In this section, you’ll find all sorts of clever ideas for showers. The ideas are meant to spark your own creativity and give your brain something to chew on. You can always come up with something of your own, or add to the ideas here.
Themed showers are fun for several reasons—the planning is easier; the event is more memorable; the pictures are easy to identify; everyone remembers the event more clearly.
If some of the following stuff sounds too far out, it’s no big deal. There are some really conservative ideas tucked in here, too. The idea is that you and your guests and bride have fun and be comfortable. So browse through these lists and pick and choose what you like. Have your cohost select her three favorite themes. You do the same and choose the one(s) that overlaps.
The theme of your party will determine where you have it, of course. Chapter 2, “Shower Themes,” will give you plenty of ideas to build on. You can mix and match ideas to come up with something of your own, or it may just spark a fresh idea.
Sometimes, when I am planning a big party, I create it around an object to get a theme. A yellow plastic pineapple bowl I got at an ice cream parlor inspired several Hawaiian parties. Is your couple going to Maui for their honeymoon? You could try to theme your party on their romantic destination, her favorite hobby, something she’s always wanted to do (bungee jump? parachute?) or just about anything else.
Think about the other showers you have been to—or ones you two have been to together. What elements did she think were interesting or fun? What kinds of things bring back fond memories of your childhood together, if you knew one another way back then?
The kind of shower you choose will determine when you have it, too, as in afternoon or evening, weekend or weeknight. The traditional time to have it is about two weeks before the wedding, but it’s even OK two nights before the wedding when the guys traditionally have their bachelor’s party. (Two nights allows any hangovers to wear off so the groom is clear-headed when he says, “I do!”)
If you think you want to try a surprise party, you should begin to pick a place or time she would least expect. Read the great section on surprise parties at the end of Chapter 2, if you haven’t already. Otherwise, and much easier, just call her and ask when would be most convenient, and surprise her with the details. (Which is a much more Day-Timer® way to do it in the very late ‘90s.)
Once you’ve given some thought to the kind of shower your bride would like most, then you can move on to the next step: choosing a theme. In the following section are some specific questions and answers that might help you focus more clearly before you choose.
For brides-to-be who like Hawaii, who are from Hawaii, who are marrying a Hawaiian, who are going to Hawaii for the honeymoon (the nation’s #1 honeymoon destination), or who just like Hawaiian music, this is a perfect idea. If time and weather permit, hold it in the summer, outside. Get lots of flowers and interesting, easily prepared food. Make everyone wear Hawaiian clothes and provide plastic leis when guests arrive (you can get them very cheap from a place called Oriental Trading Company—see address in the back of this book). Serve fruit punch—spiked and plain—and a main entrée of shish kebabs or sweet-and-sour pineapple meatballs with lots of rice and some Hawaiian bread from the grocery store. See the section on unique invitations in Chapter 5 for a great idea on how to make invitations for this party!
Check out the watermelon basket in Chapter 7. Your local party goods store will be totally stocked for this theme!
Complete with caterer and rented location, this is an elegant, tasteful, classy party for your chic bride-to-be. Hosted at a local hotel, this party includes men, champagne, a sit-down dinner, and a super cake. Lots of fun, rather pricey, but worth it. Have your guests dress formally or semiformally. See if you can get a band or a harpist to provide live music for the event. For a really clever and elegant invitation, try buying some glossy black paper from the art supply store. With a thin line of glue, write the bride’s name or the words “Wedding Shower” on paper you’ve cut and folded in half. Sprinkle the wet glue with gold glitter. Or get a fancy stamp and a gold glitter stamp pad and stamp the fronts. On the inside, insert a piece of tissue paper in the colors of the shower, or ask the bride if she has leftovers from the invitations. Print the words of the invitation on the inside.
Send each female attendee home with a long-stemmed rose from the table bouquets, or a fancy sachet filled with Jordan almonds in a veil bag tied with gold curling ribbon.
This is her last chance to be a single girl, and the guys are having a bachelor’s party anyway, so why not? Hire a male stripper or go to a girls-only dance club. As a party favor, why not provide each guest with a little lacy sachet in which you’ve tucked a condom and a chocolate kiss? If you don’t hire the stripper, you might enjoy the task of interviewing three or four young men from the local college’s drama department who would like to act as hosts/waiters for the evening. They could prove invaluable!
You’d probably have the shower in the evening. Replace your entry light with a black-lightbulb, and play your favorite music. You wouldn’t want to throw this shower for a demure friend. Have some fun! For the invitations, get some black glossy paper from the art supply store. Cut it so that folded, it fits neatly into your envelopes. On the front of each sheet, cut out a pair of lips, a big X or a big heart. On bright red paper, cut just ¼ inch smaller, print the party invitation. Fold the red in half and insert it into the card so it shows through the cutout on the front of the black. Affix it with a dab of glue in the crease. Very cool!
Why not have everyone wear Western wear or even square-dancing costumes? Could you invite guys, too, and hire a square-dance caller and someone to teach y’all in your spacious backyard? How about line dancing? Or do you just want to play Garth Brooks on the CD player and have the guests wear their boots? You’d probably serve a red-meat barbecue—no tofu for this crowd! Or maybe chili, and you could send everyone home with a little package of chili mix.
You could provide everyone with a neckerchief in bright colors—many hobby stores carry them for as little as ninety-nine cents each. You could use a few bales of hay for seating in your backyard.
For clever invitations, buy some brown construction paper, some small chicken feathers (or pull them from a pillow), and a small square of fake leather, leopard skin, or calico fabric. Cut the construction paper into little hat shapes, leaving the top of the hat with a seam so that it opens like a card. Cut the fabric into tiny strips to make hatbands and glue the feathers into the hatband. On the inside, insert the actual wording of the invitation. Yee-haw!
Not much is easier to cook for a crowd than Mexican food! Whether it’s appetizers or a main course, Mexican food is easy to cook, easy to serve, and always popular. Throw some corn chips in a bowl with two or three kinds of salsa (or see the “Do-It-Yourself 12-Step Shower Catering Plan” in Chapter 6 for a great bean-dip recipe). Play Mexican music, decorate with sombreros and serapes (Mexican colorful woven blankets), and hire some mariachis to come play for your group. You can send the guests home with little loaves of cornbread wrapped in “Mexican”-print fabrics. Don’t forget to play some great Mexican music!
For charming invitations, you could make paper flowers out of crepe paper and attach the invitation to the stem. Here’s how to do it. You’ll want to use 5″×7” envelopes to mail these.
Cut six pear-shaped, pear-sized petals for each invitation out of brightly colored crepe paper (from the hobby/craft store). Don’t use tissue paper.
Roll the petals one by one around a pencil width-wise, from end to end, NOT from the tip of the pearshape to the widest part.
Unroll the petals and gather them together at the narrowest part of the shape with a green pipe cleaner in the center. Scrunch them together and wrap some of the pipe cleaner around the petals. This now forms the stamen of the flower and the back of the green pipe cleaner is the stem. Dip this protruding tip into a touch of red paint you’ve mixed with glue and sprinkle it with green or yellow glitter, or cracked pepper. When dry, attach an invitation printed on heavyweight paper with a hole punched in the corner to the end of the pipe cleaner.
Is your couple going to California for their honeymoon? Moving there? Coming from there? Why not have a party based on the stereotypes of the West Coast? Offer your guests plastic sunglasses when they arrive, and have them dress Rodeo Drive gaudy or totally beach bum. The food? Heck, that’s easy! Serve braised tofu with rice, and a main dish they’ll recognize, too. Lots of sprouts, vegetables, whole grain breads, and so on. The drinks must include fruit punch, sparkling water, and smoothies!
Have the party at a local water park or by your pool. Of course, you’ll play Beach Boys music! Heck, why not hire a couple of local beach-bum-looking kids to help you serve food and drinks at the party?
Make invitations by sticking contact paper to manila envelopes. Cut them out in the shape of surfboards (like, wow, man!) and paste a printed sheet of data on the “belly” of the board. Totally awesome! You could send your guests home with tiny seashells pressed into white, pink, or blue votive candles you slightly melted. How about little bottles of sunscreen? Beach balls? Totally cool, dude!
Any time is a good time for a Fourth of July party! Is your bride marrying near this holiday? Are either of the couple in the military? Are they going to Philadelphia or D.C. for the honeymoon? Is either of them from there? Is it summer? Does one or both of them realize marriage means a modification of their independence? Can you think of any excuse? The coolest thing about holiday parties is that you can get cheap, cheap, cheap decorations if the holiday has already passed for real. You know what to do—get some firecrackers, dress everything in red, white, and blue.
Obviously, the invitation will have to explain it’s the Fourth of July in May, but make clever invitations with silver stick-on stars on blue construction paper with red and white tissue-paper streamers.
Here’s a lovely idea for winter brides, especially if there will be more than one shower, if the shower is coed, or if the shower is for a couple who are entering second marriages.
Theme your party around Christmas! Have everyone bring a Christmas ornament or some other carefully selected holiday decoration for the happy couple. You could give Santa hats to everyone who shows up (which would make for great pictures). Why not hire the Stripping Santa (for the right crowd), serve eggnog, stack the presents in a sleigh you made out of cardboard, give the guests sugar cookies or gingerbread men as take-home gifts, and decorate the halls with balls of holly!
Of course, your invitation will have to explain the apparently wrong season, if it is. Cute invitations might be two pieces of red-stocking felt sewn together in seconds on your machine, with a white tassel or puff ball on top. Inside, you could insert white triangle-shaped cards with the party info on them. Or what about buying some silk/polyester mistletoe and attaching an invitation to it with a sparkling gold or silver ribbon or wire?
If there is any holiday at all that’s your favorite or the bride’s, why not recreate it for the shower? Nobody says we can only have one per year, and decorating for this holiday will be a snap! (Especially if the real one has recently passed!) Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Easter, Lincoln’s Birthday, there really isn’t anything you cannot do! It will make it easy to decorate and theme, yes, but it could also be a great time for guests who will create fond new memories! If it snows at Christmas in your part of the world, have everyone wear bathing suits and Santa caps to your party in July!
Bring gifts like garden tools, gloves, a kneeling pad, a package of bulbs, a gardening book. Have it outside, serve salads in big clay pots, send the guests home with tiny flowers growing in those precious little 2-inch pots. The cleanup will be a snap—everyone can wear overalls or work clothes. Why not have it at an Arboretum? The ideal invitation would be to send one gardening glove with a hand-shaped invitation inside—guests have to show up to get the other half of their glove as a set! Paint nail polish on the “hand” inside the glove!
This delightful takeoff on the British tradition of high tea is a charming idea. Serve a true high tea, complete with scones, jam, clotted cream, and an assortment of teas. Have it outside on a big lawn, and have everyone wear tea gowns (usually, some lightweight, summery ankle-length dress).
Perfect if you can find delightful floral tablecloths, some vases of roses and daisies, lace table toppers, and china cups. (Borrow cups from everyone you know who has china!) You could all pitch in for a china service for the bride, or bring tea-related things like a teapot, an assortment of gourmet teas, scone mix, and so forth. Send your guests home with collections of tea bags, tiny pots of jam, bath tea sachets, floral perfume, or potpourri.
I have to admit I am stealing this idea from a batch of cards I saw in England. Clever, delicately patterned heavyweight paper was cut into the shape of a teacup and saucer. The paper was outlined in dark blue so you could immediately recognize it as a teacup and saucer shape. A tiny paper strawberry was pasted to the “saucer” part, and an individually wrapped Earl Grey teabag was tucked into a slit cut in the side of the cup. Adorable! The invitations were printed on the inside.
If all of the bride’s guests, family, friends, and relatives are far away, here’s a cool idea! Have everyone out of town send a present along with a humorous or touching note or memory for the bride. Set up yourself and a few local friends to have the “unwrapping party.” Decorate some place and take pictures to send to the folks back home of the bride opening everything. It’ll mean the world to those who cannot attend, and the world to your bride.
You would want to send the actual “invitation to send a present” on a piece of sturdy brown cardboard on which you have pasted a smaller printed explanation of what you want them to send. To decorate this invitation, use a bit of jute or even dress it up with a bit of ribbon and a tiny fan-folded spray of wedding gift wrap. Naturally, you will wrap these invitations, and a label preaddressed with your name and address on it, in plain brown paper, slightly oversized, and tie it with jute or twine. Very clever, and it will get the message across. This will probably cost fifty-five cents each to send, however.
At the shower, have the bride or someone read aloud the written memories before opening the packages.
Here’s a chance to expand your friend’s and her new hubby’s culinary skills! Have guests write out their favorite recipe and buy the couple of implements necessary for making it. Like a rolling pin and five pounds of pastry flour, a chef’s hat and apron, a wok and a bottle of sesame oil, you get the idea. Decorate your walls with fabulous food pictures and get some really interesting things to eat from a variety of cuisines. You could have everyone wear an apron to the shower, or provide them yourself!
You could hire a chef to come give a cooking demo (find one cheap at the local junior college); raffle an Easy Bake or toaster oven for the winner of a party game; supply all the guests with cards to write their recipes and names on and slip them into a plastic photo album for the bride’s ease of use; buy her some nice cookbooks; all pitch in and buy a stove or microwave; assign everyone one spice to bring and assemble them on a fancy rack; give away spice sachets to the guests as favors; or surprise the bride with a certificate to a cooking class she wants to attend.
Send recipe cards with the invitation. They could be the preprinted kind with words like “For Pam’s Wedding Shower.” Dab a drop of cinnamon oil on each card before you slip it into the invitation.
I don’t know that I’d do this one unless it’s coed, but it is considered a traditional shower. You would suggest that the guests bring things one fixes up a house or yard with. Gardening gloves, rakes, paint brushes, a drill, things like that.
You could also bring books on the subject, a discount coupon from a handyman, a gift certificate to a paint store, or have one of those ladies who sells home decorating out of a van come and do a demo (pay her on the side and be clear about whether or not she can pitch her wares during the party).
For food, you could use paint-roller pans (new, clean ones!) as serving dishes, have everyone wear a painter’s cap with his or her name on it (a cheap, easy way to learn new names!), and have everyone dress in overalls. Or you could have the shower at the bride-to-be’s new house and everyone could really pitch in! Send the guests home with garden trowels or paint brushes tied with ribbons.
Perfect invitations would, of course, be to buy a really inexpensive set of aluminum pocket screwdrivers—those little ones not bigger than 3 inches, with brightly colored plastic handles. You could tie them securely to sturdy paper invitations with a bit of twine or wire, so they won’t slip during mailing and make holes in the envelope or stab the mailman! Short of that, what about mailing cheap plastic switch-plate covers with printed invitations glued to the inside?
Guests bring stationery, casual home dining stuff (like paper plates), Christmas wrapping paper, toilet paper, a subscription to the local paper, anything paper! This theme also works with wood, glass, metal, vinyl, plastic, and so forth. Make sure to decorate with luminarias, those Mexican lanterns made from waxed paper bags, or Chinese lanterns. Give the guests who come a special mock-up of a newspaper showing the bride and groom on a fake front page, talking (thank God for mail merge) about the special friendship they have with that guest. (Ask the bride for helpful stories.) Take Polaroids of the party and slip them into store-bought paper frames as a giveaway for guests or a keepsake for the bride.
If you have time, a lovely invitation for this would be to take several different types and textures of paper and crinkle them, tear them, and paste them onto heavy white paper. Spray them with setting spray (craft store) and then iridescent glitter spray.
Ask each guest to bring a gift for a particular room of the house, such as bathroom, bedroom, living room, kitchen, garage, and so forth. Obviously, you can overlap if you have more guests than rooms. Place the wrapped gifts in the appropriate rooms of your house and have guests migrate with the bride while she unwraps them. You’re in for some great photo opportunities! Shape your invitations like little houses, or stick a Monopoly house to each one. Bake a cake or have one made that is shaped like a house (or has a plastic one or a picture of one on it). Make up a plaque that says “Home Sweet Home” for the newlyweds to hang, and give each guest a marker to sign it. Send your guests home with those cute little tiny clay pots filled with a small plant, candies, or a fake topiary.
Use Monopoly money as invitations, or send invitations tied to a brick, or just cut little houses out of construction paper and use different textures and colors of paper and fabric to create the siding and roof of the house.
Here’s where you and the other guests pamper yourselves at the shower. Have it around your pool, or at a day spa, where you can isolate for the day. Or, to keep costs down, hire a manicurist, a beauty consultant, even a Mary Kay specialist who can teach proper makeup application techniques. Set up a long table in your living room with mirrors and pots of colors and pretend you’re all in high school again experimenting with makeup and different looks.
Or better yet, hire a masseur or two—preferably the buff, tanned young male type, to come give everyone a massage at the party! Let your guests wear sweats or bathrobes and just have a “Girls Day Off” time. Send everyone home with a little bottle of bath oil.
Attach the invitations to little bottles of ninety-nine-cent nail polish. Or else get decorative plastic bags—like gift bags for kids’ parties—and stuff them full of cotton balls. Insert a brightly colored invitation shaped like a hand or a foot into the center of the bag and seal it. Mail them in large envelopes.
Guests bring gifts of self-pampering for the bride—a gift certificate for a facial or manicure, a husk pillow, a terrycloth robe, flannel jammies, a bottle or two of nail polish.
Guests bring items the couple can use together—a bottle of fine wine, his-and-hers monogrammed towels, CDs, and so forth. This is usually a coed affair. Appropriate games for couples would be played, as well as raffling off a dinner for two at a local restaurant, and so on. A barbecue would be the perfect meal to compliment a his-and-hers shower. You might want to arrange dancing on your lawn or in your living room, and you would have the bride and groom sit beside one another and take turns opening gifts.
Make invitations by cutting big initials for their first names out of pretty, sturdy paper.
Glue the initials to the front of slightly smaller cards and trim to fit envelopes. Take some glitter glue (craft store) in a bold contrasting color and make a swath across the front. When it dries, attach printed-out information to the inside.
For this party, guests would bring things to help the couple set up their home bar: glassware, liquor and wine, coasters, trays, shaker, ice buckets, and so forth. Perhaps a book on drink mixing? (Look for the Everything Book of Bartending at a bookstore near you!) Everyone could pitch in to get them something really great—like a wonderful blender.
Could you hire a local bartender to come teach people how to make exotic drinks? If you do this “girls only,” would you like to hire some handsome waiters to serve? You’d probably do this party in the evening, and perhaps without a meal but with hors d’oeuvres. Send the guests home with tiny alcohol bottles tied with ribbon that matches the party decorations.
For the best possible invitation to this shower, buy those little champagne bottles that are party favors—the ones where you pull the string and the confetti shoots into the air. Tie heart-shaped paper invitations to them and mail them. They’ll be bulky but adorable. Mail them in 5″×7” manila envelopes.
Gifts for this party would be travel items for the couple-to-be to use in their planned destination. Things like travel alarm clocks (or maybe not?), a camera, luggage, small leather goods, guidebooks, and so on. Decorate the room with travel posters. Send invitations that look like tickets. Put a palm tree or a little Big Ben clock or something else appropriate on the cake, and serve food reminiscent of the region to which they will travel.
You could ask a bunch of people to provide slides, images, pictures, or video of the location or even write to the tourism board for a travelogue segment (not more than fifteen minutes long!). You could make it funny by doing a voice-over of your wedding couple’s imaginary trip and first night together.
Paris? Try mailing paper French flags as invitations. The grand tour of Europe? You’d make friends by mailing small Toblerone chocolate bars to everyone, with the invitation attached. Maui? Mail tiny doll-sized grass skirts you made from green tissue paper with miniature bras you cut from floral-patterned fabric tied to an invitation shaped like a woman’s torso. Florida? Send paper orange invitations dabbed with a drop of orange oil.
This shower could also be considered an activity. A wishing well shower is a throwback to older times when the couple was first setting up house. In addition to a regular present, the guests are asked to bring some small item such as a spatula, a potholder, a sponge, a washcloth, a spool of thread, or a box of lightbulbs. The guests wrap the gifts themselves and tape a handwritten poem or note to them.
The hostess builds or buys something similar to a wishing well and ties a length of ribbon to each gift. The bride pulls the objects out of the wishing well and reads the poems one by one. This is an amusing diversion and may be a lot more enjoyable than a typical shower game. A variation would be risqué gifts or sexual implements, but only when the attendees are all about the bride’s age. No heart attack for Granny!
Send the guests home with little gifts of their own, like seed packets, small screwdrivers, wooden spoons tied with ribbons, and so on. Your invitations would probably be little wishing-well shapes, easily made from wood-grain contact paper adhered to manila folders and cut out.
Rather than bringing gifts, everybody shows up with a service to be provided after the couple-to-be returns from their honeymoon. This can be a service they either provide or purchase. Things like cooking a meal for them, helping unpack, offering to return yucky wedding presents, and so on. Services that one might pay for would be a week of maid service, a dry-cleaning service, some sort of handyman time for a specific number of hours, and so forth.
You could give your guests as a party favor a coupon or invitation to a “Welcome Back Mr. and Mrs. Jones” party to be held a week or two after the bride and groom return. So cute!
Make your invitations look like coupons, too, with dotted “cut here” marks. Microsoft Publisher could create this in seconds for you—it has a great template.
Things to entertain the new couple might include a movie, pitching in to get them a VCR, CDs, a movie gift certificate, tickets to a local show for the two of them, a magazine subscription, and best-selling books. Rent a few old movies to watch with lots of popcorn. Put up posters of old movies, take a lot of pictures, stuff like that. Show the bride’s favorite movie?
Send the guests home with gift certificates from Blockbuster, a bottle of CD-cleaning fluid tied with ribbon, or a popcorn ball.
For great invitations, cut out a couple of pictures of movie or music people from People or a similar magazine. Glue one head to the front of each of your invitations. Put a little cloud (like in a comic strip) above each of their heads: “ _________________, will you be at Veronica’s (their name) wedding shower? I wouldn’t miss it for the world!”
What fun! Gather up the girls and load up on sappy old movies, root beer floats, and pizza! Give everyone a small package of tissues as a party favor. Pop the lenses out of cheap plastic sunglasses and make ‘60s cats-eye glasses by gluing some silver glitter to the outer edges of the frames.
Go on the Internet and download Cary’s picture. Make copies of it, or one of his movie posters, and use them as covers on your invitations.
Frankly, Scarlett, your friends won’t want to go home! Watch the movie after having a picnic or luncheon on the lawn, complete with big floppy Scarlett hats you decorated yourself, or that you have your guests decorate as a project. You can buy tiny hats, 4 inches in diameter, at the craft store. Use these as invitations, or fill them with potpourri and seal them with lace circles hot-glued in place and give them as party favors.
You will, of course, need to serve mint juleps and iced tea and have plenty of flowers around. Would you all like to wear Scarlett dresses for the occasion?
If you or the bride are into some interesting hobby, why not have the party at a studio? From there, guests can go eat in a local restaurant and open presents there. The object they create becomes their party favor. It could convert a lot more people to a craft or hobby your bride and you already enjoy together.
If you are renting a place that commonly holds parties, they may provide invitations for you. Otherwise, why not send a colorful plastic paintbrush skewered through the front of an invitation shaped like an artist’s palette.
What could be more fun for your outdoorsy bride and you than to do a “girls only” campout some weekend before the wedding? Of course you’ll eat s’mores and tell ghost stories, but you could also theme the gifts to things she’ll use when she and her honey go camping. This might be the perfect chance for you all to relax and just have fun one last time without the guys.
For fun invitations, find yourself a piece of bark (elm would be good and not heavy) and glue some dried wildflowers to it along with your invitation—printed, of course, on recyclable paper.
Pretend you’re teenagers again! Gather a gaggle of girls, pile into someone’s car or van, and head off for a local hot spot. Maybe your destination will be a town not too far away from where the bride’s from, or where there are other friends to host you all. Spend the weekend remembering, playing, laughing, and just being girls. For gifts, you could all chip in and have something sitting in her front yard or living room when you all get home. How about a microwave or a new washing machine? You could even make your invitation from foil and paper to look like a road sign.
Right in your own backyard! Wear big woolly sweaters, light a fire, and roast marshmallows, just like in the lodge. The gifts could be things she’ll need to learn to ski, ski gear, tickets for lessons, or coupons for lodges or even ski passes. You’ll serve hot chocolate and maybe all hang out in the Jacuzzi afterward and reminisce.
Get some knit fabric and cut tiny sweater shapes. Get some wood-grain paper or contact paper stuck onto lightweight cardboard and cut out skis. Hot glue first the skis, then the sweater, to the front of your invitations. Cute! Send your guests home with packets of hot chocolate mix you decorated.
Let’s go to the hop! Turn your kitchen into a do-it-yourself malt shop, complete with hamburgers. Remove your furniture and your shoes. Invite the guys—or don’t invite them! Wear poodle skirts, hire a DJ, and have a dance! You provide neckerchiefs or bobby sox for the girls. Offer a bowl of fake tattoos for the young toughs; serve bubble gum cigarettes. For great invitations, take a regular paper napkin and frill the edges out by scalloping them with scissors. On very cheap white paper, print out the party directions. Insert it into the paper napkin you cut and crinkle it like a waitress in a diner might have a crinkled handkerchief in her name pin in the ‘50s. Then, tie a knot with curling ribbon. Write the would-be guest’s name on a piece of cardboard you might have even decorated, like the waitress’s pin, and hot glue it to the knot in the curling ribbon.
When’s the last time you went to a slumber party? Remember when you were little girls? Have you known the bride since you two really were having slumber parties? Make this the complete thing—with sleeping bags you rented, toenail polish, chocolate, popcorn, and ghost stories. Gifts could be things she’ll use in the bedroom. Make invitations out of little pieces of fleece or fake fur cut into the size of hotdog buns, sewed together (quickly) inside out (fuzzy on the inside; the outside of the fabric forms the outside of the sleeping bag). Stick the long, body-shaped paper invitations into the sleeping bags.
In the best version of this party, everyone contributes to buying an appliance the new couple needs, and you have it delivered by some burly young men during the party. But, you could also have guests buy small appliances for the couple. (Watch the guests’ expenses here—they may have planned a small appliance as a wedding gift.) If the new oven is already set up in the living room when the bride gets there, you could open the door to pull out the shower cake. If your appliance is a dryer or washer, you could open it up to reveal that it is stuffed with the packages of washable clothing items your guests brought. Cute idea, huh?
Send everyone home with refrigerator magnets, or use them as invitations. Or, you could go to the appliance store, get a bunch of Maytag tags (especially ones with that bored serviceman on them), and mail them on your invitations.
Remember how much fun this was in college? A few simple bed sheets, some pins, and you’re all set to party. You might like to invite the guys to this one. Make your guests wear laurel-leaf wreaths on their heads, just like Julius Caesar did. You can make them out of wire and leaves you buy at the crafts or silk flower store. For the bride and groom, spray paint them gold. Serve Greek food. Include some baklava with the cake, or send your guests home with some wrapped in pretty gold foil.
Great invitations would be to cut some off-white linen paper stamped with a gold “Greek” border. You can probably find a rubber stamp with this pattern, or you can cut the shape out of potato (in relief). Really, potatoes make good stamps, and you can surely get the ink at the stamp store in the mall.
You all dress like the toga party, but rent a Cleopatra outfit for your unsuspecting bride. She has to wear the Cleopatra wig, too. Make arm bracelets for your guests out of gold fabric-covered wire (crafts store) or electrical wire spray-painted gold (building-supply store). Wear sandals, do it outside, and don’t forget to play the song “Walk Like an Egyptian.”
Decorate your table with reeds and palm fronds; scatter some sand. Send out invitations that have gilt edges, and paste a palm frond onto the cards. (Get small palm-frond-looking silk plant leaves at the crafts store or silk floral supply store.)
Give a prize to the best costume. If you’re really creative, you could come up with a lot of quips about the bride being in “De Nile” about the realities of married life.
Why not invite the guys, too, and turn this into a real festive event? Make everyone come as a famous couple from history—Romeo and Juliet, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, Anthony and Cleopatra, Frankenstein and his bride, and so on. Make sure you either rent a costume for the bride and groom or tell them in advance!
If you want to turn it into a masquerade party, everyone would wear masks until midnight, when they would remove them all at once and discover at last who is who! You might choose to provide the masks for this, as party favors.
Exciting invitations would be to cut mask shapes (like the Lone Ranger’s) from black paper. Use glitter glue and feathers to decorate the mask and write the details on the back.
What a great idea! Go to the local bookstore and find out which authors are local. Call them or their agents and have one or more of them come to read on the topic of their book(s) (love, marriage, sex, dating, comedy, etc.). You might pay them a few bucks, or you might let them sell copies of their book(s) at the party. Better, buy their book(s) at a discount in advance from them or the bookstore (the discount from the publisher to you direct would be 40 percent or more). Let them read excerpts. Lots of authors have a great sense of humor and teach on their subject anyway, so you might want to investigate someone local who writes on what the bride is interested in.
Of course, perfect invitations would be bookmarks, book-shaped invitations that open. Party favors could be $5 gift certificates to the local bookstore. (See the section on getting prizes donated in Chapter 11.)
There are plenty of Dr. Ruth impersonators in the country. You can find one for the party. Find a novice one by calling a speakers bureau in your area, or you can get a friend who is good with voices to write a script. If your impersonator looks like Dr. Ruth, she can show up at the party. If she doesn’t, have her call in during the party to talk to the bride. Put it on speakerphone. Have her embarrass the hell out of the bride. If you cannot find your own Dr. Ruth, contact ForthWrite Speakers Bureau at 310-457-5785 and ask for Wendy Keller. (She’s an agent who books performers.) You could also have Sally Jesse Raphael, Bill Clinton, Abe Lincoln, Joan Rivers, you name it! Have Dr. Ruth offer your poor bride sex advice. Have her take questions from your guests and offer hilarious advice.
Have the shower at the local Arthur Murray studio—you’ll all be glad if there’s dancing at the wedding reception. Learn how to polka, fox trot, disco, or ballroom dance together! Or you can even learn the Macarena! After you’re all done learning to dance, head over to a local ice cream parlor and open the presents on the grass outside while you lick your ice creams and laugh. Make sure to take a camera to the lessons! It would be a lot cheaper than you think, and very little work!
Or, you could hire a dance instructor to come to your house. Maybe even a cute dance instructor who teaches in his G-string? And begins by teaching the bride how to shimmy?
Send your guests home with a pair of ballet shoes, a maraca, finger cymbals, something appropriate. The perfect invitation? A paper cutout of a vinyl record, or a paper cutout pair of dance shoes.
Everyone dresses like the ′70s and grooves to some slick tunes. Rent a ‘fro wig or two to play with! Those ghastly clothes are everywhere now—you can get them cheap at a local thrift shop. There are plenty of ′70s composite music CDs around—you could buy them for the party and then give them away as party favors at the end. (That way, you wouldn’t embarrass yourself by keeping them!)
Serve ‘70s canapés like Cheez Whiz, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, Good & Plenty—all the tacky stuff you can remember.
Love me tender, baby! Watch one of his movies, play his songs, and even hire an impersonator—Lord knows there are enough of them! Maybe you could turn this into a dance? Would you serve food like in the ‘70s-themed party to commemorate the King’s passion for quality food items? Award a pair of suede shoes, any size, you got at the thrift store and spray painted blue, to the winner of your dance contest. The party favors could be licorice records. Spray little plastic baby shoes first with Christmas flocking, then with blue paint, and attach little cards that say “Thank you … Thank you very much!”
For easy invitations, download his picture off the Internet, but I have a better idea. Buy a ½ yard of white polyester fabric, some gaudy rhinestones, and a studding machine (total cost under $10). Impress some rhinestones into the polyester, cut up the fabric into small pieces, and slip the pieces into sealed plastic bags. Attach a laser-printed note that says, “Genuine Piece of Elvis’s Costume, circa 1968, Estimated Value $1200—Sotheby’s.” Send the sealed bags with a handwritten note allegedly from Elvis, personally announcing that he’s about to reappear just for the shower.
Do it at your local arboretum, with a lecture on gardening. Have everyone bring a pottable perennial along with her gift. Give guests packets of seeds with little trowels as remembrances. Raffle off gardening gloves. Give a gift certificate to the local nursery, or have someone from the nursery come lecture on various plants that grow well in your area. Have guests wear flowers in their hair or wear dresses with flowers on them. Get plates and cups that have flower designs and serve salads out of big flowerpots you wash and give to the bride. See the Garden party for clever invitation ideas.
Stuff your house with balloons, hire a person who makes balloon animals to float amongst your guests (as favors), then shuttle everyone off to the local balloonist launch pad for a real hot air balloon ride! Your cake, decorated like a hot air balloon, could say “Up, Up, and Away—Good Luck Cathy!” Make sure you hire enough balloons to give everyone a ride—or call the local balloonists’ club and see if they’d like to help you out. You can fit only about three passengers in a balloon. And make the ride the last part of the party.
You could give guests helium balloons with mesh canopies and ribbon ropes holding Dixie cups full of nuts or M&Ms or something as cute favors. For invitations, attach a few brightly colored deflated balloons to cardboard.
You can figure this one out all by yourself! Play old-fashioned picnic games and bring the kids if the bride has them, too. Give the guests red gingham fabric napkins, and buy the bride an awesome picnic basket as a gift. Have everyone bring a gift and a small nonperishable food item that they can picnic with. Send invitations written on red-and-white gingham paper plates.
From the plates to the food to dessert, do it with chocolate! If you want something done right, you have to do it with chocolate, right? If you don’t already know how to make molded chocolate candies all by yourself, go to the Wilton Cake Shop in your city, or at JC Penney’s, and learn how. Plan a decadent cake, make sure someone brings the bride a gift of chocolate edible underwear, and you’re all set!
Attach an Andes mint to each invitation, or a Hershey’s Kiss, but only if you will be mailing them in cool weather.
Find out in advance where the bride has her linen registry. Then have everyone bring a linens item. Everything from sachets for the linen closet, to White Linen perfume, to Queen-sized flannel sheets would be welcome. You and your guests might like to cross-stitch or even fabric paint some dish towels together as a project.
Send the guests home with potpourri sachets (see Chapter 12, “Party Favors”). The perfect invitations would be little 1” × 2” pillows you made yourself out of fabric snippets, scraps of lace, and fiberfill. Short of that, how about cutting out bed shapes from cardboard and hot gluing to them a tiny fabric bedspread you have to lift to read the invitation?
This is a charming, old-fashioned way to have a wedding shower. You’d want to make sure most of the quilt was done before the shower, because you cannot do the whole thing in one evening. Set up a quilting bee of women who can or will use a needle properly. Give the result as a collective gift to the bride. You’ll probably have to hire someone to design it, finish it, or start it before. Set the quilt out on a big table (ask at the fabric store how it’s done properly) and have everyone bring their reading glasses and a thimble.
Adorable invitations would be to have a piece of fabric (preferably with a quilt print on it) skewered with a quilting needle. Spools of thread or a gift certificate from the fabric store would make a delightful shower favor.
Is there a local winery near you that would love to host this? If not, do it at home. It’s elegant and simple. Get a connoisseur to help you if you don’t already know what to select. Have several types of wine and cheese and some good crackers and breads. Hire some real waiters. Make everyone come black tie—no matter where it is. Get a harpist or a violinist or play chamber music. Very classy.
Send folks home with airline-sized wine bottles wrapped in gold mesh and tied with colored curling ribbon. Ideal invitations would be fake wine labels from the Vineyard of Mr. and Mrs. ___________ (whatever the new couple’s name is).
What fun! Everybody wears fuzzy slippers, bathrobes or aprons, and hair rollers and mud masks! Get a more theatrical-minded guest to show up with a large pregnancy under her dress (a big balloon). Have your guests go home with a can of Ajax with a bow on top as a party favor. Award a pair of bunny slippers to the winner of your biggest contest. I don’t think I’d invite the guys to this one. Give the bride a book on how to clean anything, and arrange a bouquet of feather dusters on the table. Have the bride sit in a special chair, from which she “rules” with her toilet bowl brush scepter.
The greatest invitations would be rolled up, scroll-like, and stuffed inside big pink plastic hair rollers.
Go just have fun and pretend you’re kids at the local amusement park! Or a carnival! Open presents at your house first, with hamburgers off the grill. Give everyone a free roller coaster ride or something little as a party favor. Draw clown faces on your invitations with markers and glitter glue.
Decorate your house in the traditional Japanese party style, with paper lanterns and cushions on the floor around a low table. Or hire a room at the local Japanese restaurant. Serve sushi, rice, and cashew chicken or snow peas, or just order in the food. Give everyone a pair of chopstick-like hair skewers. Have a kimono ready for the bride. Float lotus or even magnolia blooms in low dishes of water.
How very Zen of you to write your invitations on gray rice or vellum paper with a Japanese font or calligraphy or even a bit of brush painting. Or you could send them as origami.
Just do the traditional thing—serve cake, coffee, and plenty of gossip and laughter. This is the most common type of shower, where you just hang out for a few hours with the girls. Nothing fancy is needed, it’s very casual, and it just sort of happens, without a real theme.
A surprise party! What a wonderful idea! All you have to do is coordinate a time when your bride has absolutely nothing planned; keep at least fifteen people from leaking your secret to her; and figure out who should be invited, where the bride is registered for gifts, and what she wants most from the shower. Not that hard, is it?
In my experience, very few brides (or for that matter, birthday girls or mothers-to-be) are actually surprised by their shower. After all, they know they are getting married, or having a baby or a birthday, and assuming basic social customs, they probably figure someone will throw them a shower.
Further, it really is tricky getting people not to talk about it to the guest of honor! Most people will be great at keeping the secret, but there’s always one who apologetically says, “Linda, I’m so sorry I won’t see you Thursday night! I have to….” And then they see the surprised look on Linda’s face (the same one she’ll have to fake at the actual shower!) and say, “Well, I mean, I had been thinking we should get together for dinner some night before your wedding, and I’d kind of chosen this Thursday without telling you, and well, now I just cannot keep this dinner plan we actually never had” or some sorrier rendition of the same. But if you absolutely insist on having a surprise shower, this section will help you handle it as flawlessly as possible.
First, your main objective is to get together a guest list that will include everyone the bride wants to invite. The easiest way to do this is to ask her best friends (if you aren’t the best friend), the local girlfriends, or the groom. In fact, the absolutely best way is to ask each of them to come up with a list of twenty people they think should be invited, and then check for overlap and invite all the people on the lists.
Now, you have to figure out where she’s registered for gifts. For this, ask her or her Mom (if you really want to be sneaky). Make sure to include registry information on the invitations so the guests don’t have to guess what the bride’s tastes are.
Next step is finding a way to contact all these people. You are likely to get things as vague as “I know she has a friend named Jackie who works in the office next door to hers.” Finding these people will require more than a little ingenuity on your part. But be persistent: you wouldn’t want to leave out anyone that might be meaningful to the bride.
On the invitations, set the start time at half an hour before your bride is due to come. This way you ensure that even the stragglers aren’t walking up the drive at the same time she is and thus ruining everything. You might want to say, “DEBBIE ARRIVES AT 7:30, so PLEASE show up at 7!” on the invitations.
Once you have assembled a decent guest list, you need to take extra precautions to make sure no one who is invited to the party spills the beans. Mark the outside of the envelopes “TOP SECRET” in big red letters, or write on the invitation “SSSSH! This is a surprise party!” You want to remind them on the map and so forth so that they will feel totally guilty if they screw up and ruin the surprise.
Make sure the bride can show up on the day you select. The easiest way to make this happen is to enlist the aid of someone she knows will NOT be throwing the shower to arrange a “date” with her the night of the shower. It is commonly the groom who acts as the decoy, but it could be another girlfriend or her mom. You simply get this person to ask her out to dinner on the day and at the time you want to hold the shower. Make sure the event they invite her to would require people to be dressed similarly to the way your shower guests will be dressed so that she is not uncomfortable. She should not be the only one prepared to go roller blading at your English Tea Garden party.
On the day of the shower, call the decoy an hour before the scheduled arrival and ask if they are on schedule. Remember, the bride has a lot of details to handle, and she could be running a little late for myriad reasons. Make sure the guests park their cars away from the house. Tell the decoy to take a circuitous route to the location if it isn’t a public or rented facility.
Turn out the lights and be prepared to flick them on and swing open the door when she walks inside ahead of the decoy. Get the rest of the guests settled and ready to yell “surprise” as she walks into the room.
As hard as it sounds, the payoff is huge. Everyone who says that he or she hates surprise parties in truth loves the attention and the real message behind the party. That they are special enough to warrant all this extra effort.