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We just planned and hosted a pretty large bridal shower for my sister, Ellen, and we had a blast! As the Matron of Honor, I took the helm on the planning and also was the face of the one hosting the shower. I had a ton of help from my Mom & sisters of course, but I was the one who planned the theme and decorations, sent out the invitations and received the RSVPs, and was the person in charge on the day of the shower.
Seriously: so much fun!
It only seemed to make sense to sit down and write out what really worked well for us and how I feel we succeeded. This bridal shower was quite the monumentous task with 72 lovely ladies having RSVP’ed – so just the fact that we stayed on track and organized was a feat!
So, here are my top 5 tips for hosting a beautiful & successful bridal shower!
Pick A Theme
Both of Ellen’s showers were theme based (my blog reviewing her Sherlock themed shower is here & my blog reviewing her Winter in Paris themed shower is here) and I LOVE how they turned out! When you have a theme, you have a guide to hold everything up to: do these decorations make sense with the theme? Does our menu hold true to the theme? Do our activities go along with the theme? I promise: when you go to the store and begin looking at decoration ideas and invitations and favors, it can all get very overwhelming very fast. So, if you have a theme to act as the “ruler” you hold everything up against, it can really help in navigating through the vast array of bridal shower stuff to choose from!
Ask For Help & Delegate
You’ll be surprised where help will come from if you allow it! I was so surprised at the number of people who asked if they could make food or bring drinks or help in any way with the shower! Maybe Ellen just has the most amazing and helpful friends & family – but I think deep down, people truly do want to help! So, when it’s offered, sometimes it just seems simpler to turn it down, but I encourage you to resist that urge & give your helpful guests something they can help with! There’s no rules that says that the bridal party has to do it all!
And to go along with that: sometimes people want to help, but they simply don’t know how, and that’s when delegation comes into play. If you can, put someone else in charge of gathering the RSVPs or in charge of the menu. So much comes into play when you are planning a bridal shower, and there are many many tasks to complete in order for it all to come together well.
Don’t Go Overboard
I know you really want to plan a beautiful, memorable, amazing bridal shower, but please don’t go overboard! And that goes for everything! Don’t go overboard with your decorations, or your food, or your activities! I promise, the bridal showers you see advertised on Pinterest are way over the top and your goal should not be to mimick that. Draw inspiration, get ideas – by all means, but don’t assume that if your bridal shower doesn’t look like a Pinterest pin that it was a failure. Simple & classic goes a lot way. In the same manner, it can be easy to get caught up in all of the games – there are so many fun ideas for activities and games to play – but here’s the bottom line: your guests do not want to be at the bridal shower for 5 hours. My goal with Ellen’s shower was to keep it under 3 hours and I knew that was going to be a challenge! With 72 ladies coming – that’s a lot of gifts! So I figured we had over an hour’s worth of opening just gifts alone – not including time to eat, mingle, and play a game or two! My suggestion is to first take into consideration the amount of guests you will have & how long it will take the bride to open her gifts and then plan accordingly from there. For us, we only truly played 1 official game. We played the ice-breaker, which was just disguised as a clever way to get people in line for food, and I asked if anyone wanted to share advice with Ellen as we were finishing up eating, but that was it!
A few things that can help you not go overboard are:
- Plan a timeline – write out what your plan of action is and how long you want to be at each task. Trust me, it will go so fast for you as the host, but it won’t be quite as quick for your guests! So, planning a timeline will help you stay on track & keep the shower from running way over.
- No favors – I know it’s traditional to give everyone a small favor as a way of saying thank you for coming to the shower, but let’s be honest, does anyone truly want what you’re giving them? Yes, there are cute favors out there, but they can get expensive (and with 72 ladies coming, spending over $150 on favors alone was simply not in the budget!) So, I challenge you to consider going without. It’s just something to seriously consider.
Give The Groom Instructions
What does the groom do during a bridal shower? Not too much, right? Normally, he drops the bride off, goes home for a few hours, then comes back to help load up all the gifts. Why not give him some special instructions to help fill that space? My sister Amy started this one at a few of the bridal showers she’s been at – she’ll specifically tell the groom when to return and how to return: with a big bouquet of flowers. If there’s anything to get the ladies ooohing and awwwing when he walks in the door, is when he comes in with all these flowers for his bride. I promise, it’s a winner every single time!
Personalization Is Key
When giving the bride gifts, the things she has listed on her registry are obviously what is needed for the bride & groom’s new life together. However, I challenge you to think outside the box: what can you get them that you can personalize to them? Cookwhere with their new last name on it, monogrammed robes & towels, personalized signs, a hanger with her new last name on it to hang her wedding dress on, matching aprons – these are gifts that will quickly rise to the top of the bride’s favorite list. Not that silverwear & pots and pans are boring, but how can you take that up a notch? Check Etsy for some fabulous ideas & I promise, it’ll be a hit!
BONUS – For Extra Large Showers..
If you are hosting an extra large bridal shower like we just did for Ellen (I’d say, if your guest list is over 40 people, you’re in the “extra large” category) you will want to do as much as you can to help her get through those gifts. As I mentioned before, none of your guests want to be at a shower all day long, so make gift opening as efficient as possible. We had a whole team of people helping Ellen with her gifts – one person to bring gifts over to where Ellen was sitting, one person actually opened the card & had it out and on top, ready to be read, one person was in charge of gathering all of the ribbons for the ribbon bouquet, one person was in charge of gathering up all the discarded wrapping paper, and one person was in charge of taking the gift off to another area to be “stored”. That is a lot of people – but trust me, you’d be surprised how much time will be saved just by the simple act of having the card out, the envelope opened, and ready to read! Those seconds really add up & can really help to make the gift opening process as efficient as possible!
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