking about her bridal shower immediately (and wedding cake too but that's for later), which kinda made me the default to coordinate it. I wanted to make it look as nice and as pretty as it can get. I kinda enjoy all the planning for events like this, I've always been the kind of person who loves spreadsheet, timetable, and everything, I love to see visually how things would flow and such. So, there I was planning, budgeting (the hardest part), arranging the bridal shower on a giant spreadsheet that contains everything you can possibly imagine, from very detail budgeting and pricing, menu, person who's in charge, favor, table setting, centerpiece, guest list, you name it, it's all there.

The original plan was to have an outdoor garden lunch but unfortunately, we found out earlier in the week that it would rain that weekend, bummer! So, the plan has to be changed to an indoor lunch. It also happen that in the same week as the bridal shower, I "had" to go on a last-minute vacation to Hawaii, which left me only two days to decide what cake I would make, the decoration, what favor, buy ingredients, gifts, and finalizing everything else. Oh yes, it was hectic, not a pretty situation, but thankfully there are always friends who are willing to help.

note: above photos are courtesy of nana

It was raining and a bit windy, but it didn't stop us from gearing up for the party. We had a wonderful decorating, thanks to Irene, the master of all creativity. The color theme for this shower is white, green and brown. The wedding itself is gonna be in bright purple and silver but we wanted the shower to have different color scheme. I think white, green, and brown has a warmth feeling to it, especially in the Fall season. We also had a very satisfying pasta lunch made by Merry's aunt. It was a bit sad when we had to tear down the decoration when the time of renting the place was up, it was too pretty. Merry looked wonderful that day, she had a trial make-up session with her salon for her wedding, so it was the perfect timing!

I made a traditional Indonesian cake, also known as "Lapis Surabaya" or "Spiku", as seen here, and brownie for the favor. I don't have a picture of the brownie inside the box as we had no more time, but I was determined to make it again, this time all dressed up with the ice cream and sauce! I'll post the recipe then as I had quite a number of people requesting the recipe for the brownie after the shower.

passion fruit drink

So there Merry, I wish you a wonderful beginning for your journey ahead, so sad that you will have to move after getting married, but hey, LA is not that far anyway :), we'll go visit :). Congratulations and big hug for you!