Shower me with shower ideas

July 12, 2012 7:00 PM

I'm hosting a bridal shower for a colleague at work. What games can we play that are easy to execute?

I am hosting a bridal shower for a colleague at work, and I'm looking for ideas of something to do beyond standing around eating food, and then giving a collective gift to the bride-to-be. Are there any fun, but low key games we could play that aren't super involved?

Here are some relevant details:
-12pm-1pm time slot
-There will be about 20 people there, both men and women, ranging from 26 years old - 50ish
-the bride isn't super into overly silly or girly wedding stuff, but would be up for a bit of fun
-most people will be standing and the space we have is kind of awkward (a central area with a small coffee table and two small couches, and then room to add some extra chairs); food will be in a separate room
-everyone knows the bride of course, but not necessarily super well (we're all colleagues, and only some of us are friends outside of work)
-the bride likes fishing and outdoorsy stuff; we work in the environmental field
-I'm going to be in a meeting right up until the shower is supposed to start, so I can't do much prep right before the shower, but can do some ahead of time
-games need to be SFW (obviously)

I'm terrible at coming up with ideas for fun games. Does anyone have any brilliant ideas for me?

Thanks for your help!

posted by just_ducky to Grab Bag (7 answers total)

One of the most fun games I ever did at a shower was toilet paper gowns. Teams of three-four people are given a LARGE package of toilet paper (at least six rolls) and told to make a wedding gown. The results are hilarious. The bride picks a winner and that team gets a group prize. This is super easy to execute, does not require a lot of planning ahead, and requires about 15 minutes for explaning, creating, modeling, and selecting a winner.
posted by eleslie at 7:33 PM on July 12, 2012 [4 favorites]

A wedding-themed trivia quiz could be fun - I was at a baby shower that did that and it was interesting and got everyone chatting with one another.
posted by brilliantine at 7:38 PM on July 12, 2012

You could also do wedding jargon bingo. Have a prepared list of wedding phrases built into bingo cards. This helps to get conversation going with the participants. Downside - it takes some preparation. Good words - honeymoon, mother-in-law, maid of honor.
posted by eleslie at 7:51 PM on July 12, 2012

I was asked to photograph a friend's wedding shower last week, and one of the games was trivia about the bride-to-be: Birthday, Favorite book, how long with the fiancee, wedding date, etc. People just took 5-10 minutes filling it out, and then they went through the list. Very low key and seemed to go over well. If you'd like, I'll see if my wife still has the paper for a full example.
posted by shinynewnick at 7:56 PM on July 12, 2012

Best answer: I played this one at a baby shower with drawings of babies, but it could work for a wedding, with pictures of either the bride or the cake?

Give everyone a paper plate (or you can use scraps of paper, the plate is just more rigid so it's a little easier) and get everyone to draw a picture of (dress, cake, the bride, the groom etc, pick one) while holding the plate on top of their heads. Then the bride shows all of them to the group and chooses a winner. Winner gets a prize.

I like this one for a co-ed work shower because it's less "girly" than a lot of the shower games out there, and it got SUPER competitive at the shower I was at.
posted by Sweetchrysanthemum at 8:21 PM on July 12, 2012

At one baby shower at work, they had everyone bring in a baby picture of themselves. They put them on display and everyone had to match up the pictures to current employees. I seem to remember that one because it was almost impossible for me to guess anyone as I had just started work that week, but it was a good way to meet everyone and match names to (current) faces.
posted by kaybdc at 8:33 PM on July 12, 2012 [2 favorites]

The only bridal shower game I've ever participated in that I thought was really fun and sweet and actually interesting was one where we had the bride* play a sort of "newlywed game". We asked the groom a bunch of super-basic questions (What's your favorite band? Favorite food? What did you and Bride do on your first date? What's your favorite thing about Bride? stuff like that), and then we had the bride guess what his answers were.

I think we did maybe 5 questions, definitely not more than ten. Guests were allowed to shout out "help" as desired.

Aside from arranging the questions/answers and making up a cute Questions and Answers board that acted as a visual aid to make it more fun for the guests, there was virtually no advance work involved. And it was HILARIOUS, especially when the bride's five year old niece started shouting out answers.

*This was a shower where the groom was not involved. Obviously you could do it for both of them, which might be more interesting.
posted by Sara C. at 7:01 AM on July 13, 2012