The turnout was much larger than expected. Apparently either DD1 is so special she defies the rule of 1/3 (1/3 of your invited guests won't come), or many of her friends and relatives had nothing more interesting on their calendars for March 11th! Because we were stuffed to the gills with guests. Had we known such a high percentage (at least 80%) of invitees would actually attend, we would have looked into having the shower at a hall or other venue. Having had 20 people for family holidays, we figured 12-15 guests at our house would be no big deal. Imagine putting 21 people in your living room!
It was loud, it was sometimes crazy, but it was FUN! Despite an unexpected guest (I will never know why??? my eldest sister-in-law thinks its okay to bring uninvited people to family events without first asking if that's okay. . .) there were enough chairs, food, and favors for everyone. Everyone seemed to have a great time, and many people asked where we had found the ideas for the games that were played.
Honestly, this was just a mish-mash of old traditional shower games, and newer ones, with a few school-style things (like calling on DD1 to use her "teacher voice" and do the attention getting hand-clap when the crowd got a little rowdy) thrown in.
We had prepped everything except for the punch the day before (punch was made about 1/2 hour before the shower so it would still be kind of fizzy at serving time 2/3 of the way through the shower). As guests arrived, we directed them to the dining room table, which we had set up for cards and gifts, as well as the first 'game': How Many Kisses for the Mrs? where they wrote down a guess for how many Hershey's kisses were in a quart sized canning jar. The guest who guessed closest without going over the amount actually in the jar received the jar of kisses as their prize. (In case you are wondering, I crammed 129 Hershey's kisses into that jar.)
Also at this station were envelopes for thank you cards, which we asked each guest to address, as well as slips of paper to write "Advice and Well Wishes For The Soon-To-Be Mrs". and a basket to put those papers in.
start here
Once everyone had arrived and had completed their tasks at the table, the fun began in the living room. Each guest was given a clip board (rounded up from several sources so we had enough for everyone), an ink pen, and a sheet of paper entitled Find The Guest Who. . . that had a grid of squares with different items. That was our icebreaker game, and guests mingled getting to know each other for about 15 minutes while they tried to find another guest who
- has the same first name as you or your mother
- drives the same color car as you
- has been on a vacation in the last three months
- speaks a foreign language
- traveled over 50 miles to attend this shower
- is afraid of heights
- doesn't like coffee
- has the same favorite color as you
- can play a musical instrument
. . . among many other things. There were 20 items in all to acquire someone else's name for. That seemed to loosen up the crowd--ranging in ages from 5 (the flower girl) to 75.
The next game was Jeopardy. DD2 had come up with six categories, and questions and answers to go with them. Each category had 5 questions ranging in point value from 200 to 1000, plus one Double Jeopardy question worth 2000. And once all those had been chosen and answered, there was a Final Jeopardy question to wager on.
We told the guests to form teams of 3-4 people each, and commenced playing. This game took about 45 minutes to get through, but it kept rolling with lots of laughter and some surprising competitiveness between teams.
Our categories were Wedding Traditions, Special Dates, Where are They?/What are They Doing?, Bride or Groom?, Love Songs, and Famous Couples. Wedding Traditions was just that; questions about different wedding traditions. Special Dates was things like the bride's birth date, the date of their first date, their wedding date, date they graduated from high school, etc. Where are They?/What are They Doing? featured printed photos of DD1 and Honorary Son at different places or events throughout their years of dating, and the guests had to either name the place or the event. Bride or Groom? was questions like "Who showers more" and "Who is the bigger sports fan" and "Whose brother hit them in the head with a baseball bat when they were five years old" and the guests had to decide if the correct answer was DD1 or Honorary Son. The Love Songs category was audio, with either DD1 or I singing selected verses of a love song, and the teams had to come up with the title of the song. Famous Couples had questions whose answers were things like Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Bonnie and Clyde, Tarzan and Jane.
Jeopardy
For Final Jeopardy, the category of Firsts was announced, and then each team got to write down what amount of their points they wanted to wager. After that, the question "Where did DD1 and Honorary Son go for their first date?" was read, and the teams had one minute to consult and then write down an answer. To everyone's surprise, the team that had gone into Final Jeopardy with the least points ended up being the only team to correctly answer the question. The members of the winning team got to each pick a prize from our prize table.
prizes
The next game was a kitchen themed memory game. I had sewn a new apron for this, and DD1 put it on in another room, where I put things in her hands, or clipped them to the apron or put them into the apron pockets with enough identifiable parts sticking out. Then she paraded through the living room for about 90 seconds before leaving the room again, after which the guests had three minutes to write down as many items as they could remember. When the time was up, we had her return to the living room, where one by one the items--including the apron--were named and removed. There was a tie for who had remembered the most items correctly, and it was broken by correctly stating how many clips had been on the apron (five). The winner then was given the choice of keeping the apron or choosing something from the prize table (she elected to take a mug from the prize table, much to the delight of Surprise, who later ended up taking the apron home).
How many kitchen items can you spot?
That was followed by two wedding themed Mad-Libs that we had found on the Internet. To our amazement, the Mad-Libs were kind of a bust. My family absolutely loves Mad-Libs, we used to do them on road trips to break up the monotony of hours in the car and my kids could tell you what an adverb was compared to an adjective long before they could even read or write the words themselves. So we never dreamed that other people would have so much trouble coming up with nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, numbers, liquids, etc.
After the Mad-Libs (which honestly we cut short, having originally intended to do three, one about How They Met, one about The Proposal, and one about The Wedding), each guest was given a wedding themed word search to do while DD2 and I set out refreshments and DD1 quickly ate a plate of refreshments in the kitchen. The first three people done with their word searches earned a trip to the prize table.
Then it was time for everyone to get something to eat and to drink, and DD1 sat in the chair of honor. She opened the cards and gifts while guests imbibed on snacks, punch and lemonade, looking on.
the noshes
the overflowing gift table
When the shower ended (we had scheduled it from 1-4, the clock read 3:53 as DD1 unwrapped the last gift--and DD2 & I stepped into the kitchen where we shared an elated fist bump at our impeccable timing) the guests were instructed to please take home a candle (which I had made last week in 4 ounce mason jars) in either the scent of vanilla, maple, or lilac.
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