Wedding Invitations

Send three recipe cards (or index cards) to each guest with their bridal shower invitation. Ask them to write down their favorite appetizer, entrée, and dessert recipe and to put their names and phone numbers on the recipe cards. At the shower, collect the cards and arrange them in a pretty recipe box to present to the bride. This will begin or enhance her cooking repertoire and give her a helpful contact to consult if she has trouble with a recipe.

Have each invitee bring a different kind of recipe: a recipe for a happy marriage. Guests can offer quotes, suggestions, and anecdotes to share with the bride to prepare her for successful married life.

One hostess mailed each guest a blank photo album page with instructions to decorate it with photos, quotes, anecdotes, or meaningful ideas for the bride-to-be. Each invitee presented her page at the shower and added it to the album for the bride-to-be to take home.

Fun bridal shower themes include “Around the Clock,” for which each guest is preassigned a time of day to correspond to her gift, “Lingerie,” “Kitchen,” “Recipes,” or “Holidays.”

Couples’ showers, rather than the traditional “girls only” events, are becoming increasingly popular. Typically, evenings are better for these events.

For a couples’ shower, be sure to choose a theme that both genders can appreciate, such as “Around the House,” where each guest brings a gift that corresponds to a preassigned room of the house, or “Outdoor Activities,” for which guests bring items the couple would enjoy outdoors, such as sporting equipment, beach towels, or exercise gear. The “Handy Couple” shower is a popular way for the honorees to stock up on tools and home accessories, and “That’s Entertainment” is a fun theme for stereo or video equipment, CDs and videos, and maybe even a popcorn popper.