Jennifer Estabrook and Casey Jukkola planned a lovely bridal shower for Abby van Wingerden. We met at the fellowship hall on Saturday, December 2, at 4 PM.
The Lord gave us a lovely balmy day, and the fellowship hall looked as beautiful as spring. There were lovely, filmy white curtains on two of the windows, and on the wall facing the woods, with white lights shining behind the curtains. The plates and cups had spring flowers on them, and there were “springy” arrangements of real flowers, sitting on lovely pink cloth runners, as centerpieces on the tables.
Ladies brought various food, such as chicken salad sandwiches, Judi van Wingerden’s famous little hotdogs with pecans; fruit pizza, etc. Casey and Jennifer made a tasty pink punch with ice cream and maraschino cherries in it. Becky Jaciuk made cupcakes which Diana Oakley decorated beautifully with icing and edible flowers. Jennifer made big, delicious sugar cookies, which Allison and Libby decorated beautifully with either a “T” for Toler or spring flowers on them.
After we ate, Janice MacAvoy gave a devotional for Abby from Psalm 127:1. She tried to encourage Abby as she and John would be “building a house”/a marriage together. Janice also talked about Proverbs 14:1, and gave four principles that a wife can use to build her house: love her husband, thank her husband, follow her husband, and pray for her husband.
After the devotional, we played three fun games. One was a game in which we tried to guess which things Abby would prefer doing. There were 14 things that we could choose from. (Abby‘s sister Emily got all of those categories correct! Good job, Emily.) Our second game was called “Name that Cake” and there were 15 types of cakes that we had to name, from clues that were given. Our third game had to do with biblical couples, in which we needed to match which man had which wife. Our hardest one to figure out was Lapidoth. Some of us were teasing that we ought to give Pastor MacAvoy a call, and just randomly say that we were thinking about Lapidoth and wondering who his wife was, ha ha.
Tammy van Wingerden made a favor for everyone to take home from the shower. It was a cute little memento of the shower, which we can even plant, and grow some wildflowers from it.
We ended the evening with Abby opening gifts. We were so glad for everyone who was able to come and celebrate this special time in Abby’s life.