Who Is This Bride and Why Am I Invited to Her Shower?
I had a client a few weeks ago who shared an interesting situation with me. She received an invitation to a wedding shower but did not know who the bride was, nor did she recognize the names of any of the hostesses. Her husband has a rather large family so she assumed the bridal shower was for the fiancé of a nephew, but she wasn’t sure. Given how uncomfortable this made her feel, now that she is creating a bridal shower invitation for the daughter of one of her closest friends, she wants to make sure this doesn’t happen to her. Here is some advice I gave my client to help her avoid the same issue.
Include Pertinent Details on the Invitation
The best way to ensure that each guest knows who the party is for is to include as much information as possible on the shower invitation. This is especially important if the guest list includes extended friends and family (as opposed to close friends and family), or people the bride has never met. Include the bride’s last name, as well as the full names of each host/hostess. You can even include the groom’s full name for added clarity. That way, each guest knows exactly who the honoree is and who is planning the party.
Limit the Guest List
A wedding shower should be more intimate and casual than the wedding and really should include just the bride’s closest friends and relatives. So while it’s true that all shower guests should be invited to the wedding, that doesn’t mean everyone who is invited to the wedding has to be invited to the bridal shower. Unless the bride has a truly close relationship with someone, she shouldn’t feel obligated to invite her to her wedding shower, so if the bride or one of the hostesses doesn’t personally know someone on the guest list, perhaps that person doesn’t need to be included. This especially goes for the significant others of the groomsmen, friends of the bride’s or groom’s siblings, and extended relatives and their spouses.
Making Sure Guests Feel Welcome
Since bridal showers are typically more intimate affairs, guests who don’t know the bride well, or who don’t know any of the other guests may feel uncomfortable attending a bridal shower. Perhaps it’s best not to include them.
Don’t Invite People Just for the Gifts
If a guest is not particularly close to the bride or groom, or if they’ve never met, it may feel like she’s being invited just for the gift. That’s never a good feeling, so perhaps that guest does not need to be included on the shower guest list. This goes back to just including people who are close to the bride and groom.
The bottom line is a wedding shower should be a time when the guests can spend quality time with the bride before her big day. A smaller guest list will result in a more intimate event, and in the end will be more memorable not only for the bride, but for her guests as well.