Do it Yourself Wedding Shower Advice

Every bride wants one and usually every bride gets at least one, while some brides are multiple recipients. We’re talking about wedding showers of course. Showers for brides are usually planned for a few months or weeks before the big event. It’s appropriate for those hosting the event to include on the guest list family members, members of the bridal party, close friends of the bride and the groom and really any female known to be on the wedding invitation list. The end result of this gala gathering is that the bride to be can take time to enjoy her female friends and family members and also reap an incredible harvest of shower gifts. For the bride, this should be a relaxing time, but for the maid of honor and bridesmaids, who officially take responsibility for this event, it can be very demanding and costly unless they chose to make their task easy and inexpensive by hosting a do it yourself wedding shower.

1. Choosing a setting. In today’s over the top world, wedding showers seem, more often than not, to take on a life of their own. Instead of being a fun precursor to the formal wedding reception, showers seem to reach out to every appropriate guest providing at the same time an ocean of gifts and the need to provide seating for large numbers of people. The result is that such events, in addition to be very impersonal, can also be extremely costly as hostesses are left to rent a hotel function room or something equally pricey just to get everyone together.

The first and best step to producing a do it yourself wedding shower is to abandon the large hall setting. Let’s face it, the wedding itself will probably be held in a hotel or restaurant , so why undercut the wedding setting with an overly expensive wedding shower. Instead a great bit of do it yourself wedding shower advice is to simply dial it back a bit.

Talk among the hostesses and determine who among you has a home, yard or deck that can accommodate your guests. Remember that while anyone who is on the wedding invitation list can appropriately be invited to a shower, not everyone HAS to be invited. Invitees can be kept to a number suitable to your setting. If you want to plan a do it yourself wedding shower and your family room only accommodates twenty, then that clearly shapes the length of your guest list.

An added bonus that comes from having your do it yourself wedding shower in someone’s home and cutting down your guest list is that you have coincidentally also cut down not just the total number of gifts the bride to be will receive, but also the total number of duplicate or triplicate gifts that they will be forced to return or deal with. You, and the bride to be, will be glad you chose a do it yourself wedding shower when you sit down comfortably in a cozy and friendly setting that allows people to socialize and move about in a relaxed fashion.

2 .What’s to eat. Choosing to have a do it yourself wedding shower and moving that shower to a private home or yard signals a huge reduction in the price of refreshments. You will not have to worry about paying top dollar for an elaborate meal at a restaurant. Again the shower is not the wedding and there just is no reason to shell out a large payment for a fancy, over the top meal. You certainly do not want to put yourself in the position where your shower meal is competing with the wedding reception menu.

A do it yourself wedding shower, if it is true to its name, gives everyone and any one on the invitation list a chance to add something to the refreshment table. With a little planning and a few phone calls you can achieve a workable balance of cold dishes and hot, side dishes and deserts and perhaps even a special punch. At some wedding showers guests are encouraged to bring along a favorite recipe to pass along to the bride. You might pick up on that idea but add that bringing that recipe, fully prepared for sharing at the shower would be much appreciated. If your group of attendees is small the hostesses are likely to know everyone personally making this kind of do it yourself request possible.

Of course no invited guest should feel obliged to bring a dish, but many will enjoy the opportunity to strut their cooking stuff.

3. Decorations Having a do it yourself wedding shower in a private home or yard will in some ways dictate the type and extent of shower decorations. But a good do it yourself wedding shower decoration tip is to let the decorations truly reflect the couple . Lovely pink and white bells with dainty flowers will be beautiful but may not fit the nature or personality of the bride or groom. Are they preppy? Do they frequent a particular restaurant or club? Are they fans of a special sports team? A do it yourself wedding shower sets the hostesses free to decorate in accordance with the honoree. Those in charge of decorations can make them as personal as they wish within the bounds of good taste. A good piece of do it yourself wedding shower advice is to remember that when you are at home you can decorate to suit the people involved.

Another good feature about having a do it yourself shower at home means that you can do the actual decorating whenever it suits you, two days before or two hours before, it’s your choice and your convenience. Remember that’s why you chose to do it yourself.

4. Entertainment There really are wedding showers at which paid professional musicians arrive and play chamber music or show tunes while you dine and open gifts. If this suits your tastes and the taste of the bride then proceed. But for people who prefer a do it yourself wedding shower there are other choices and a little bit of advice.

It’s nice to have background music at any social gathering, it succeeds nicely in taking the edge off. You can use your own equipment to provide background music that includes recordings of the bride and grooms favorites as you know them. It can really be fun for bridesmaids to share what they know about the bride and groom’s musical tastes and then to capture those songs on a mix tape which can then be given to the bride as a shower gift and memento.

Sometimes a do it yourself shower requires little entertainment. The guests know each other well and would much rather spend the time catching up with family and friends. But you may decide some bit of organized entertainment is in order. One simple game you might try tests the knowledge that guests have about the bride or the groom or both. A list of ten questions is prepared in advance by the maid honor or other hostess. Each question asks for a specific answer about the life of the bride or groom. The guest guessing the most right answers receives a small prize.

A more active game is a variation of the children’s game, Pin the Tail on the Donkey. For a do it yourself wedding shower the game is renamed put the pin on the honeymoon. As in the original game, guests are blindfolded, spun around a bit and then directed to pin something on a stationary wall. In this case small pins are stuck into a giant wall map. The person placing the pin closest to the spot of the honeymoon to be wins a prize. This game is great for generating conversation and for getting people up and moving about and can be very funny.

There is no doubt that a high priced wedding shower in a fancy hotel is becoming more and more the norm. But for lots of easy going, light hearted, inexpensive fun shared by a bride and her closest friends and family there is a lot to be said for an old fashioned do it yourself wedding shower.