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One of the greatest joys in life is when two people decide that they are meant to be together and decide that they are going to get married. A wedding shower is usually given to help the happy couple get started with their new life together to join in their wonderful celebration.

Wedding showers can be so much fun, and the gifts received will help the happy couple get started on creating their new life together.

Wedding shower etiquette

According to Emily Post, the Mother of the Bride shouldn’t throw a wedding shower. It looks as if she is trying to get gifts for her daughter. But not everyone follows that rule anymore, and times have changed. The bridesmaids are too involved in helping with the wedding plans, so it is usually difficult to ask them to host a wedding shower. When and if a bridesmaid decides to throw the wedding shower, the Mother of the Bride is usually involved, and in most cases, so is the Mother of the Groom.

Planning a wedding shower

Planning a wedding shower can be as difficult a task as planning a wedding. By the time someone decides to throw a wedding shower for the bride, she is quite frazzled. That usually happens two to three months prior to the wedding. By that time, the bride will let the wedding shower coordinator do whatever he or she wants, with a few exceptions, of course. This is the time for the bride to just sit back and enjoy being pampered through the midst of getting all the wedding preparations ready.

Plan Ahead

If you are planning to throw a wedding shower for your daughter or a friend, there are some things that need to be done. First and foremost, talk with the bride and find out how many guests she wants to invite. Usually, everyone who is invited to the wedding is also invited to the shower, meaning just the women. On the other hand, and it has become quite common, the bride might want to have a couples shower.

Shower Theme, Date, Time, and Place

There are so many different showers that you can hold in honour of the bride and groom. The thing that you will want to do is determine what the theme for your shower will be. Some suggested themes include stocking the pantry, destination honeymoon; garden gifts; or choosing a room theme (pick a certain room in the house and have everyone bring an appropriate gift for that room).

Discuss what theme she would like to have for her shower, thus preparing for the event. The date and time of the shower should also be discussed and finalised. Decide where she would like to have it; either itís a restaurant, a friendís home, or a country club. When that is decided, the wedding shower coordinator will make phone calls to restaurants and/or country clubs to finalise the date and time. Depending on the time of year, some restaurants and country clubs are booked months in advance. Thus making it difficult to find a place for your wedding shower.

Decorations

Decorations are a very important part of the shower. Decorate in whatever theme you have decided on. If your theme is destination honeymoon, decorate with maps of where the couple will be honeymooning. Use other travel accents to add to the decorations. Choose a menu that will accent your theme and play games that will go along with that theme. Guests can bring gifts that the couple can use on their honeymoons – like local area maps, assorted luggage, or travel books. Those gifts would greatly help the bride and groom once they reach their honeymoon destination.

If your shower theme is garden gifts, throw your party outdoors in a beautiful garden setting, with each table accented with cut plants as your centrepiece. Plan your decorations accordingly. As a party favour, you may want to give your guests a small plant as a party favour to take home to remember the occasion with. Add a tag to the plant with the couple’s name and wedding date, and anything else you may want to add.

Tie the tag to the plant with a beautiful bow that is the same colour as the colour the bride and groom have chosen as their wedding colours. Another party favour idea for this theme would be to decorate small candy boxes with pretty silk flowers. Cut the silk flowers off of their stems and hot glue them to the top of the boxes. Put some kind of candy or gift in each box. Sit the boxes together on a table, and it will look like a beautiful flower arrangement. Hand these boxes out to your guests as they are leaving.

Guest lists. Invitations, Food Catering

Once the date, time, place, and number of guests are finalised, then the invitations can be designed and sent out. All the above should be done two months prior to the shower, with the exception of booking the place.

Six weeks preceding the shower date, the invitations should be mailed out. Include an RSVP to be returned two weeks prior to the date of the event. When all the RSVPs are received, take a count of all the invitees. That will determine the amount of food you need to order. A week before the event, you need to notify the restaurant or the country club of how many people will attend the shower.

Have a meeting with the manager to figure out what type of food you are going to serve. Some restaurants will let you serve from a specific menu with just four items as the main course. The same goes for a country club. If the shower is held at someone’s home, the food will either be prepared by some of the wedding shower coordinators or catered. In the event that the shower is catered, the coordinators need to contact a few catering places to find out what they offer and if they will be available for catering the shower at a specific date and time.

Favours, Games, Giveaway Gifts

If you are planning to give out favours according to the shower’s theme, then these should be ordered about a month prior to the event. A week prior to the shower, prepare the games, the giveaway gifts, and all the pertinent supplies for the themed shower.

On the day of the shower, arrive at the place of the event a bit early so that you can prepare the room. You can acquire some of the other bridesmaids’ help and/or the Mother of the Groom’s help. When the time for the event is near, just sit back and enjoy the event that you so hard worked for.

Be sure that your menu choice, decorations, wedding party favours, and music choices accent your shower theme. You can turn a wedding shower into a very meaningful one with a little thought. Make an unforgettable shower for all. The possibilities are endless.