They say if you hold a seashell to your ear, you can hear the ocean, but I think I hear wedding bells! In preparation for her best friend’s beach wedding, Kelli McCarthy of KLM Events created this beautiful Chic Beachy Bridal Shower. Inspired by the bride’s favorite colors, Kelli brought the ocean to shore in untraditional (and super cute) hues of yellow and gray. My absolute favorite part (as well as the bride’s) is that amazing lace & pearl high heel cake topper — made of sugar! I’ll take a size 7 please. ;)

PARTY HIGHLIGHTS to look out for:

• Heart shaped silver seashell backdrop + ‘message in a bottle’ advice for the bride
• Glittery starfish topped chocolate covered Oreos + mini starfish & clamshell cookies
• Oyster pearl truffles, sugar ‘beach glass’ topped cupcakes & silver mercury glass floral centerpiece vases
• Yellow ombre ‘LOVE’ topped cupcakes + a gray and yellow starfish adorned cake

PARTY DETAILS as told by Kelli…

One of my very best friends is getting married on the beach in April so the bridesmaid’s and I planned a “Chic Beach” bridal shower for the bride-to-be. Yellow has always been her favorite color and her wedding colors are yellow and grey so we used those colors throughout and added a ton of beach elements, specifically highlighting starfish to set the tone. It was fun to do a beach theme with yellows and greys, as they are not the typical blues and greens you tend to see with “beach” themes.

The bridesmaids and I bought some silver/grey mercury goblets from Michael’s craft store and we made up the centerpieces ourselves with some yellow and white flowers from our local Produce Junction. If you are trying to save money on the florals, then this is the way to go! We only spent $40 total for all of the flowers and they went a long way in regards to décor! We also set up a little area for people to “send” some messages (or advice) for the bride-to-be. This helped tie in the beach theme, as well.

For the dessert table, I tried to add some fun beach-related treats, such as, silver pearlized Oreo Truffles that were sitting on little shells meant to look like pearls in oysters as well as some cupcakes on top of upside down wine glasses with little starfish underneath. I also put some shards of sugar atop some of the cupcakes to resemble beach glass. I made some 2-tier chocolate covered Oreos with little silver starfish sitting on top.

While we decided to do a “beach” theme, we wanted to incorporate a little something that the bride loves, as well, which herein lies that amazingly beautiful shoe topper! She has always been big into fashion (and shoes!) to the point where she even came to her shower in a yellow and grey dress to match her theme :) So I knew that Stephanie from “Sweet Little Morsels” was the girl to go to for this. She made a custom shoe that matched the colors perfectly and incorporated a ruffled starfish to pull in the beach theme. The bride was so in love with the shoe topper that she wished she could have her wedding shoes look like them even though she already has her yellow Louboutin’s purchased for her wedding! I also thought it would be cute to have “L-O-V-E” spelled out in front of the cake but instead of the “O” I asked Stephanie to use a matching starfish which turned out perfectly! One of the bridesmaid’s mom made those adorable cookie favors and had them sitting on brown sugar to resemble sand.

Even though the weather has been far from “beachy” in NJ, we spent a couple of hours soaking in the beach atmosphere enjoying her beautiful shower.