The Groom and the Bridal Shower

If you're having an all girls shower than I suggest asking some men to show up at the end of the shower to help bring the gifts to the cars.

You should have the fathers of the bride and groom, any brothers and the groom arrive about 30-45 minutes toward the end of the party to say hello and load the car(s) with the bags and boxes of gifts you (and the groom) received.

Another idea is to get the groom to arrive earlier and take part in a game - like the newlywed game - during the shower.  I like this idea because it's more fun when you hear the groom's responses live and you can see the couple interact with each other.

Bridal Shower Game

If you follow my @aisledash Twittter feed then you read that I was at a bridal shower over the weekend.  It was at tea party at Lady Mendel's in Manhattan.

One of the games the bridesmaids planned was bridal themed Scattergories.  It was a lot of fun - I love Scattergories, and I won!  Here's how it works:

Come up with a list or 8-10 categories and then use the first letter of the bride's name and the groom's name for the two rounds.  We only had time to score one round so another idea is to play one round and  use the first letter of the bride's name or the first letter of what the bride's married name will be.

In this case the letter for round one was S and for round two D.  Some of the categories were:  Something you find at a bridal shower, something the bride will need on her wedding day, a word to describe the bride, a word to describe the groom, the bride's favorite food, something you find on a bridal registry and a pet name for a spouse.

Scoring it is difficult because the idea is that you want to have the most original answers.  If someone else has what you wrote then you don't get a point.  The bridesmaid running the game first had people shouting their answers and she didn't always catch what people said so by the 5th category she went table by table allowing a few people to give their answer.  This allowed people to hear if they got a point or not, but it also dragged the game on and that's why we only got through one round.

So if you play this game, which is a lot of fun, maybe you want to limit it to one round and if you have a lot of guests maybe you want the tables to play against each other.