My bridesmaid, who is American, is organising a bridal shower for me. Since I live in Australia, I’m not to familiar with this apparent American tradition. I’m quite happy to have her organise it but don’t know the do’s and don’ts that are associated with it.
Can someone please explain to me what happens? My bridesmaid mentioned having some sort of party games too.
Also, what are the ‘rules’ with inviting guests? I’m aware that they’ve got to be close female friends and relatives of the bride-to-be but my bridesmaid has also ruled that ALL female invitees to the wedding must be invited (even my fiance’s aunts and other relations who I don’t know very well - and some that I don’t like). I wouldn’t mind inviting a couple of female friends that haven’t been invited to the wedding but my bridesmaid says this is a no-no.
You can’t invite those who are not invited to the wedding, but I have never heard of having to invite all potential female wedding guests to the shower. How is that even possible? Some female guests may be coming from far away (especially given the Australia/America combo!).
the whole point of a shower is to “shower” the bride with gifts. There are Christmas showers (where you get stuff like Christmas plates and accessories and ornaments etc), “personal” showers (best not have the aunts to that one), and general “dry goods” showers, to name a few.
Some brides register at better department stores, some don’t.
According to Miss Manners(and I agree), the attendee is required to bring a gift or to contribute to a gift in some way. Gifts are the whole point of the event.
As to games-blech. I don’t care for them. One I do know of consists of someone making a “bouquet” of all your ribbons and decorative bits on the gifts. Why I have no idea!
Another “game” is that of everyone nudg-nudging, wink-winking if said bride to be breaks a ribbon whilst opening a gift. All the ribbon breaking is supposed to mean that you will have that many children. (break 25 ribbons and you better get your tubes tied!). It’s silly and well, rather stupid, but there it is.
I had one friend of my MIL’s come up to me after the shower was officially over and ask if I remembered what gift she gave me! Thank God for my maid of honor, who prompted me re the kitchen knife set. I wanted to use one on this lady, but it would have broken up the set. Just a story to let you know that not all shower attendees are nice…
Hint you didn’t ask for: have another bridesmaid (not the hostess) keep a list of all presents and their givers. Start your thank you notes that night and do 5 a day. Otherwise, it can get out of hand…
[QUOTE=eleanorigby]
You can’t invite those who are not invited to the wedding, but I have never heard of having to invite all potential female wedding guests to the shower. How is that even possible? Some female guests may be coming from far away (especially given the Australia/America combo!).
Sorry, should have clarified - my American bridesmaid lives in Australia. The wedding is in Australia. While we have some overseas coming (from the UK and NZ), we haven’t included those females since they are overseas and obviously won’t be able to make it.
Ummm…cause then they would fell left out for not being invited to the actual wedding?
The shower is akin to the bachelor party, usually not all females invited to the wedding attend, but everyone who does attend, goes to the wedding (if possible.)
Basically, it’s a way to mooch two presents out of some of your friends and family.
A shower is traditionally for the bride’s close girlfriends and relatives. You should all be able to fit into a living room; it’s supposed to be intimate. Once upon a time, the shower gift was supposed to be fairly small, and usually something kitchen-related, but now of course anything goes and people sometimes expect presents that are just as large as the actual wedding present.
Some of the games can get pretty awful (toilet-paper wedding dresses, for example). Some can be okay. At the most recent shower I attended, games included “Identify the movie this wedding scene is from,” “Identify the white kitchen-related powder” (20 different white powders in baggies, from baking soda to Splena), and “Guess what the bride knows about the groom” (ask the groom things like his favorite city/sport/pizza topping, what he wants to name the kids, etc, then ask the bride to answer the questions correctly and have everyone rate her answer).
A shower can be a brunch or afternoon-snackies kind of thing, but is rarely a sit-down meal kind of thing.
I’ve just polled the females around the office (those who are still here at 6.30pm anyway) and they all said that bridal showers do exist in Australia - just under the name of “kitchen teas”.
I agree that you should never ask someone to the shower who is not invited to the wedding. I also agree that you should invite only 20 or 30 of your closest friends – if that many.
The bouquet of ribbons and bows is what you carry at the rehersal for your wedding (representing a bouquet of flowers.)
I always liked lingerie showers best. Everyone gets the giggles.
Because a shower is shamelessly a gift-giving event. So if you invite someone to the shower but not to the wedding, it implies “I want a gift from you, but I don’t like you enough to invite you to my wedding.”
This is also the reason why you and your close family are forbidden from giving your shower. The polite fiction is that this is a spontanious gesture by a few of your best girl friends because they love you so much.
Thanks, I have heard “kitchen teas” in Oz (though never been to one), it was more the American traditions/meanings/symbolism laced into these bridal showers that I was unfamiliar with.
Wow, I did mine all wrong. My sister was my maid of honor and my only attendant. At the time, none of my female friends lived in town, though two of them traveled here to attend the wedding (one of them actually performed the ceremony). My sister threw the shower for me and invited all my female relatives and every woman my mother knows, plus a couple of my sister’s friends. Our wedding was a very small backyard affair, so almost nobody who was at the shower was at the wedding. Everyone bought gifts from my gift registry, which was full of practical and reasonably-priced items.
The ladies in my department at work threw me a huge surprise shower at work too. The “surprise” part got complicated when I called in sick with a migraine that day! After I called in, the woman who organized the shower called me at home and told me what was up. I dragged myself out of bed and came to work to find a huge breakfast buffet laid out, my desk beautifully decorated, and an enormous pile of presents all around it. I was surprised, all right!
Between the two showers and the actual wedding, I wound up receiving every single item on my registry, and then I got a bunch of gift cards on top of that. I had a great time, and I hope nobody thought I was awful for the several apparent etiquette breaches that really weren’t my fault.
To be quite honest, my bridal shower is the alternative to having a ‘hens night’. I’m not the debaucherous type, don’t drink that much and not many of my close female friends or female relatives fall into this category.
As for the gifts, I’m slightly uneasy about this since we already have a bridal registry at a major department store (Myer, for those that live in Oz).
Yes, I’ve always understood the hens’ night to be the more debauched version. On a hens’ night the bride and her female friends go to the pub, get sloshed, ogle strippers etc. At a kitchen tea they sit around at home, open the presents and gossip.
I guess the hens night is what we’d call a bachelorette party. Those can be as raunchy or low-key as you want. For mine, I went to visit a couple of my out-of-town girlfriends and we spent the day looking around in shops in a trendy district, trying on crazy hats and shoes, all while I wore one of those cheesy white veils they sell in adult novelty stores especially for bachelorette parties. At the end of the day we went to a restaurant up in the hills with a big deck, which was perfect for watching the sunset, drinking margarita, and then watching that night’s fireworks display (it was July 5th, a Saturday). It was fun, but it wasn’t a wild debauch or anything.
I have had a few awesome hen’s nights (not mine, I need to add :p), where a group of us have driven to wine country for dinner and a night at a b&b, done life drawing classes (I suck btw); dinner parties, restaurants, one we all went to pole dancing classes after going out for a few chardies, etc. I’ve never been to one that’s done the whole male stripper thing, (not really me or my friends cup of tea). So I don’t think it really does need to be all about the drinking and debauchery. Sometimes, though it just helps
A hen’s night is NOT the same thing as a shower. A hen’s night is what Americans would call a batchlorette party, and is only for your best friends. A shower is a chance to give gifts–pure and simple.
Around here at least, when you do your wedding registry (at department stores, Target, whatever), you make sure to include lots of less expensive stuff - you know, towels and stuff - so people can get them for you for your shower if they want. Also, showers are often heavily themed - Christmas showers and lingerie showers have already been mentioned, but there are also things like kitchen showers or garden showers or round-the-clock showers (where everybody is assigned a time of day - if you get, say, 8 AM you might get the bride a waffle iron, say) and couples showers. Couples showers are weird and I have no idea why a man would want to be dragged to one. (My parents got invited to one and my dad said “Isn’t that something women do?”)
Thanks for the heads up re: gifts. Our wedding registry contains lots of moderately priced items for 2 reasons: a) we took into account that not everyone is a millionaire so we didn’t go overboard and b) we don’t need a LOT of stuff since we’ve been living together over a year and a half now.
Anyone have any more examples of bridal shower games and their symbolisms?
