Message in a Bottle Rehearsal Dinner

For the past few years, I have spent a week in September in Bald Head Island, NC with my family. One of my mom and my greatest pleasures during our time there is hunting for sea shells. Year after year we comment on the abundant supply to choose from and continue to bring buckets full of our beautiful treasures home. The question my dad continually asked us was what exactly we were going to DO with those shells. .

And although we never really had the perfect answer, thankfully my brother eventually provided one for us.

Last summer he proposed to my now sister-in-law by burying a message in a bottle in the sand during their beach vacation. It was such a romantic gesture that my mom and I decided to run with that theme for their rehearsal dinner this past weekend. We knew we had the shells...we just had to determine exactly how to use them.

(The happy couple with the parents of the bride and groom during the celebration.)

Thankfully I had two fabulous helpers on hand Friday, my cousins, who were my decorating assistants.

Our guests were greeted with a sign explaining the proposal and informing them that they could find their table number in their individual glass bottles. We filled each one with sand, a shell from BHI and stamped the corks with the numbers.

Continuing the theme, table numbers were displayed on bottles. Since you rarely find flowers growing on the beach, we decided to grow wheat grass to flank our lanterns on the tables. Each container had a burlap rosette with a shell and I made individual rosettes to top each napkin.

The shell topiaries were my mom's first attempt at "crafting" in a while. She was a natural. :) I will do a mini tutorial on these another time as I was very happy with how they turned out.

One of my favorite parts was the beachy cake we ordered from Simply Cakes by Allison. Ali made a delicious coconut cake (the bride and groom's favorite) and managed to fool everyone with her elegant candy shells. The cake was a big hit and enjoyed by my family for the rest of the weekend.

And of course it should come as no surprise that I made cookie favors for everyone. Sand dollars and sea shells seemed like the perfect compliment to the evening.

Finally a special shout-out to Mr. Preppy Cookie, who took a great deal of time creating a wonderful slideshow documenting the bride and groom's memories to share with us all.

It was a memorable celebration and the best was yet to come. I am coming down off of such a high spending the weekend with family and friends...wish we could do it all again this week! :)

CONGRATULATIONS Mr. and Mrs. C!