paperandglue.net

Last week I participated in yet another rite of wedding season — the bridal shower. A family friend (son of my mom’s good friend, high school friend of my brother, who is in the wedding party) is getting married at the end of the month, and so my mom and I participated in the throwing of a shower for his intended.

I think I can take credit for coming up with the idea that frees us from the seemingly-obligatory and uniformly awful bridal shower games. I just have no interest in any of the following:

1. Making wedding dresses out of toilet paper

2. Playing “What’s Missing from the Tray?” memory games

3. Playing “How Well Do You Know the Bride?” trivia games

4. Anything else called an “icebreaker.”

So here’s what we do. We specify that all guests bring one or two favourite recipes. When they arrive, we have tables set up, laden with patterned paper, stickers, pens and markers, and scissors. Then we get everyone to “scrapbook” their recipe onto a page. I typically lead everyone in this activity, and I stress that it’s a no-pressure kind of thing. You can just glue the recipe card down and stick a sticker on and be done. Or, for those who are comfortable with fancier techniques, you can mat your recipe and draw illustrations or whatever. Basically, these are skills you learned in kindergarten, so just go for it!

At the end of the shower, we gather all the pages and place them in page protectors and put them in a nice binder. The bride goes home with an artifact that’s not only useful (containing many excellent, tried-and-true recipes), but a tangible expression of love.

The other benefit to doing the scrapbooking during the shower is that it truly is a great icebreaker. You give people a project and it gives them something to chat about even if they have nothing else in common but a relationship to the bride or groom.

Another tip for a successful shower, especially one where not everyone knows each other, is to make detailed nametags. This was my mom’s idea — she made simple pin-on nametags that had the individual’s name, their relationship to the bride or groom (“Groom’s grandmother,” “Bride’s friend”) and also put the neighbourhood or town the person hails from. I suppose that might be too dorky for some, but I’m an advocate of name-tagging at these kinds of social events.

I’ll leave you with an adorable shot of the bride (left) and her sisters.