Monday, August 6, 2012

Bridal Shower Games (& free printables)

I love showers. I love the games and the food and the celebrating of a marriage or new baby or whatever. I know that there are many women who don't care for showers or games, but I do enjoy them so I was thrilled when I got the chance to throw a shower for my sister. I took my time looking up ideas for all aspects of the shower, pinning my favorite ideas, pulling everything together and putting it into one cohesive party. One of the major parts of a shower is the games. I found several ideas that I liked. I used ideas from Wedding Bee and Elegant Labels and I changed them to fit my ideas for the shower. I planned 4 games for the shower. We only had time to do 2  of the games because my sister's mother-in-law to be had plans for after the shower and asked me to cut it short. But I thought that I would go ahead and share all 4 with you so you can use them if you want.

The files are word documents so you should be able to change them to fit your needs. I edited the documents to take out the names. You can put in names for bride and groom. These are for personal use only. Please keep my web address on them when you print them so I get my credit and other people can find these printables if they want them.


Purse Game

There are many versions of purse games out there. I got the idea for this one by combining an idea from one of the sites above and a game that was used during a jewelry party that I hosted.  I used this as kinda an introductory game at the beginning of the shower to draw everyone together. In this game you give everyone a sheet of paper. You can use this printable or just give them a blank paper and have them write out the letters (I did that because my printer was low on ink). I used my sister's and her fiance's names and his last name, but I changed it for the printable, you can use any words that you want. Anyways everyone then starts going through their purse looking for things that start with each of the letters. You will want to put some sort of time limit on it (I think we did 10-15 minutes). Then whoever has the most items wins. You can have a few small prizes (I got mine at dollar tree) to hand out to winners. Print the Purse Game




Bridal Shower Bingo
This is a really simple game and does not take very much more time than you are already taking when opening presents. The only reason that I didn't go ahead and so this one is because I couldn't get it printed off. In case you haven't seen this before the way it works is that each person gets a bingo sheet. They fill in each square with things they think might be in the presents that will be opened (blender, tongs, wisk, towel, wash cloth, etc). The center spot is a free spot, you can put in the couple's names or just leave it Bride and Groom. The people will have a couple squares that they know for sure because they can put down their present. This game takes down some of the awkwardness for the bride of opening presents, when she opens a present she can say who has ____ on their card and then everyone is busy looking at their cards (Yes I know this from experience :). This is also great for baby showers. It is absolutely wonderful for parties that people don't know each other well, because like I said it takes away the awkwardness. You can give a prize for the first bingo, or the first several or whatever you want. Print Bridal Shower Bingo


The Story of the Bride and Groom
This is the game that we ended up not having time to play. I got the idea from my mother-in-law. For my bridal shower she did a really fun game where people were in groups and they wrote a story about how Mr. Random and I met and how our lives would go. The game was played like wasted paper with one person writing part and then passing it on to the next person who writes another part and so on until everyone has written. That game was super fun, and this printable can easily be used for that. But I wasn't sure that that game would work well for the group of people I was expecting, so I adjusted it a little. I made up this sheet and I was planning to give each person a sheet (or if you don't want to print it off you can just have each person divide the paper in 4ths and title each section as above). Then each person is to write out a story for each section. They can write the actual story of what happened or they can make up a wild and crazy story. I was planning to give prizes for the most accurate, the brides favorite, and the most funny. Print the Story Game


Know the Couple Game
This is a pretty basic game. I got the idea from the Wedding Bee link above. I made this game to include both the bride and groom because the shower included people that knew just my sister or her fiancee. I figured everyone would have a chance of getting 1/2 of the questions right and they could have fun guessing on the other half and getting to know the bride and groom better. Basically to play you give each person a paper (either this print out or a plain paper that they number 1-22) and have them fill it out or read the questions to them. When everyone is done give the correct questions (the bride and groom were both there for the shower so I had them sit at the front of the room and answer the questions interview style, it worked out really well). The person who got the most right gets a prize. You can adjust the questions to fit the couple better if these ones do not apply. Print the Know the Couple Game


Bridal Shower Things
This game was kinda an extra game that I planned if we had extra time. It would have been more of a game for people who wanted to hang out after the present opening when the people who have plans left, but it just didn't work. The way I planned this game was to make a cross between The Game of Things and Apples to Apples (Two extrememly fun games). The materials needed for this are small strips of papers for people to write on and pens or pencils. Everyone gets several strips of paper. You announce a category such as things you don't do at a wedding, things you say at the altar, things you see when walking up the aisle, things you don't say to your mother in law, things you don't do on your honeymoon, etc. I had planned to write up a list of categories but hadn't gotten around to it so I was going to wing it. Everyone writes up a response to the category and passes them to the bride. If you have a small group you can play like things and go around the circle guessing who wrote which response (let me know if you are interested in more info on that way of playing). If you have a larger group play like apples to apples and the bride picks her favorite response. I wasn't planning to do any prizes for this game, but you could award points and whoever has the most points gets the prize.



What about you? Do you like bridal shower games? What is your favorite or least favorite bridal shower game?


I am thinking about making up a simple bridal game kit to sell on Etsy. Leave me a comment if you would be interested in this so I can get an idea of the possible interest.


Linked Up To:
A Pinch of Joy, While He Was Napping, Claiming our Space, Cornerstone Confessions, Frugal Girls, Blissful and Domestic,






 

6 comments:

  1. Sounds like a fun shower -- love the games you put together, especially the idea for Bingo! Thanks so much for sharing on Busy Monday.

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  2. These sound like fun! Thanks so much for sharing on Tout It Tuesday. Hope to see you tomorrow.

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  3. Where are the files? When I click on the pictures of the games it just brings up thumbnails of all of them...could you possibly email the bingo to me? clbrockway@gmail.com

    Thanks!

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    1. I'm sorry you are having trouble. If you look at the bottom of the game description there is a link that says Print the ____ Game. If you click on that link you should be able to download and print it. I also emailed it to you. Thanks for asking!

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    2. By the way thanks for commenting! You helped me realize that my links were too dark. It was hard to see what was a link and what was text. I have corrected it now. Thank you for bringing it to my attention!

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  4. thanks for the downloads,big help and great time saver. glad I found this!

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