The Basics of Bridal Shower Etiquette

My brother is getting married out of state. Only immediate family is attending. For the bridal shower, my sister and I are throwing it. Who do we invite?

Many brides now need to travel by airplane home after a shower or wedding, How do you ask you guests to think about bring a small gift.

I am the MOH and live two states away. Because of this I wasn’t able to make it to the bridal shower or to the bacholrette party. I wasn’t asked for any ideas or imput. Now, just days before the wedding I’m being asked to pay for part of each. Please help me with this. We’re already spending so much just to be here.

My aunts are invited to the dinner and the reception, but my cousins are only invited to the reception. Is ok to invite them all the the bridal shower?

Hi Elise — guests are usually intimate friends and close family members. Flower girls, typically not, but maybe older junior bridesmaids.

Catherine — definitely. At some drop-in showers the (poor!) bride is posted by the door specifically to accept and unwrap gifts.

Cynthia: that’s a complicated question. It’s not standard etiquette, so you can’t determine whether it’s ‘proper’ or not except by considering the whole context.

Emma: there’s no requirement that the MOH give a ’special’ gift at the shower. Hopefully, the bride will be thrilled with whatever you picked out as a token of your friendship and affection. However, many people enjoy using the registry to narrow down what the bride really wants. Typically you would pick a less expensive item off the registry, and save more expensive picks for the wedding. But any gift that represents your closeness is a good choice.

Tamara: I’m not quite clear on which events your cousins and aunts are invited to. Can you clarify?

Angela: it’s really never okay to expect your bridesmaids to host a shower for 80 people. In fact, bridesmaids should never be on the hook for anything larger than a very intimate party — say, 20 max.

If you’re going to throw etiquette to the wind as a bride and effectively plan your own, excessively large shower… leave the bridesmaids out of it, and don’t give lip service to etiquette. Just have your mother host it. An event that size is too much to ask girlfriends to plan and pay for.

Hello, my best friend is getting married and she has 3 brides maids, no maid of honor. She is pretty much planning her own shower ( likes to have things done correctly ) and has invited about 80 people. Is that too many? How do we do games with that many people, how does she open 80 plus gifts w/o everyone getting bored? Help!

We are planning to go away with our wedding party and get married. Two weeks after we return we are going to have a dinner and reception. Before dinner our wedding video will be played and then we will arrive and have dinner and our reception. My question is - I have a really large family and I am closer to some of my cousins then others since I know I will offend my aunts if certain cousins are invited and not all and I can’t afford to feed everyone I am only inviting my aunts is it ok to invite my cousins to the Bridal shower even if they are only invited to the reception?

Should the maid of honor give a “special” gift at the bridal shower? Or should the gift be something from the bride’s registry list?

is it appropriate for the mother of the groom to hold a bridal shower?

I am attending a “drop in” shower. Do I still wrap my gift?

are flower girls invited to the bridal shower

“Not important” — I see the problem!

Mistake #1: your bride should have put the kabosh on this. As flattering as it is to have all those parties thrown in your honor, it’s a bad idea. Most, if not all brides, CANNOT come up with a non-duplicating guest list for every shower that someone feels like hosting. It’s up to her to stop the madness. Plus, is she planning on inviting all these people to the wedding? If not, she has another problem.

Mistake #2: Since she didn’t stop it, she absolutely should not get frustrated at guests who just attend one. Common sense dictates that’s enough, as your family rightly expressed.

If some super-enthusiastic relatives are happy to hit them all … great. But no one should be expected to — and outside the moms & bridesmaids, most people shouldn’t even be invited to more than one.

Plus, keep in mind that most bridesmaids are not going to be thrilled to hit four showers either. The world doesn’t stop when a couple gets married … friends & relatives have lives and obligations too.

Thanks for the reply.

Basically she has several people who want to throw her a shower. Different family members and friends of the family all want to throw their own shower for her and so they do, and she feels it is important to invite the mothers and grandmothers to every shower and when some feel like one was enough, or even 2, then she feels insulted that they only wanted to attend one when her mother and grandmother is more than happy to go to every single one.
basically I am the groom and she is pissed at my family for not going to every shower that her family/friends throw, but they have all been to each one. If i try to say its enough the i get yelled at.

“Not Important” –

I totally agree with you, it’s burdensome. Inviting people to multiple showers should be avoided as much as possible.

BUT …

the multiple showers thing is not covered under etiquette. The traditional shower is ONE shower hosted by friends of the bride, not relatives. Traditionally, it is SMALL. Girlfriends, close family members, end of story. Lots of problems avoided!

If you have more than one shower, you won’t have a lot of etiquette guidelines to lean on. So you’ll have to use diplomacy, and local custom. Obviously, some parts of the country are customarily having WAY more bridal showers than others. You’ll even find places where people separately recognize a “bridal shower,” a “wedding shower”, a lingerie shower … blah blah blah.

Why are there 3, 4, 5 showers happening here? What’s the difference between them? Is one for work? One for the groom’s family who lives 200 miles away? Use that info to winnow out as many repeat guests as you possibly can. Not even a saint could go to three showers for the same blushing bride without starting to feel a little imposed on, gift or no gift.

Maria:
I’m the mother of the groom living with my son in NJ and I’m hosting a bridal shower for my future daughter in law for relatives in NJ and nearby states (within a days drive) Just curious why you wouldnt want to host the shower.
Tori

As the mother of the groom, I do not intend to host a bridal shower for my daughter-in-law-to-be. We have no family in the immediate area. However, I do have some family within a day’s drive who could host a shower, that could include members of our side of the family. How do I give them the idea to do this? A simple, small shower, from our side of the family would mean so much to my son and his wife-to-be!

i am interested in know what others feel about inviting the same people to every single bridal shower. I understand the bridesmaids and mother-of-the-bride are invited to all of them, but is it necessary to invite the grooms mother, and grandmothers to every shower? I feel that it is more burdensome to ask the same people to every shower, and to have them buy you gifts for every shower, especially if you have 3, 4 ,5 + showers. I know it’s not really normal to invite the same guests to every shower, but mainly I want to know about the grandmothers, and other close family members. If they are invited to every single shower, should the bride feel offended or upset that they don’t go to all of them, or more than one?

thanks,

Hi Kelly:

I think many people attending a bridal shower are happy to have a theme and a suggested type of gift to bring. It narrows things down and makes it easier, and “theme” showers are commonplace, so no one should be too surprised. Just make it clear that the theme gifts or even clothing is a suggestion, not a requirement.

Nikki:
Hmm, this is a problem. The bridal shower is NOT a party run by the bride. It is a generous effort that you and (hopefully!) the other bridesmaids plan and pull off. Therefore, YOUR budget and your needs are front and center here. You can ask the bride for suggested guests, but you also need to tell her how many you can comfortably accommodate. Again, that number is up to you. If 70 … yikes! … is out of the question, say so. That is an AWFUL lot of people to expect your friends to pony up for.

Also, whenever a shower (especially outside of work) includes guests who aren’t coming to the wedding, there are bound to be hurt feelings. I think this should be avoided, except maybe in the case of a very small intimate wedding where only family is invited. If you’re having 200+ guests and still inviting people to the shower who aren’t getting a wedding invite … you have a problem.

People need to remember that bridal showers were designed to be INTIMATE, meaning, a cozy occasion between the bride and her best friends, not a social free-for-all that shows off how many hundreds of people you know. When you start getting away from this original intention, you start having etiquette problems and hurt feelings.

Should any ladies be invited to the bridal shower if they are not being invited to the wedding? My girlfriend has a running list of about 70 people she wants to invite, but how can I explain the etiquette and the fact that it will be costly for me (Matron of Honor) to plan and to partly fund……

Is it proper to send a note in the bridal shower invitation to tell a person what theme like kitchen utensils, she has to buy for the shower?