Wedding showers are a tradition nearly as old as weddings themselves. Sadly, the games played at many of them seem just as old. We have come up with some revised classics and some brand new ones to help make your wedding shower classically fresh!
Laundry Basket Toss
When sending out invitations, add a note to each, asking each guest to, “Please bring a small household item in addition to your gift, nothing breakable, for a game we will be playing at the gathering!” If you would like to be more specific, such as an item for the kitchen, or for the bedroom, that will work too. Upon arriving at the shower, give each guest a chance to ‘shoot’ his or her item into the laundry basket from a set distance. Award a small gift to guests who make their shot. The basket of items makes a great extra gift for the bride-to-be from the group.
Puzzled
This game is compliments of the digital age! Take a 4” x 6” picture of the bride and groom and print off enough pictures for each guest that will be at the shower. In an envelope place a copy of each picture ‘cut’ into small squares. Time the guests to see how fast the photo can be reassembled. The first one to ‘get the picture’ wins. For a nice follow up, pass out copies of the photograph, uncut, after the game to each guest as a memento to take home. Note: Especially nice for the prizewinner, award her with one of the prints framed.
Wedding Word Jumble
One of the oldest games that come to mind when thinking of those played at wedding showers for decades past is the word jumble that scrambles up words such as ‘shower’ into ‘wosreh’ or ‘honeymoon’ into ‘emyohonon’. Pass around this scrambled list for a destined to be new ‘classic’.
Two incomes – wot ncsimeo
Stay at home parent – tyas ta meho ntrepa
Family cell phone plan –imafly lelc nohpe pnla
Organizer - groznarei
Menu planner – mune lpnnera
Dollar store – lldora rotes
Bachelorette – chalereotetb
Bachelor - aclrobhe
In laws - ni wals
Takeout - outeakt
Where’s the Key
A variation of the paperclip in rice game, this one raises the level a bit. Pour into bowl two to three pounds of plain white rice. Add a dozen paperclips and mix them around. Also, bend two paperclips to resemble keys and add them to the mix. Blindfold the participant, set a timer, and see how many paperclips they can pull out of the rice. Those who find a ‘key’ get to double their points. If you want to intensify the challenge of the game, have each participant don a pair of rubber gloves before they go fishing for the paperclips and keys!
Always a Bridesmaid
Assign guests into groups of three or people, depending on how many guests are at the party. Tell each group to appoint a bridesmaid and give each 10 minutes, a tube of lipstick, and a roll of toilet paper to make over their ‘bridesmaids’. The bride-to-be gets to be the judge of who is the most beautiful bridesmaid. The surprise is that once the bride-to-be has picked her winner, the losers get to make her over, with nothing more than a roll of toilet paper and a tube of lipstick! Make sure to have plenty of film or the batteries charged on the digital camera for some laugh out-loud snapshot taking.
