[Tammyms]

Hey ladies I need help! I am maitron of honor for a friends wedding and have to plan the bridal shower! I've never planned one before and her invite list is huge! 124 people invited so even if half show up it will be quite big. Just wondering what games you like, what you don't like, how to organize, etc?? Any ideas would be much appreciated!

[Crystallee]

We played some interesting ones at my wedding shower. We played one where you had a long list of 1 person of various famous couples, both fictional and real, and you had to name their better half. Most right wins a prize. We played famous jingles where it stated the jingle from the commercial and you had to write down the product, same thing most right wins. I outlawed dress the bride in toilet paper.... lol. The first type of games I listed are super easy for huge groups because you just say did anybody get them all right? and go down until someone says they had that many. We also played one for the bride (me) where they asked my DH a list of questions and got his answers ahead of time, made me try to guess them which was super hard but fun and people guessed how many I would get right ahead of time and closest got a prize. Then we did advice for me where everyone got a slip of paper to write down advice for the bride on and then I had to read them all out loud anonymously out of a bowl. Lastly, they started doing some don't say the word game like the baby shower game where if anyone said wife or wedding or bride or something they lost a closepin. I vetod it as I got sick of it part way through Make sure you get her a sash that says she is the bride or whatever. That was my favorite part of the whole shower, my bride 2 be sash! Organize some easy party food and something like punch or wine depending on the type of shower, add some coffee for all the grammies, get someone to write down all presents and take pictures so that she doesn't have to try to assign someone to do it last minute, probably rent out somewhere unless you have a ton of room somewhere, something like community centers, hotel convention rooms, senior centers, lions clubs, grange halls, american legions, and that sort of thing are all pretty cheap. We incoorporated my wedding colors but that isn't really a necessity it was just fun to have all the decorations in my colors. Also, make sure everybody gets there before the bride and then have her come. Makes it more fun. Lastly use your contact info on the invites for rsvp vs hers. We didn't for mine and I got really sick of fielding rsvp calls then passing them along lol. Whoops.

[Tammyms]

GREAT suggestions!!! Thank you

[dansyl]

I'm not very creative, but I'm sure you will do fine and everyone will have tons of fun!!

[blueeyes25s]

First I would start with discussing ideas with the bride, I know it's for the bridesmaids to plan but it is for the bride and if you have an idea of things she likes it makes it easier to plan and this will give you a base to start with. Ex. find out if she wants games played; some people despise though shower games, while other people just absolutely love playing them.

Once you have a base you can plan for food and drinks. Make a list and spilt it amongst the bridesmaids and mothers (if they are willing to help). You can pick a theme for food or you can just go with appetizers and desserts or add a main dish. Drinks can be punch with and without alcohol, wine, soda, water, etc. It's good to have a variety if you don't know what the crowd is going to be like.

Games; Crystallee mentioned some good games. Since it's going to be a large group you are going to want to keep the games simple and a max of 3 games! Another suggestion is Bridal Bingo! The guest get a blank bingo card and have a choice to fill in the blanks with an item the bride to be may get as a gift. When the bride to be opens her gifts and each time someone has that item on there card it gets marked off until you get bingo. I think this is a great game to get people more engaged in the gift opening part of the shower.

I also played the 'how well do I know DH' game at my bridal shower and each person read off a question when I opened the gift they got me and if I got the answer wrong I had to put a piece of bubblegum in my mouth

Another game is finding fun stuff to put in the bride's to be purse (this can be played to different ways) and have the guest guess what's in the purse; the person with the most correct answers wins, or you can have this purse knocked over and the bride to be with pick up everything as quickly as possible and afterwards the guests have to write down what they saw from memory. The fun part is, you can put goofy stuff in the purse to embarrass the be bride to be .

Either way, I'm sure you will figure something out and it will be tons off fun! Just get with your bridesmaids and get there input as well.

I have thrown quite a few bridal showers and recently baby showers so I have theses things down LOL.

[Belita]

At my shower they did a sweet one where everyone had to write down words of advice on a sheet of paper. There were several different topics. If you're interested I can get mine out and type them up for you, but it was really sweet!

I second Bridal Bingo. It helps make present opening much more interesting and with that many people invited, I'm sure she'll have a lot to open!

One that we did for my sister's shower was to make a composite of my sister's and her husband's faces on different bodies of celebrity couples and the people had to figure out which couple their faces were on!