As a bridesmaid, it's my job to plan my friend's upcoming bridal shower. The bride-to-be is a HUGE Harry Potter fan. The honeymoon is going to be at the Harry Potter World at Universal Studios, if that tells you anything.
So the question for me became: How do I properly throw a party inspired by the books and movies, without making it look like a children's birthday party?
There are TONS of suggestions out there, so it was easy to see some possible options, but we also wanted to make it uniquely appropriate for Stefani, our bride. So we settled on a “Madam Puddifoot's Tea House” theme — a tea party, complete with crumpets, and scones, and tea and lemonade…
Plus we threw in a few Harry Potter things, like the Marauder's map, house badges for sorting everyone, and games of Quidditch beer pong — yes, with actual butterbeer in the cups.
The highlight of the event was a Transfiguration photo booth, complete with costumes and a stuffed owl. We brought along a mini photo printer, and printed each of the photos so that guests could paste them into a small “charms and wishes” guest book that was hacked from a simple paper-covered Moleskine notebook.
People could write notes of love and wishes to the bride, alongside their photos, for her to look back on as a memory.
Everyone got these awesome teacup candles as favors. We also had a wand-making station — the wands were a hit!
They started out as dowels, cut to size, carved up a bit, sanded down, spray painted, and then rubbed with some “rub and buff” metallic finish.
We used all sorts of bling, wire, glitter hot glue (yes, that's a thing!), and everyone made wands that were definitely representative of their personalities.
We even had our own personal dragon wandering around the party in the form of Maez, the hostess's cat.
We also had a “Goblet of Fire” station — “potions” to drink that included flaming rum.
The party was so much fun that we didn't even realize it was almost 7:30 by the time we started to wind down! By the end of the night, there were just a few happy wizards and witches hanging around, happily pasting photos into the charm book, and much adorable photo posting on Facebook.
