10 Creative Ways to Elevate Your Bridal Shower

A bridal shower celebrates the bride before the wedding day. Close friends and family members will help organize the event. Bridal showers give the bride and her loved ones a chance to spend quality time together before tying the knot.

The main purpose of a bridal shower is to show love and support for the bride during this exciting milestone.

Bridal showers occur a few weeks or months before the wedding. In most cases, a bridal shower is coincided with a weekend brunch. Guests—typically women—will arrive with gifts for the bride to help her transition into a married life.

Hire a bridal shower photographer to document these precious moments with your family and friends. From candid laughs to detail shots, brides will cherish the memories.

Use this list to discover creative ideas for your bridal shower!

Give guests a sneak peek of your wedding day! This is one of the most creative bridal shower ideas. Arrange a captivating display of wedding shoes, your morning robe, the decorative hanger, fragrances, sentimental jewelry, and customized clothes.

Guests will love to peruse the wedding accessories display. They’ll snap images on their phone and share with others. Amidst this, anticipation for the big day is building.

A wedding accessories display at your bridal shower is a lot of work to arrange, but it will create that wow-factor!

When designing your own display, make it the centerpiece of the room. Use balloons and florals to add texture. Most importantly, personalize the wedding accessories display to fit your style.

Bridal shower themes are optional; however, they add a fun twist to the party. First, decide on a theme that fits your aesthetic and personality. Make it meaningful.

Are you island-hopping for your honeymoon? Then choose a tropic theme with sand and sunshine. Do you want to feel like classic royalty? Pick a vintage tea party theme.

A bridal shower with a meaningful theme is appealing. This aesthetic influences the floral décor, invitations, place cards, and formalwear.

On top of this, guests are eager to arrive and wear an outfit that matches the themed bridal shower. It draws interest to attend the event and allows for more creative direction and conversations.

An ideal venue will provide an ambiance that matches the event’s theme. This elegant bridal shower occurs at McLoone’s Pier House in New Jersey, which overlooks the ocean. The beachfront venue fits the bridal shower’s tropical theme.

An average venue will accommodate wedding displays, tables for dining, and exciting bridal shower games. Small wedding venues, like McLoone’s Pier House, offer these amenities. Think about the total number of guests and visit the venue in-person to envision the space.

Location is worth considering, too. Does the venue offer easy access and parking for guests? Though the venue is gorgeous, a lack of accessibility can lead to low guest turn-out at the bridal shower.

Make a list of small wedding venues in Philadelphia or New Jersey for hosting your bridal shower. Account for the pros and cons before finalizing the selection.

A weekend brunch is an ideal time to schedule a bridal shower.

Most guests are available to attend the bridal shower during brunch hours. As a plus, the bride can serve a delicious array of food options—ranging from sweet and savory. Don’t forget the champagne, too!

Brunch is casual and elegant at the same time. Therefore, it is less formal than the wedding, but more formal than a regular lunch. Add a relaxing environment to the bridal shower by combining it with brunch.

The bridal shower venue can serve a range of sweet and savory food:

• French Toast
• Chicken and Waffles
• Eggs Benedict

Pair any of these delicious food options with mimosas, Blood Marys, and bellinis to enhance the bridal shower brunch.

Bridal shower photographers will enter the venue early to capture the venue’s interior and wedding accessories on displays. An early arrival makes it easier for the photographers to capture photos. When guests arrive for the bridal shower, they begin interacting with the space, so photographers need to direct traffic.

Close family members—like the parents, grandparents, and siblings—should arrive at the venue early for bridal shower photography. In these circumstances, photographers have the family’s full attention for photos. Oftentimes, guests will greet family members upon arrival, which creates distractions.

During these early hours of the bridal shower, the groom and father of the bride will briefly stay before exiting.

Capturing family photos at a bridal shower is a trial run before the wedding. This is an opportunity for brides to prepare for the real family formals with their wedding photographer.

Bridal showers offer delicious food, socialization, and tables for presents. One of the best ways to elevate your bridal shower is to play fun games with guests.

Creative bridal shower games add interest to the event. Usually, guests arrive to greet the bride, eat, drop-off presents, and leave. Games are fun activities to occupy your guests.

Keep the games a secret until the guests are ready to play. These surprising reactions will create stunning bridal shower photography.

Some fun bridal shower games include:

• Toilet Paper Wedding Dress — Guests divide themselves into 4-6 teams. They choose one model from the group to wear the “dress.” They collaborate to make a wedding dress using rolls of toilet paper. The bride decides the winner.
• Bridal Jeopardy — Test your guests on their knowledge about the bride. Arrange a board with 5 question categories. Guests work together to answer the bride-specific questions for the most points.
• Who Has the Bride? — This is fun for guests that love scratch-off prizes. Each person receives a card with the bride’s face on it. On that same card, the groom has a gold scratch-off circle over his face. Upon scratching, the groom or a celebrity will appear. Whoever has the groom will win the game.

Playing fun bridal shower games makes this day more memorable. It is a relaxing way to break the ice for guests as the wedding approaches.

Every meaningful person in a bride’s life will have the opportunity to present a heartfelt speech at the wedding reception. A bridal shower is the perfect time for brides to give others a chance to speak.

In most cases, a wedding photographer will capture the best man, maid-of-honor, and occasionally, the father of the bride giving a speech.

Use the bridal shower to allocate speeches to others, like a bridesmaid, mother, or grandparent. They will value their time in the spotlight to share thoughtful words.

As wedding photographers, we love when couples avoid back-to-back speeches from their best man and maid-of-honor. Do this at the bridal shower! Begin with a welcome speech, play games, add another speech, eat, and then end the event with a farewell speech.

Instead of wrapping gifts, a display shower is when guests bring unwrapped gifts to display at the event. This showcases each gift at the bridal shower and saves the bride-to-be countless minutes of tearing wrapping paper. She can show appreciation for the gift on-the-spot, too.

Guests will love skipping the task of wrapping their bridal shower present. A display shower is less stressful and makes the gift-giving process more enjoyable. It saves precious time for socialization.

In the long run, a display shower is more environmentally friendly. Wrapping paper accumulates trash, while open presents require none of it. Guests can place their bridal shower gifts in reusable bags as an eco-friendly option.

A photo booth is always the life of a party! At a bridal shower, photo booths are another fun-filled group activity. Photo booths provide a quick keepsake photo for the bride, family, and friends.

Always reserve a 10x10 area for a photo booth and decorate the background to fit the theme of your bridal shower. Use a video light to illuminate the photo booth’s scene. There are three options for photo booths:

• Mobile phone pictures only — The quickest way to snap and share.
• The selfie station — After posing for pictures, a series of three photos on a strip of paper will print immediately.
• Camera on a tripod with strobes — The pictures will look their sharpest, but need to download onto a computer and tweak in post-production until they’re ready to share.

However, you choose to have a Photo booth at your bridal shower, guests will appreciate their moment in the spotlight.

Once a bridal shower ends, it is typical for the groom to return to the venue. Take this golden opportunity to capture more photos in the surrounding area.

As a wedding photography studio, we believe a post-bridal shower photo session with the couple is worth it. This is especially true when the bridal shower venue offers scenic photo locations that the wedding venue lacks. Small or large, every wedding venue has its best features for intimate portraits.

Stunning photo opportunities are seldom. Whether the event is a bridal shower or rehearsal dinner, our studio is always eager to snap photos. In this case, a beautiful beach day calls for a photo session with the bride-to-be and her fiancé.

McLoone’s Pier House overlooks the Atlantic Ocean, so we venture onto the beach for romantic photos. Heavy waves crash onto the rocks, which create a dramatic background to pose against.

Romantic photo sessions with a photographer are the perfect finale to your bridal shower. It is a trial run before the wedding day.

After the bridal shower, the wedding countdown really begins. View the wedding portfolio by Phil Kramer to find inspiration for the big day.