Wedding Shower Ideas

A fabulous shower starts with a theme that fits the couple's interests and sparks the guests' gift-giving creativity. Below you will find more than 30 themes organized into six categories.

" Sequential themes
" Newlywed themes
" Home themes
" Hobby themes
" Historic themes
" No-cost themes

Sequential themes

The common thread with these themes is that each gift represents one element in a sequence like "letters in the bride's name" or "countries of the world." Each guest is assigned an element (e.g., the letter "N," the country "France") and is responsible for coming up with an appropriate gift. These themes work best for funky or eclectic couples who "already have everything."

Around the World Shower
Each guest is assigned a country and must bring a gift associated with that country. "Scotland" could mean shortbread, a plaid pillow, a travel book or a CD of the world's great bagpipe tunes. (Choose countries carefully; most people won't know what to make of, say, "Paraguay.") Decorate with paper flags, use out-dated maps for placemats (or a big one for the tablecloth), and serve a tray of desserts from the various countries that were assigned.

Around the Clock Shower
Each guest is assigned a different time of day and asked to bring a gift associated with that time. For the shower itself, recall the White Rabbit's complaint of "Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it's getting!" and throw an Alice-in-Wonderland English tea. Use playing cards as place cards, and decorate with hearts, diamonds, spades, and clubs. Serve plum cake (labeled "Eat Me," of course), scones, and the strawberry tarts stolen by the knave of hearts. As an alternative to shower games, play croquet on the lawn before the bride opens gifts.

Around the Calendar Shower
Assign each guest a month (repeat months if you have more than 12 guests). A suitable gift for "May" might be an autumn tree; the guest with "January" could bring a picnic basket. A fun way to handle this shower is to design the party around a season that's six months away. Hold a beach-themed party in July, an Oktoberfest party in April, or a Valentine's Day party around August 15.

Around the Calendar Holiday Shower
In this variation, each guest is assigned a holiday instead of a month. If you stick to civil holidays, the gift for Australia Day might be a world atlas; the gift for Valentine's Day might be a book of romantic poems or a gift certificate to order a dozen roses. If the couple observes Lent, a book of meatless main course recipes will be greatly appreciated! (This theme works best if everyone on the guest list comes from the same culture or religion; there is a lot of sensitivity where holidays are concerned.) Match the party itself to the nearest actual holiday.

Initials Shower
Use the letters in the bride's name, the groom's name, or both. Each guest is assigned a letter (it's okay to repeat letters if, for instance, the bride's name is Nina Nunn) and must bring a gift that starts with that letter. Serve sugar cookies shaped like letters or cut out heart-shaped cookies and ice each one with a different letter in the name. (A more complete meal would, of course, require alphabet soup.) Make a simple but effective centerpiece by piling up old alphabet blocks.

Adjectives Shower
Choose adjectives that describe the bride or the ideal marriage ("fun," "thoughtful," "sharing," etc.) Each guest brings a gift related to one of the words. "Fun" might be a board game; "thoughtful" might be a kit for giving a massage. Decorate around a "word" theme. Check an educational supply or party store for children's placemats with word games. Play Scrabble or MadLibs as an alternative to shower games. If your mind suddenly goes blank when you have to choose 40 appropriate adjectives, turn to the "affections" section of the thesaurus.

Around the Mansion Shower
You'll need to assign one room to each guest, so be creative in brainstorming the list of all the rooms a mansion might have. Don't forget items like "conservatory," "music room," "billiards room," "pantry," and "media room." To make invitations, get a book of historic (and no longer copyrighted) plans for large houses. Photocopy the plan onto pale blue paper for a blueprint-like look. Each guest, of course, brings a gift appropriate to her assigned room: a plant for the conservatory, a CD for the music room, a picture frame for the portrait gallery, a kitchen gadget for the pantry. If you aren't pinching pennies, rent a room at a historic building for the party. Or hold a "couples" shower around a Murder Mystery evening instead of the usual shower games.

Newlywed Themes

These themes all help the couple prepare for something they'll do as newlyweds.

Honeymoon Shower
For many people, the honeymoon is their first major trip. Help the couple prepare with a honeymoon shower. Possible gifts include colourful containers for toiletries, small zippered bags to help organize luggage, travel books, luggage tags, film, phrase books for foreign languages, movies about the honeymoon destination, possibly even something special to wear or gift certificates for a romantic dinner. If the honeymoon destination is known, use it as the theme of the party. If it's a secret, hold a Safari Party. Use colourful animal invitations, hold a barbecue outdoors and give small stuffed "wild" animals as bonbonniere. Don't forget to serve tropical drinks!

First Holiday Shower
Each guest brings something the couple can use for their first major holiday together. Encourage guests to think creatively, as a couple only needs so many Seder platters or Advent wreaths! Find or make invitations appropriate for the holiday itself (if it's a religious holiday, do check to make sure that this won't offend people) and serve a holiday-appropriate menu. Eggnog tastes perfectly good in July.

First Home Shower
The first time you don't have a roommate or a landlord, it's amazing what things you turn out to need! Model your invitations on change-of-address cards, and ask guests to bring gifts that they wish they'd had in their first home. Possibilities include basic tools, buckets, stick-on hooks, wastepaper baskets, flashlight, mini-vacuum cleaner, bins for indoor recycling. The ideal place to hold this party is in an undecorated room with only a bare table and folding chairs! Or turn it into a "Moving Day" shower (ideal for a couple with a big move ahead, especially if someone brings bubble wrap, packing tape, and permanent markers). Cover the table with newspaper, scatter Styrofoam peanuts, and serve the classic moving day meal: pizza.

First Month of Dinners Shower
One major downside to being married is that you don't feel right about having frozen meals and yogurt for dinner three nights a week. Even dedicated cooks enjoy new ideas. Ask each guest to bring a favourite dinner recipe, possibly with a key non-perishable ingredient. Send the blank recipe cards in the invitations. Serve your own favourite recipes (or get your favourite variety of take-away)... or see if one of the local cooking schools offers an affordable party package. Some "do" showers and other special events.

First Party Shower
Each guest brings something she thinks is suitable for the first party that the couple will hold. Someone will bring a pack of microwave popcorn and a gift certificate to rent a movie. Someone else will bring something sexy for the honeymoon. More conventional gifts include a bottle of champagne, a set of pretty invitations, the materials to put on a theme party, a favourite recipe and something to help make it, or a book on entertaining.

First Argument Shower
This one requires a sense of humour, if the bride isn't to be buried under "Mars and Venus" books. Possible gifts include a lacy satin pillow to cry into, a set of matching embroidered handkerchiefs, one of those squeeze dolls for venting frustrations, a gift certificate for a spa (also for venting frustrations), and a lacy satin negligee to wear when making up. Serve anything, as long as it's chocolate.

Home Themes

These are the classic showers to help couples set up housekeeping.

Kitchen Shower
The most classic of the classic, this shower is best held in a large kitchen, with low-cost kitchen gadgets as bonbonniere or prizes. (Check the "ladle and spatula" wall of any big home wares store, or give magnets shaped like kitchen items.) If the couple's kitchen will have a specific colour or theme, try to choose a matching invitation. If you want to get out of the kitchen, consider a pottery-painting party.

Boudoir Shower
The popular "lingerie" shower seems a little too, um, graphic for anyone but very close friends of the bride. A more general theme encourages shyer guests to bring whatever they think will encourage romance, from scented candles to lacy pillows to massage oil to the ingredients for a romantic breakfast in bed. Haul out your favourite Valentine's Day bric-a-brac to decorate, or just use sweet, romantic colours from the party store. The inevitable cookie: chocolate hearts!

Tool Box Shower
Power tools delight the heart of many a blushing bride; this will also work as the theme of a "couples" shower. Make a centre piece out of items from a child-sized toolbox. As your major game, divide the guests into teams of five or six, and see who can build the highest house of cards. Or supply them with pre-baked slabs of gingerbread, bowls of candy, and lots of frosting, and challenge them to build the prettiest or most creative gingerbread houses. Serve brownbag lunches to your construction workers.

Shower Shower
The "shower shower" focuses, of course, on everything for the bath. This event positively demands the famous Towel Cake as well as the game of designing a bride's dress from toilet paper. Use an inexpensive shower curtain liner as your tablecloth, and washcloths as placemats. Give scented soaps as bonbonniere.

Garden Shower
The most popular gift at this party will be the garden hose. Other possible gifts include garden tools, seeds, plants, gardening books, watering can, garden centre gift certificates, knee pads, hat, gloves. Use floral invitations and hold the shower outdoors if weather permits. Whether indoors or out, use linens and plates in floral colours and serve a light, elegant menu. Tiny potted plants make excellent bonbonniere or prizes.

Room-by-Room Shower
To make the invitations, draw a rough sketch of the couple's home, and sketch in the major colours and motifs of each room. The sketch should look like something dashed off by an interior designer on the back of an envelope (you may want to do this on the computer). Make colour copies; on the individual invitations, circle the room assigned to each guest. The guest's mission, then, is to bring a gift appropriate for that room. Unlike the "Around the Mansion" shower, this theme is tied to real rooms, and guests are encouraged to bring fairly serious, practical gifts.

Colour Shower
Parties with decorations and food all in a single colour (often pink) were a Victorian fad that lingered into the 1950s. Choose a colour that the newlyweds will features prominently in their home, and ask guests to bring a gift in that colour. (If the colour is difficult to match, try to match it exactly on the invitation so the guests have a clue.) Decorate your party space in that colour, and serve the same colour of food. This is fairly easy for, say, a white dessert (sugar cookies, angel food cake, blonde fudge), but accomplishing a blue meal may require some creativity and food colouring.

Hobby Themes

When people who already owned household chattels started marrying each other, the hobby shower was born. All hobby showers start from the basic premise that the gifts are to be items related to the hobby, and that the party itself should also feature the hobby. Hobby showers make excellent couples showers. The suggestions below cover some of the more common hobby shower themes, but there's no reason that you couldn't have a Dinosaur Shower, an Ornithology Shower, or a Sky-Diving Shower.

Books Shower
People who have lots of books probably don't need more, but they will appreciate "stuff" to help them manage the collection. A group of friends who chips in for a gift certificate to purchase shelves will be adored forever, but book plates, book marks, reading lights, and mail order certificates for buying more books will also find a good home. Look for invitations with a bookish theme; use stacks of books as your centrepiece; include quotes from famous writers on the place cards or as part of the decorations.

Music Shower
Concert tickets, CDs, a shower-safe radio, a book on a favourite composer, these are just some of the possible gifts at a music shower. Use invitations with a musical theme and start the party by meeting for a free concert (these occur at lunchtime in many cities). Finish refreshments with sugar cookies shaped like musical instruments or, if you have a good imported food shop in town, with Mozart chocolates.

Biking, Hiking, or Fishing Shower
You guessed it: the point of the shower is to equip the couple with biking, hiking, or fishing equipment. This shower will be most successful if all of the guests also participate in the sport. Organize the shower around a biking, hiking, or fishing expedition, and serve picnic food.

Wine Shower
If your city has a good wine bar, that's one ideal place to hold a wine shower. Possible gifts, other than wine, include carafes, special cork toppers, wine-buying guides, wine racks, gift certificates for cheese to go with the wine, coasters. If you have the party at home, serve a couple of nice wines with a selection of cheeses and crackers. For a different game, have individuals or teams draw a special wine label in honour of the couple; give corkscrews as prizes to the prettiest, the one that best expresses the couple's personalities and the most creative entry. (For anyone who needs party or gift ideas, there are several hundred thousand wine-related sites on the Web.

Beer Shower
A couple that prefers beer will, of course, prefer a beer shower. Hold it in a pub, if you can. Gifts include steins, homebrew kits, beer guides, foods to eat with beer, antique beer promotional items, and gift certificates to other pubs. Look for invitations that use a famous "old" beer logo, like the St. Paul girl, to give guests a hint that this party is about serious beer connoisseurship, not about hanging out in bars. Give t-shirts with good beer logos (which don't always go with good beer) as prizes; be sure to have a booby prize ready for the guest who shows up with a six-pack of VB.

"Best of" Shower
This theme is most fun if all of the guests know the bride and groom fairly well. Choose categories like "classical music," "jazz," "movie," "wine," "coffee," etc., or use a local magazine's annual "best of" listings for inspiration. Each guest is assigned a category and must bring a gift that she thinks is the "best of" that category. Try to assign categories to knowledgeable guests: if the "beer" person only drinks French wines, her gift could be more funny than fabulous. The party itself can be held at a favourite restaurant ("best meal for under $5"?) or at home, with a menu of the bride's favourite dishes (or the cook's favourite recipes).

Historic Themes

Historic showers try to sweep the bride (and possibly the groom) away to another time. As sources of gifts, themes in this category work best if the couple plans to decorate in that style and if neither bride nor groom are such serious connoisseurs of the period that they'll be disappointed by their friends' best efforts. Some of the most popular periods are described below.

Victorian Shower
Use reproduction Victorian invitations. Serve tea with gingerbread, buttered toast, and a cake full of raisins. As gifts, expect to see lacy linens, silver picture frames, delicate vases, and at least one book on Victorian weddings.

Fabulous Fifties Shower
If the bride and groom collect mid-century goodies like Fiesta Ware, vintage lunch boxes, kidney-shaped tables and funky metal furniture in the Jetson style, encourage the guests to add to the decor with a Fabulous Fifties theme shower. Choose invitations with fifties flair, play Elvis in the background. Even serve a traditional 1950s shower menu with chicken a la king and pink jelly.

Kid Stuff Shower
This shower isn't about gifts for the couple's hypothetical future children; it's about gifts that hearken back to the bride's and groom's childhoods. Possible gifts include a favourite game, a set of the kind of tumblers that Mum used to serve the morning milk, a terrific child's book, even a purse, tie, or table setting of the era. You can choose invitations, decorations, and a party menu to reflect the era of the theme. Or use children's invitations, Winnie-the-Pooh or Cinderella paper plates and crepe paper streamers; pass out party hats and serve chicken fingers and French fries. Play Twister and other children's games instead of shower games.

"What Does the Future Hold?" Shower
Each guest brings a gift that will be useful in what they see as the bride and groom's most likely future. (Hint: this is not a good theme if the couple has decided not to have kids, but most guests don't know it or don't take the decision seriously.) At a successful party with this theme, guests will bring gifts like a frame for the bride's law school diploma, a travel guide for somewhere the couple wants to go, or materials for some skill that the couple wants to learn. Use metallic "space age" decorations for that futuristic look. The most appropriate dessert? Fortune cookies of course.

No-Cost Themes

When affection is great but budgets are tiny, it's time for a shower with no-cost gifts. Each of the showers described below has a theme that allows guests to spend nothing, or next to nothing, while still bringing a gift that the bride will treasure.

"Memories Are Made of This" Shower
Each guest brings the story of a special memory that involves the bride and perhaps a copy of a photo. The whole set can be bound into a book for the bride to cherish.

Recipe Shower
Send a blank recipe card in each invitation, and ask the guest to fill it with a favourite recipe. The hosts of the party serve the recipes they intend to give.

Wedded Bliss Shower
If most of the guests are married women, a third low-cost theme is to ask each guest to write down her best piece of advice for the bride. This theme is especially appropriate when the mother of the groom is determined to have a "shower" to introduce the bride to her friends.

Other Suggestions

Be creative and choose a theme for the bridal shower. Showers can include, both couples or "just the girls". Themes can be conservative or hilarious. If the bride or groom is into cooking, you can have a "kitchen gadgets" theme. Play games and suggest to the guests to purchase gifts with the "kitchen" in mind. Gag gifts could include a mop and bucket or cleaning supplies. Games could include; unscrambled "kitchen" words, bingo with kitchen or food items listed in the boxes, or cooking contest. The cooking contest would feature the basic ingredients needed for baking a cake. Each team would then create their own recipe. The team with the best tasting cake wins. This is especially fun if the shower includes the guys.

The shower that is for the women only could have a personal touch. On the invitations, mention that the gifts are geared for the brides personal use only. This could include bath oils, jewellery, lingerie, anything to pamper the bride.

Basically, your imagination is all you need.