Wuv is what bwings us hewe today.

March 5, 2011 5:16 PM

Planning a bridal shower; need fun activities- especially funny questions for a "He said / She said" game.

I'm helping plan a wedding shower, next Saturday afternoon at a large suburban home.
Twenty female guests, mostly age 25-35. Bride is 30, funny, laid-back, and not super-girly.
I think the basic plan is: icebreaker... games... gifts... buffet lunch... karaoke.

1.
What bridal shower games have you enjoyed (or hated) in the past?

2.
We're doing the "He said/She said" game, where the bride guesses what her fiancé answered.
Sample question: "What would Calvin say is the worst article of clothing that Suzy owns?
Can you suggest funny questions & ideas for this game? Should there be a points system, or something?

3.
Anything else I can do to make the event fun, funny, and memorable?

Thank you!

posted by pseudostrabismus to human relations (12 answers total)

Honestly... I have been to half a dozen or so bridal showers now, and so far the number of bridal-shower specific games I've actually enjoyed is 0. For example, Pictionary is fun. Bridal-specific Pictionary pretty much sucks all the fun out of it. Repeat for a bunch more games. Do these people all know the bride and her husband really well? I can see how the he said/she said game might be fun for her, but wouldn't it be more fun if he were there and they did it both ways? And in what way will it be fun for everyone else?

Are there games the bride enjoys playing? Board games, trivia games? Play them. Don't play weird bride versions of them, just actually play the game.

/Sorry this sounds kind of bitter, I just really hate bridal showers. Not as much as baby showers, but it's very very close.
posted by brainmouse at 7:22 PM on March 5, 2011 [6 favorites]

One of the best bridal shower game / icebreakers I've participated in involved a questionaire about the couple - how they met, what their favorite movie was, etc. We broke into teams that had people from different aspects of their life and tried to come up with (often funny, especially if we didn't know the real answer) answers that were then read to the whole group.

This was nice because it was all about the bride/couple, but got people working, chatting, and laughing together.
posted by ldthomps at 8:04 PM on March 5, 2011

Do you have to play games? I hate this stuff. As a mother of a pretty much grown-up young woman, I think I' rather see a slide show of photos and have friends tell me about the bride and groom.
posted by Ideefixe at 8:15 PM on March 5, 2011 [1 favorite]

1. I have enjoyed zero bridal shower games, including at my own shower, where we played...
2. The he said/she said game. I pretty much got all the answers right, and nobody else knew/cared so it was a bust.
3. Beer.

(But I'm probably in a bad mood because I just got back from a baby shower where I had to play stupid games.)
posted by Green Eyed Monster at 8:17 PM on March 5, 2011 [1 favorite]

If you must play the he said/she said game, could you break into teams? The bride herself is her own team (as she should be the most able to guess correctly), and everyone else breaks into random teams. Create a points system where each team that gets one right gets a certain amount of points and have a prize for the winner. Or turn it into a drinking game and have each team drink when they get a question wrong.
posted by cheerwine at 8:22 PM on March 5, 2011

Perhaps lunch should be first? People don't want to play games if they're hungry. If you've got enough snacks to hold people over until lunch, then you're good to go!
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 8:34 PM on March 5, 2011

Doing stuff in teams makes things so much better. Then it's a great chance for people who maybe don't know each other to all do things together and get to know each other and talk about the bride. Especially good is if they then present the results to the bride. We did a t-shirt lingerie contest at a bridal shower I went to (for a young woman from a conservative religious community, so all the semi-raunchy wedding jokes were actually appropriate to her situation). It was a lot of fun - we got together in small groups and pairs and cut up white t-shirts for her to put on (over her clothes) and then she picked out her favorite one that she'd want to wear for her husband. Everyone got to do something to make her laugh and smile. But it worked only because she had a group of friends who had the right attitudes, and the right relationship to her, for it not to be hugely awkward and unwanted.
posted by Lady Li at 8:37 PM on March 5, 2011

My aunt knew I really hated bridal shower games, so she had a party game where she listed off a bunch of random objects the guests might or might not have in their purses. (bobby pins, lip stick, kleenex, condoms, hairspray, credit cards, notebooks, etc.)

I thought that was super fun.
posted by santojulieta at 8:48 PM on March 5, 2011

Honeymoon story mad libs were fun.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 3:01 PM on March 6, 2011

icebreaker... games... gifts... buffet lunch... karaoke.

I hope that this is not in sequential order, because if the guests have to wait that long for lunch, they're gonna mutiny.

Honestly, I despise the enforced "fun!" of shower games as well. These games inevitably seem to be adored by approximately two people and merely endured by everyone else. It's a party to shower the bride with gifts and love...why does everyone have to be doing the same activity together simultaneously?

The only shower "games" that I ever thought were kind of fun were the sort where everyone can contribute throughout the party. Like a collection of photos of the couple, to which the guests add irreverent captions. Or some sort of crafty sort of project where everyone can make a little piece to add.
posted by desuetude at 4:27 PM on March 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

I definitely think you should do the buffet lunch before the gifts. People can be sitting and nibbling their food or cake while the bride-to-be opens her gifts.

I actually enjoyed it when I was at a friend's bridal shower and one of her friends wrote down what she said as she opened the gifts and then read some of the comments back dramatically as what E. (the bride) would, "say on her wedding night". Some were particularly appropo ("It's just what I wanted!") and they were more funny to her friends because, honestly, she was a bit slutty. ; ) The older women didn't know why the "What could this be? It's so small!" comments sent us into peals of laughter.

Game I didn't particularly enjoy: Making toilet paper wedding dress, in teams, for another teammate. I was engaged at the time but some of the girls were not too thrilled with this idea, either because they didn't want to play bride or wished they were getting married instead of the guest of honor.

I went to two bachelor parties at male revues. The first one, I had a great time and we all went nuts*. The second time, there was one girl there that was visibly uncomfortable and that made us all self-conscious.

The thing is, whether I was thrilled with what was planned or not, I would throw myself into it because the bride was my friend, and I feel the other guests owe it to her to make an effort at her bridal shower or else just not come. That's just my opinion.

Even so, trying too hard to make it all "wedding-y" is probably a mistake. If you have to force it, it's not a good idea. Why not just plan a get-together with gifts and food and friends, and then let it all progress naturally from there?*

*I did NOT intend the super-lame pun.
posted by misha at 6:43 PM on March 6, 2011

I think I'm gonna expand HeSaid/SheSaid into a game for the whole group to play. We'll split into a few teams, with the bride as her own team, and I'll ask questions that they have to answer in different styles:
- Quickly (Bride has to answer in months, everyone else in years: "How long have they been together?")
- Family-Feud style: I asked Groom his 5 favourite things about the bride- name one!... survey says!
- Pictionary or charades style: have one representative from each team draw or mime something like "the first gift he ever gave her" for the rest to guess.
- Balderdash style: Everyone writes funny answers to questions like "What did she say to him after their first kiss?" "What's her private nickname for him, and what's the story behind it?"
- Show a photo of them and have the groups "write a caption", then vote on the funniest.
- I can throw in a couple rounds of purse-bingo, too. "First team to find a bobby pin, any kind of coupon, a lipstick, and a tampon wins a point."

I'll give points and have a prize for the winners. Hopefully, varying the style of question so it's not dependent on actual knowledge will allow people to be creative and write ridiculous, funny things, so even if you don't know them that well it'll be fun.

Good call on lunch before gifts, and writing down her gift reactions to read later.

I'll make a slideshow of cute pics (thank you Facebook!) and play it in the background.

And karaoke can be the last thing we do as the party winds down- I know that sounds weird but the bride will be into it, I think.

Thanks for your help, everyone!
posted by pseudostrabismus at 9:22 AM on March 7, 2011