Eight Important Basics to Planning a Bridal Shower

Planning a bridal shower can be one of the most exciting activities you have ever experienced. There is so much joy associated with bridal shower. Everyone is pleased to bring gifts that the bride is excited to see as a sign of the start of her new life. Even though getting ready can be an exciting time, it can also be a very stressful time. There are so many things that you must consider when you are planning your bridal shower.

One of the most important things to first consider is the guest list. You should invite anywhere from five to twenty people. If you invite more than twenty, you risk overwhelming the bride and the guests, as you want it to be a rather intimate affair. When you make your guest list, be sure to consult the bride as to whom she wishes to have at her wedding shower. Female family members of both sides of the wedding party should certainly be at the top of your guest list. You will also want to include the bride's closest friends, and, of course, the wedding party. Be sure that everyone who is invited to the wedding shower is also on the invitation list to the wedding to avoid any hurt feelings.

The second important thing to think about is the invitations. The invitations you choose can have any look or feel that you like. If you wish to have a themed shower, send out invitations that match your theme. For example, if you plan to have a beach party shower, send out invitations that have the look of a beach party. If you are not having a themed shower, you might want to go with something that looks like the bride's wedding invitations. Check with the printer of her wedding invitations, as he or she might be able to cut you a deal if the bride's invitation order was big enough. Whatever type of invitation you go with, be sure to include the guest of honor's name, the time, date, and location of the invitation, the hostess' name and phone number, an RSVP deadline (about two weeks before the shower is sufficient), and the shower theme. If you wish, include a map of how to reach the location. You might also think about including where the couple has registered and the colors of their future home. Send the invitations out about one month in advance of the wedding shower.

Once you've sent out the invitations, it is time to start planning your party. You will want to start with some light appetizers for your party guests. Try to provide a variety of foods, and try to avoid foods that guests might be allergic to. If you intend to serve highly allergenic foods like peanuts, be sure to keep them well away from the other foods you will serve. Don't forget to think about drinks as well. Serve a wide variety, and be sure to include healthy drinks like water and fruit juice. If you also intend to serve cake, try to make it fit with the theme of your party.

Once you've considered the food, you are ready to start thinking about party games. You will want to play two to four games during your bridal shower. These games can serve as ice breakers if you wish. One fun game is to issue a list of common purse items. Whoever has the most items in their purse from your list wins. Another great game is a simple wedding word scramble. Whoever deciphers the most words in the time allotted is the winner.

Be sure to include time in your shower for everyone to introduce themselves and their relationship to the bride. Remember that several of your guests may have a connection to no one but the bride, so it is important to help them get involved with the other shower attendees.

A sixth thing to consider when you are planning a bridal shower is party favors for all of the guests. While this tends to be a regional idea, offering party favors for each guest is a nice touch. You can do something as simple as a small box of candy or a scented candle. Try to offer party favors that reflect the theme of your shower, if you have one.

An additional thing to think about when you are planning is the decorative scheme. If you are having a themed shower, you probably already have some ideas in mind for decorations. If you are having a fairly general themed bridal shower, you need to think about table linens and centerpieces at the very least.

One final thing you must consider when you are planning a bridal shower is planning for after the shower. Buying some thank you notes for the bride to send that match the invitations is a nice touch. Furthermore, giving the bride a preprinted list of guests with up-to-date address information can also be quite helpful.

Planning a bridal shower is an intensive procedure, but getting the right combination of events will lead to a happy memory.

The Basics of Throwing a Bridal Shower Tea Party

If you are planning a bridal shower, you are probably looking for a unique and fun way to celebrate. You want to have the traditions of a bridal shower, such as gift giving and mingling, but you want to jazz it up a little and add a new twist. Why not consider throwing a bridal shower tea party?

A Brief Look at the History of Tea Parties

Most people view tea parties as an upscale, extravagant affair. In many ways, this is true. Over tie, it has evolved into a tradition that is both elegant and refined. The concept of setting aside a special time to enjoy tea was, however, established by the working class citizens of Britain who enjoyed taking in tea during their evening supper. Over time, teatime slowly moved up in the day from the evening to mid or late afternoon.

Now, “Afternoon” Tea is used to describe when tea and a snack are enjoyed in the afternoon. “High” Tea, on the other hand, is used to describe when having tea in the evening and with a larger meal. Both men and women now enjoy Afternoon Tea between meals and High Tea in the evening. Some even use Afternoon Tea as a way to entertain business guests.

Decorations

Because Afternoon Tea is intended to be a somewhat elegant affair, you must be sure to cover the tables with linens. If possible, you should also use silver and china to add to the atmosphere of refinement. A silver three-tier tray also adds a touch of class and is an excellent way to put your snacks on display and within easy reach to your guests. Teapot warmers are also a fantastic decoration, which adds the practical benefit of keeping your tea warm.

If you choose to have your bridal shower tea party in the evening and outdoors, try hanging small white lights around the area of the party. Then, place several votive candles in clear glass holders on the tables. The dim lighting and pleasant atmosphere is perfect for a bridal shower tea party, particularly one with a small group of friends.

Foods to Accompany Afternoon Tea

All food for an Afternoon Tea should be prepared before the guests arrive. It is ok to set this up as a buffet style snack or to pass various plates of treats around the table. You should, however, go around and actually serve the tea yourself. Sugar cubes, milk, and lemon slices should also be available to your guests to include in their tea.

The foods associated with afternoon tea should not be heavy and overly filling. It should consist of bite size pieces of biscuits or scones, sandwiches, and sweets. Some examples of traditional Afternoon Tea snacks include cucumber sandwiches, clotted cream, lemon teacakes and Madeleines, which are cake-like cookies. Other great choices are asparagus and prosciutto tea sandwiches and, for large gatherings, chicken salad sandwiches are a good choice. Miniature chocolates, white chocolate dipped strawberries, and pastel Jordan Almonds should also be included on your snack table.

For an extra fancy touch, provide a white frosted cake for your bridal shower tea party. Decorate it with edible flowers, such as pink roses, pansies, nasturtiums, carnations, and calendulas. Your guests will be sure to admire the final outcome.

Bridal Shower Tea Party Favors

There are several excellent favors you can create for your bridal shower tea party. Small bouquets made of fresh flowers make a great decoration and favor for your guests. Or, try filling a jar with tea for each guest. Then, decorate the top of each jar with something special to symbolize your bridal shower or wedding, such as a miniature veil or a white hat with flowers decorating the brim.

Activities

In addition to other traditional bridal shower games, a bridal shower tea party lends itself naturally to a more intimate type of activity. One activity that is great for a bridal shower tea party is to ask each guest ahead of time to come prepared with a great love story or poem to share. These stories can be shared with one another while drinking tea, and will provide for wonderful inspiration to the bride-to-be. If possible, have each guest writer her love story or poem down and create a book as a keepsake.

Know your Neighbor - Easy Shower Games to Make Everyone Comfortable

Planning a few games for a bridal shower is the perfect way to break the ice and help the guests get to know each other. Many games can be played with only a few supplies, and some need nothing to play. If the guests at your bridal shower are not familiar with one another, consider playing games to help make everyone comfortable.

When planning bridal shower games, you will need to take into consideration the guests that will be in attendance. If relatives and family members will be in attendance, it might be wise to steer clear of games that will offend or embarrass some people. Save those games for the bachelorette party or for a girl’s night out. Also, plan your games ahead of time and know what you will need to play each game. It is always a good idea to have all of the supplies such as pens, pencils, papers and other items ready to go before the party starts. This will save you from looking for these items at the last minute while the guests are waiting. It is also a good idea to know how long each game will take before the party begins. Most games take no longer than 10-15 minutes. Knowing this will help you plan enough games and activities for the bridal shower.

Also, think about prizes for the games. The bridal shower guest might enjoy winning prizes for certain games. There are several ways to go about giving gifts. You might purchase gifts or favors that the guests can take home. Or, consider purchasing gifts that the guests can give to the bride-to-be at the end of the shower. Wrap the prizes and have a basket for the guests to place them in after the games are over. If you plan on doing this, make sure your guests understand that the prizes are intended for the bride.

If you are low on ideas for bridal shower games, here are a few suggestions that almost anyone can enjoy.

Love Poem: Write twenty romantic words on index cards. These words can include passion, roses, chocolate, love, candles, massage, lips, hugs and kiss. On another set of cards, write 20 non-romantic words such as nose, house, car, cat, and telephone. Stack each set of cards in two different piles and hand out a pencil and paper to each guest. Instruct each player to draw a card from each pile. After each guest has drawn two cards, tell them to write a silly love poem using words from each card they have drawn. When everyone is finished, have players read the poems out loud. You might get something like, “How do I love thee, let me count the cars.”

Life Line: Pass a spool of string or yarn around to each guest. Instruct the guests to cut off a piece of string however long they want, but do not tell them what it will be used for. After everyone has a string, have guests take turns telling about them selves. Tell them to wrap the string around their finger and they must talk about themselves until all of the string is around their finger. You can give prizes for the person who tells the most facts about themselves or the one with the most interesting facts.

The Magic Word: As everyone arrives for the bridal shower, give each guest a pin to wear on his or her shirt. You can make a pin using flowers, a small bridal bell or even a bow. Before the shower begins, decide on a magic word, that you think everyone will want to say often, such as wedding or maybe even the groom’s name. Tell the guests the magic word and tell them that the word cannot be mentioned during the shower. If a guest hears another guest say the magic word, they can take that person’s pin and wear it. The guest that has the most pins at the end of the shower wins a prize.

Couple Trivia: Before the shower begins, make a list of several questions about the bride and groom. You might want to include questions such as “Where did the bride and groom met?”, “How long have the bride and groom been engaged?”, “Where did they go for their first date?” Hand out pens and paper and ask each question out loud. The person that gets the most correct wins the game.

Six Suggestions for Do-It-Yourself Bridal Shower Invitations

A bridal shower is a time for fun and happiness. It is an opportunity for the bride-to-be to share in the company of her friends and family, while being “showered” by gifts of love and affection. To add to the personal feel of the shower and to create an intimate touch, it can be a great idea to create do-it-yourself bridal shower invitations. Your guests will certainly appreciate the time it takes you to create these invitations. In addition, creating your own invitations can often help you save money in the long run and will ensure that your cards fit perfectly within your bridal shower theme.

Add the Personal Touch

There are many ways you can personalize your handmade bridal shower invitations. One is to add a picture of yourself and your fiancé to the invitation. Programs such as Macromedia Fireworks and Adobe Photoshop are great for manipulating photographs and adding special effects. With such programs, you can create a textured look, add borders, or make a cameo-style oval shape of the photo.

Choose the Right Design

If you don’t want to add a picture to your invitation, you should still add some sort of clip art or design. Take your time to look around on the Internet for different images that might work for your invitations. There are many free clip-art images available, and you might be able to find one that will fit your theme beautifully.

Make or Select the Right Paper

Making your own paper for your handmade bridal shower invitations can truly add a special touch. If you cannot make your own paper, be sure to choose the highest quality paper you can manage. The paper quality will have a far greater impact on the final look and feel of your handmade bridal shower invitations than you may realize.

Choose the Right Font

If you are going to print your handmade shower invitations, be sure to take the time to select the right font color, style, and size. The lettering on your invitation can make a great impact on setting the mood for your bridal shower.

Do a Few Trial Runs

After you have come up with what you think is the perfect font and design for your do-it-yourself shower invitations, print one off with regular printer paper. This will help you make sure it has the look you are really after, without wasting your more expensive, high quality paper. After you are sure your invitation is just perfect, go ahead and print them all off.

Try Something New

Making your own bridal shower invitations is a great time to try something new. Embossing your own bridal shower invitations can make them look classy and unique. In addition, your guests will appreciate the time and effort it takes to create these cards. To emboss your do-it-yourself bridal shower invitations, you will need to obtain an embossing heat tool, which will cost approximately $35 at a craft store. This is a worthwhile investment because you will be able to use it for many different special occasions, including creating thank you notes, programs, and invitations. You can also use an embossing heat tool with the hobby of scrapbooking (maybe you can put one together after the wedding!).

You will also need embossing powder, which costs about $5 per bottle, in the colors you need. An embossing inkpad, costing about $5, and stamps, which cost about $5-10 each, will also need to be purchased.

The stamp will serve as the image you will use on your do-it-yourself bridal shower invitations. Therefore, you should pick out a couple that seem to fit within the theme of the shower or, if you wish, the theme of the wedding. You may also simply choose a design or image that represents love, such as two intertwined hearts or a tulip design. These stamps can also be used over and over and can go beyond just your bridal shower invitations. In fact, you might choose to emboss the design or picture on the program at your wedding or on the menu cards at your reception.

The colored embossing powder you will use to create your invitations will actually go a long way. Therefore, you might want to just stick to one or two colors in order to keep the cost down. One or two bottles should be plenty to create all the cards you need.

The actual process of embossing is quite simple. First, stamp the inkpad with the stamp you selected for your do-it-yourself bridal shower invitations. Then, sprinkle some of your embossing powder over the stamped area. Tap off the excess powder and let it fall onto another piece of plain paper. The excess powder can be returned to its container by creasing the plain paper and using it as a funnel to pour the powder back in. After the excess embossing powder has been removed, apply heat to the area by holding your embossing heat tool near to, but not directly on, the area. Continue applying heat for several seconds until the embossing powder is melted into the image or design you desire.

After you get good at this process, you can use different colors within the same design. Or, you can choose to use a couple different designs. The best part is that no two invitations will be exactly the same – making each one a truly unique gift to each of your guests!

Emailed Bridal Shower Invites vs. Snail Mail - The Pros and Cons

E-mail is the great equalizer. Business people and busy housewives alike love the ease with which they can send our communications, large and small, with the click of a button. No longer tied to the tedious observation of business hours, anyone can now get in touch with a business, pay a bill, purchase a shirt, or research the life of Abraham Lincoln – in the middle of the night, at five in the morning, when the baby is finally asleep, the first grader is finally in school, dinner plates are finally washed, or any other moment that allows someone caught up in the hectic hustle and bustle of life to catch a breath. It is no wonder that greetings cards have gone by the wayside a bit and made room for the e-card. As a matter of fact, if it were not for such electronic cards, many would probably not get any Easter of Christmas cards, or perhaps some would not send any! Thus, it is not surprising that the next new wave in electronic greetings is the electronic invitation.

Of course, some purists purse their lips at the idea of sending invitations through cyberspace, and in some cases many would agree. For example is it appropriate to send a birthday party invitation via the Internet? What about a Super Bowl party invitation? Many agree that these occasions are somewhat informal and therefore an electronic invitation truly is all that is required. Yet what about the more formal occasion of a bridal shower? Should bridal shower invites be emailed or sent via snail mail?

Anyone who routinely marks down to eschew procrastination on the annual New Years resolution list will most likely applaud the notion of sending the invites via email. After all, if the party is the day after tomorrow, it is indeed a bit too late to still send out anything via the post office. On the other hand, if the party is still a week away or perhaps even further on the horizon, would the formality of the occasion not warrant a handwritten card? Traditionalists have long since felt that bridal shower invitations quite often become keepsakes for the bride and groom, and perhaps also for the guests, and so it is much more appropriate to have the tangible form of invitation rather than simply the electronic message. At the same time, some bridal shower organizers go through great lengths to hand make beautifully crafted cards, envelopes, and return envelopes, and with the help of rubber stamps, glue, some simple craft supplies, and a lot of time and patience send out these small masterpieces to friends and family who love to receive them.

Obviously there is no good answer. By way of suggestion, here are some times that it appears to be best to send out e-mailed invitations:

If you have procrastinated with your paper invitations and the party is only a few short days away, don’t wait any longer but send out an e-mail blitz to get as many friends and family members informed as possible.

If the bride and groom are not much concerned with tradition, but do not really care about the niceties of mailed versus e-mailed invitations, go ahead and e-mail them.

If the bride is a cyber junkie, go ahead and e-mail them. This would be right up her ally!

If one or more of the guest to be have specifically requested to receive an e-mailed invitation, please be sure to honor that request. They might not be looking for a piece of snail mail, and so your beautifully crafted invite may get stuck between a few pieces of junk mail.

If the bride and groom shy away from the traditional trappings of a wedding ceremony, and are instead modernizing the whole experience, then it might also be appropriate to modernize the bridal shower experience.

Obviously, for the majority of brides and grooms as well as their friends and families, handwritten and mailed invitations are still the best way to go. Many will hold on to those little written gems and put them in scrap books and photo albums, where they will be treasured for years and quite possibly decades to come.

Bridal Showers Gone Co-Ed - Fun Themes that Celebrate both Bride and Groom

Bridal showers are not just for women anymore. Traditionally, only women attended a bridal shower in order to “shower” the bride with items for her new married life. Now, as more couples pitch in together to pay for a wedding, co-ed bridal showers seem more appropriate. Generally, a co-ed bridal shower is for the bride and groom and all of their closest friends.

Hosting a co-ed bridal shower can be fun because they are usually less formal than a traditional bridal shower. Almost anyone can attend a co-ed bridal shower. Sometimes, the bride and groom want close family and friends, and other times, co-workers can be invited. In addition, a relative of the bride or groom does not usually hold a co-ed shower. Friends usually plan co-ed showers.

In addition, if you are hosting a co-ed bridal shower, talk to the bride and groom about whom to invite. Most etiquette rules say that anyone who is invited to a bridal shower must also be invited to the actual wedding. At a co-ed shower, friends and family of both the groom and the bride are generally included in the shower guest list.

There are many options for a co-ed shower. If your home is not large enough to hold a large amount of people, consider holding the shower at a restaurant, a park, or a rented room. Also, there are no set rules about when to hold a co-ed bridal shower. Consider any time of the day that is convenient, a good time to host a co-ed shower. Most guests will enjoy a relaxed, informal shower so if that is what you are planning, make sure to mention that on your invitation.

You can hold a co-ed shower just about anywhere. One popular option is to host a weekend barbeque at a park, lake or just in the backyard. If you want something a little more formal, consider hosting a wine and cheese shower. Ask each guest to bring a different type of wine. As a host, you will provide the cheese, crackers and other snacks. The couple’s favorite restaurant is another good option for hosting a co-ed shower. Look for a place that has a large banquet-type room that can hold all invited guest.

When you host a co-ed shower, consider having a theme. This can be fun for both the guests and the bride and groom. Some ideas might be a honeymoon theme. Ask guests to bring gifts that the couple can use on their honeymoon. This might include luggage, cameras, lingerie, and gift cards for hotels or restaurants in the city where they will be visiting or even photo albums for the honeymoon pictures.

Another fun co-ed bridal shower theme might be an electronic theme. Any groom will appreciate new electronics for the new home. Ask guests to bring items such as stereos, DVD players or movies, music CDs, computer software, digital clocks or even sound machines. Anything that the couple does not already own will be a great gift for this type of shower.

It is acceptable to hold a co-ed shower even if the bride and groom prefer a more traditional shower. The couple might need basic necessities for their homes such as tableware or towels. Find out where they have registered for gifts and include that information on the shower invitation.

When you plan a co-ed shower, you might want to consider playing a few games. Appropriate games and activities can help fill the time if you are having a more traditional shower in your home. Think about the guests that will be in attendance and plan your games and activities to suit the guests. Do not plan games or activities that might be considered offensive if you will have a mixed crowd. Instead, concentrate on icebreaker games or trivia games about the bride and groom. You can even add interest to the shower by playing men against the women games. If you are hosting a barbeque or outdoor shower, the men might feel more comfortable with other activities while the bride opens her gifts.

Planning and hosting a co-ed shower can be fun and exciting. It is becoming more common for showers to include both men and women. Find out what your bride and groom prefer and plan the shower around their preferences.