This past weekend was my bridal shower here in Hoboken and I’m taking you behind-the-scenes and sharing all of the details with you! (Like really, alllll of the details.)

Planning The Shower

The Vibe + Theme

I love scrolling TikTok and seeing what everyone does for their various wedding events in terms of themes, but I ultimately didn’t select an official theme because I wanted to do something true to me that I would always look back on and be happy with.

Here’s a look at my Pinterest board of inspiration images.

Because of this, I chose to do bold and bright decor with a color palette of hot pink and orange for my bridal shower over a specific theme and planned pretty much everything else around that.

I took the reins on the creative design and made a timeline a few months before my shower and then I asked different people like my mom, future mother-in-law and maid of honor to help me with various parts of the planning. It meant a lot to have help!

The Invitations

I have been using Minted for all wedding stationary and I browsed a few different designs on Minted and ultimately landed on one that felt super girly and fun.

I found these invitations called Modern Fling Bachelorette Party Invitations by an independent designer named Creo Study based in Mumbai, India! I chose the color sunset and a squiggle silhouette.

One thing to note about these was that I was able to change the “Bachelorette Party” font to read “Bridal Brunch,” I just had to request a custom design update in the personalization section.

We included all of the details including date, time and location and we were also able to print registry info on the back.

I was even able to have them print envelopes with the guest’s addresses on them which was a big time saver for sending out the invitations.

The Venue

Our wedding will be in New York City but I wanted to do the bridal brunch in Hoboken where Andrew and I have lived for two years now.

I knew I wanted to have my bridal shower brunch at a restaurant so we didn’t need to worry about the cooking and cleaning and I was hoping to find a place with a semi-private or private setup so we could play games and take up space and not feel like we were disrupting other diners.

We ultimately decided on Olivia’s, one of my favorite restaurants in Hoboken, as the venue for the bridal shower.

Olivia’s is a mediterranean restaurant and it has a private event space called The Luna Room which holds up to 40 people in a formal sit down style event.

We ended up having just over 20 people for brunch and we split the guests into 3 groups of tables and it worked out really well.

The Olivia’s team went above and beyond for us from rearranging tables day of to keeping the drinks flowing.

We are so grateful for all of their help and hard work! If you’re local to the area, definitely consider them for events.

The Decorations

Welcome Sign

I ordered my welcome sign from Minted where I also got our invitation stationary too! It’s been great to partner with them leading up to the wedding.

I customized the Nolita Large Custom Sign to have a white background and a bright pink font.

The sign came out so nicely and it was definitely the size I wanted!

The one thing I will say was it was on cardstock that was a little flimsy on the small tabletop easel that we used so we folded the cardboard it came in behind it to help it stand up more. I don’t think that would be an issue with a regular tall easel.

Balloons

I had such a blast planning the decorations and the balloons were definitely the focal point for the event.

We did both a freestanding bouquet of balloons and then an arch with tons of balloons of different sizes attached to it (called organic style) and I opted to do pink and orange bridal shower decorations by doing a pink backdrop and then various shades of pink and orange balloons.

I worked with My Deco Balloon baed here in NJ on these and they were super helpful and responsive throughout the whole process.

I was even able to take screenshots of the balloon colors from their website and design a mockup of what I wanted in Canva which was really helpful and I feel like the vision came to life perfectly.

I decided not to add a message to the arch because we ended up standing in front of it and would have blocked the text anyway.

Flowers + Bud Vases

When we first started planning the shower, I had the idea to DIY our flowers from Trader Joe’s.

They honestly turned out better than expected, and not to mention all of the flowers cost less than $50 (including the bouquet Andrew brought in!!)

I picked out flowers in the pink and orange I was using for the rest of the decor and then mixed in some light pink, white and yellow flowers as well to add some more color and also picked up this very whimsical greenery to add to any bunches that needed a little something extra.

We had a mix of spray roses, carnations, lilies, and daisies.

I bought 2 packs of these clear vintage-inspired bud vases on Amazon so we had 20 in total and they were so cute! Each bud vase could hold between 3-5 blooms and I personally thought 3 looked best overall.

We brought them to the venue and we also brought an empty orange juice container to fill with water from the bathrooms and a funnel to pour the water into each of the bud vases.

The Name Tags

When my cousin Erin got married she had these cute little wooden name tags from Etsy at each of our place settings and I thought this was such a cute way to add a special detail to the table settings. They’re actually super affordable too, they were about $1 each!

The Look

Dress

Once we confirmed we were doing brunch for the shower, I knew I wanted to find the flirtiest, girliest white dress and I found just that.

I highly recommend Lulus for any bridal events you may have in the lead up to your wedding—they literally had so many options, many of them under $100! I loved the swiss dot tulle and the neckline of this dress so much!

Shop my bridal shower outfit

Shoes + Jewelry

Since I was in Classic Bridal Mode and chose to wear a white dress, I knew this was my chance to have fun with the shoes.

I ordered this pair of hot pink heels from Amazon and absolutely loved how they looked with the dress—very Barbiecore if you’re keeping up with the endless promo for summer’s hottest movie—and I actually have the same shoes in white that I wore for our engagement shoot!

I love that they give me 3” of height but that they’re not impossible to walk in.

For jewelry I obviously wore my engagement ring, I wore a twisted gold ring on my right hand from Hoboken-based brand Electric Picks, and I ordered this super dainty necklace from Amazon from Prime Day to complete the look!

Hair

I went to Drybar with my mom and Taylor the morning of the shower (highly recommend—we did an 8am appointment and the shower started at noon) and I asked for the straight up and we slightly rounded the ends to give a bit of body to my hair.

Skin

On the Wednesday before the shower, I did get a facial at Joanna Vargas in Bryant Park. They invited me in to experience their Oxygen Purifying Facial and it really helped reduce my breakouts and make my skin super glowy.

Skin first, makeup second—always! All details from that are over on my Instagram.

Nails

My nails were press-ons from imPRESS Manicure! I love press-on nails for special occasions and this design was called Magic Shop.

Makeup

For makeup, I wanted to have some coverage since it was an event but also still make it feel light and dewy. I decided to opt for a CC cream instead of a full coverage foundation and supplemented it with concealer.

Since it’s July I decided to stick to cream blush and bronzer. I also filled in my brows with a pencil and added a black liquid eyeliner, two things I normally skip in my everyday makeup routine.

I tied in the makeup with my shoes with a pink lip to finish off the look! If you want to see me apply everything (minus the moisturizer because I originally used a different primer) watch this TikTok to see everything in action.

All makeup products used:

The Games

I’m a big fan of games so we played four games at the shower:

Bridal Word Search (everyone completed independently)
This or That - How Well Do You Know The Bride
Who’s More Likely? — Austen or Andrew
Newlywed Game With Whiteboards

I used Pinterest and Etsy to get inspiration for different games and questions to include for each one.

But I ultimately decided to customize all of my games using Canva because some of the pre-made games included questions I didn’t love and also I wanted to design them to include our names in them.

If you’re familiar with Canva and own a printer, I would highly suggest DIY-ing this. If neither of those things apply to you, you may want to save time and purchase pre-designed templates from Etsy.

I also bought this paper cutter from Amazon that was super affordable to quickly and easily cut all of the games. I printed two games on each piece of paper and then cut the papers in half.

I also got some white boards from Amazon for us to share our answers for who’s more likely and the newlywed game and it was so fun to play those games with Andrew and see what the other said for each question.

Taylor, my maid of honor, moderated the games and she did a fantastic job!

The Favors

I didn’t want to spend too much money on favors, but two things I definitely wanted to have for people to take home were these cute mini prosecco bottles and some custom cookies.

Andrew’s mom actually has a friend who makes these cookies on the side and I asked her if she’d be able to make a few designs for my shower and she said yes! We decided on a champagne glass, A+A inside of a heart and the calendar with the date circled as the designs.

I went to the local liquor store in Hoboken to ask about these Mionetto mini prosecco bottles because I thought the pop of orange at each place setting on the table would be super cute.

They didn’t have them in the store but shout out to Lucy who works there for calling them in for me!

I also did some prizes for the games and put them in these pink gift bags with orange tissue paper.

Planning + Logistics Notes

Since we are getting married in the fall, I decided sometime in the second half of summer would be best for the bridal shower.

I honestly didn’t have a preference so I just confirmed with my mom, maid of honor and future mother-in-law which weekends would be best for them.

Summer tends to book up fast which ultimately left me with two available weekends for the shower in July and I decided to go with the 22nd.

I chose a Saturday because I knew several family members on my fiancé’s side were leaving for vacation on Sunday but wanted to make sure they could all still attend.

Also, I wanted to have FUN at my shower (read: drink several mimosas) and hang around with people afterwards which is much easier done on a Saturday when there’s less of a rush to get home vs showers that happen on Sundays.

We locked in the date with the venue in March (four months out) and I sent a text to my bridal party and any other guest I knew I wanted to invite after it was confirmed to make sure everyone at least had the date on their radar.

Okay, I think that officially covers everything about my girly, pink and orange bridal shower but if you have any questions for me about my shower, please leave me a comment and I’ll get back to you!

Shop the post:

Thank you to Tara for helping me capture content at the shower and to all of my family and friends for making this day so amazing.

yours,

Austen

Inside My Colorful Bridal Shower Brunch in Hoboken