Wedding Shower

Whose job is it to plan my wedding shower?

Traditionally, your Maid of Honor might be the one who would orchestrate with your bridesmaids to plan a wedding shower. Perhaps your close family, like your Aunts, would get together and give you a shower. Very often your mother's friends will organize themselves and get together and give you a bridal shower. It can be any of those groups or it might be a combination thereof.

Why might it be better for an older member of my family to host my wedding shower?

It might be better for an older member of your family to host a wedding shower simply because showers can become expensive. If you're going to have 30 people for lunch, that's looking a little costly. These days we usually find that several people, usually women, will go in together in order to give the shower and to share the expenses for that event. The bridesmaids will often get together and give a shower, sometimes a couple's shower, and do something perhaps not so elaborate; a little more casual, less expensive, where everybody can get together and have a really good time.

What are some ways to cut costs at my wedding shower?

The ways to cut costs on a wedding shower are firstly on the food. Don't do a luncheon. Have something like a tea. Have something that's very simple; perhaps a home event, perhaps it can be out a restaurant, but that's so elaborate. Often the bridesmaids get together to do a couple's shower; they make it potluck so everybody brings something. The idea is to get together and have a good time. The word shower here means to shower the bride and groom with gifts, so we give them things for their wedding to help them along their way in their new married life. That's the whole point - not to have something so elaborate that it breaks the budget.

Why is a wedding shower called a 'shower'?

A wedding shower has its name because we shower the bride and groom with gifts. It is a very old tradition. People have always given gifts to the bride and groom. When you are planning a wedding, people enjoy getting together and sharing these happy times with you. It is nice to shower you with gifts, give you things you are going to need for your new life together and help get you established and on your way.

What are some great wedding shower themes?

Wedding shower themes can be absolutely anything that you can dream up. They can have so many fun themes. Sometimes people do a personal shower for the bride, so if you love lingerie, that could be a theme. They can do a kitchen shower, where it's very much directed towards things for the kitchen. I've seen some absolutely great showers where it was the kitchen combined with doing recipes, and the idea was to give the bride a recipe that you really like and then your gift had be something that she would use to make that recipe. If it was a cake recipe, you'd give her the cake pans that she might use or perhaps cake decorating items. Very often, they do a romance shower and you can extrapolate yourself for that. Often a wedding shower is just a general shower and the guests bring whatever they want. They certainly look at the bride's registry to see what kinds of things she would like to have, and they can choose from that as well to help find a shower gift.

Who should I invite to my wedding shower?

When the invitations for a wedding shower go out, they should go out, first of all, to people who are invited to the wedding, or have been invited to the wedding. You do not ever invite someone to a shower who's not included in the wedding party as a guest, so let's start with that. Secondly, the people invited to the shower are generally the people who are the closest to the bride, or the bride's family. The people that are acquaintances who are invited to the wedding, but aren't really close, are not the ones that come to the shower. The wedding shower should be the closest friends; smaller showers of twenty to thirty people, at the most, tend to be the nicest. When they get to be really big, they get unwieldy, they aren't as intimate and they don't feel as good.

What are some of the most popular wedding shower games?

Wedding shower games are very often played for fun. Or, perhaps if some of the women who are attending don't know the bride that well - they could be from the groom's side, not the bride's side - we do things like word games that involve letters or writing words, or a bingo game that has different things about weddings in the squares, as opposed to letters or numbers. One wedding shower game that is kind of fun is when the bride opens the gifts and sometimes somebody writes down everything she says as she opens the gifts, and then afterwards you read it back and you say, "This is what you're going to say on your wedding night." You can read all these funny little comments. I think that what's going on in my particular area right now is that shower games are not as popular as they might once have been and for the most part, a wedding shower is a time for women to get together and socialize and have a good time. We don't see so many games being played but that's certainly up to you and depends on what's going on in your area and your town.

Can my fiance' come to my wedding shower?

Generally speaking, wedding showers are a women's prerogative and a women's venue, so your fiancé doesn't come to your shower. However, it is very, very nice if he comes towards the end, especially when you get ready for opening the gifts. I happen to be a big fan of that. I like it when he comes towards the end, he helps you open the gifts, and everybody gets to see the two of you do that together as a couple. The other reason that I like that is because men don't go to wedding showers, so they don't have a clue about all these gifts that they are about to get, and when they're there for that gift opening, and they see this wonderful shower of gifts that your friends and family are giving you, they're usually pretty impressed. It really gives them a lovely feeling about the wedding and about all these good things that are happening to them.

What is a 'bow bouquet'?

A bow bouquet is when one of the girls at your wedding shower takes all the bows and collects them. They make a hole in a box top or in a paper plate, and put all the bows in there. We make a bouquet of bows and that's for the bride to use at the rehearsal. That's her bouquet for her to practice with at the rehearsal for the wedding ceremony.