Let's Drink Coffee, Darling: A Red, Purple, and Chinese Themed Wedding Shower

A few weeks ago, we threw together a small party to celebrate some very good friends. If you read my post last month, you already know a little bit about how we met these sweet friends. Today is all about the party!

Decoration pictures are toward the end.

Since in Chinese culture, wedding showers where people come to an event solely to buy you gifts isn't common, we did our best to make an event where it was a cross between a wedding shower and an engagement party. My husband, sister-in-law, and I got them a gift together, but did not want their Chinese friends to feel awkward, so that part remained a subtle aspect of the day.

This is our small - but incredibly fun - group of celebration participants!

We came together to celebrate our friends, and to have a time where we could all hang out and do something fun together. Because these two won't be able to go back to China for their marriage, we wanted to host an event where their closest friends here in Oklahoma could come together. That was my favorite part about our wedding - the fact that everyone we loved was there at the same place. There's nothing more overwhelming that makes you feel loved than everyone you know coming together for you.

The chosen way to spend our time having fun was to play monopoly. I think my husband may have cast a very persuasive vote to help things happen this way. He is very competitive when it comes to board games. :P

My friend has a 20 sided die. I thought it was almost ridiculous (because she's so smart, so obviously she should be the type to have a 20 sided die.) We played monopoly with it, which was actually a lot of fun, because it put a pretty big spin on the game. One time someone even went from their last turn in jail, and straight back to jail again because they rolled a 20.

Now let's get on to the party decorations!

We used a box knife to cut up all the rolls of crepe paper before hanging them up. In China, red is a very lucky color. People often hang couplets (poems), lucky or prosperous characters, or little guardians in red on their doors. We went with this idea for the party decorations by surrounding the door frame with red crepe paper, and then hanging the small papers on the crepe paper along the door.

The main character on the papers is 壽 (shòu) which means 'life'.

Another smaller character is 囍, (xǐ) which means double happiness. The character is symmetrical on both sides, so it gives the impression that the two sides complete each other, and is symbolically used in weddings.

Our friends favorite color is purple. At first, I thought that we couldn't do both colors because generally in my mind, purple and red match. I decided to look up some decorations to see how they looked, and I thought the colors could go surprisingly well together, when done right.

Here is our tablescape. We have a variety of flowers, props, and served fruits and veggies.

This apartment (my old apartment before we were married) was built by the university in the 1960s. They are pretty ancient (I could go on and on about the weird problems they have but I won't). One weird thing is that the walls aren't really attached to the ceiling. That made it convenient for us to stuff the crepe paper in the top and make banners.

I also made this "Fall in Love" banner for them.

This is what you could see right when you walk in the door. We used a picture of the two of them from our wedding, a couple of photobooth props, and a hand-drawn picture.