The Modern Bridal Shower

This girly bridal shower was the perfect excuse to pull out my mum's china tea cup collection

A couple of weeks ago, my sisters and I hosted a bridal shower for our soon-to-be sister in law, Lauren. Lauren and my brother had already had a Jack & Jill wedding shower/engagement party, and had already received many of the gifts on their registry, so we took this as an opportunity to have a ladies-only bridal shower, and invited every guest to bring a bottle of her favourite wine for the bride-to-be. My mother had a pre-wedding bash like this when she was younger, and had a year's supply of wine for her and my dad by the end of it, so she was keen on the idea.

With wine set loosely as our theme, we began planning a small shower of 25 guests, with a simple luncheon menu, a very feminine cake, and beautiful floral arrangements. When it came to games, I was disappointed by the selection of shower game suggestions online. I didn't want the party to be stuffy and old school, but I wanted to have a few fun activities that would bring everyone together, especially as it was many of our guest's first time meeting.

So I took the time to come up with 3 updated takes on classic bridal shower games, and we ended up having a ton of fun. My sister came up with the idea for the forth game, and we gave prizes to the winners - corkscrews, in fact - to tie in with our original wine theme. Below are the games we chose to take our shower up a notch.

One of our bridal bingo game cards

1. Bridal Bingo: I had read somewhere online that a fun game to play at a shower is bingo, but with the word "bride" at the top of the cards to match the occasion. The site I was on suggested putting words in each box that tie into the bride and groom's life, but I knew I could take this game one step further, by incorporating photos rather than text.

I made these 5 x 5 bridal bingo cards using Canva, a web-app with hundreds of design templates, and made 25 different versions of a pictorial bingo card, including various snaps of Sebastian and Lauren. We gave each guest her own bingo card and pen, and told players to cross out each photo that appeared in the slideshow we played on our TV screen, if it appeared on her bingo card. The first person to cross off a line (horizontal, diagonal or vertical) of photos on her card, won the game. The best part of the game, however, was that it allowed us to go through photos of the bride and groom's relationship - some silly, some romantic, some formal, some candid - and Lauren was able to share stories about when those photos were taken.​

Can you match these married couples?

2. Match the Celebrity Couple: I had played this at another bridal shower, but many of the options were very obvious ones, at least for anyone who paid minimal attention to pop culture. I decided to make our version a little more challenging, with a broad range of couples from various industries, levels of fame, and generations. This made it a little bit more of a puzzle, but I knew we would have at least a couple ladies tied for first place, so as a tie-breaker, we had our top runners guess which couple on the game card has been married the longest. This game had everyone chattering as they referenced their celebrity knowledge.

The game card I made for our version of "He Said, She Said"

3. He Said, She Said: As I recently discovered, searching for bridal shower game ideas on Pinterest results in dozens of "shoe game" examples. The shoe game is often played at engagement parties or weddings, and involves the bride and groom holding up a shoe (either their own, or their spouse's) to answer a series of who does this, or who does this better, questions. Because S & L had already played the shoe game at their last shower, I wanted to make this game different; I also wanted to make it more personal and less generic. So I did my best to recall things each of them had said - direct quotations from the two of them. I'm fortunate to have an auditory memory, but I also pulled some quotations from Facebook status updates and text messages - funny ones that weren't private, of course. I then created the template above, and put moustache and stiletto options to represent S & L, respectively. Although this reminded me slightly of tests I took in my high school English classes when we studied Shakespeare, this version of "identify the speaker" was much more fun, and had guests racking their brains to see who they thought was more likely to utter the words on the paper in front of them.

We integrated this traditional guessing game into our wine-themed shower

4. And last but not least, we made one game particularly wine-centric, to coincide with our shower's theme. We filled a large, round vase with wine corks and had each guest estimate how many corks were in the vase. This is a classic game, that can be played with anything from jellybeans to golf balls, depending on your party's theme. Our corks allowed us to post this pun-y sign on our bar, which we loved.

Can't forget to mention our beautiful cake from Bobbette and Belle (the flowers were made of sugar and 100% edible!)

I'm not one for cheesy games all of the time, but every so often, I must admit, they can be fun, especially in settings where people of different ages and backgrounds are all coming together for the first time, trying to get to know one another. As it turns out, a couple of these games and a delicious cake are all you need for a great shower.

#Bridal #Shower #Wedding #Games #Party #EventPlanning