A bridal shower often seats the bride’s grandmother next to her coworker, so the games below are chosen to work across ages: they’re played at tables, with cards, and nobody has to perform. Each runs ten to fifteen minutes. All you need are index cards, pens and a few answers collected from the couple beforehand. The questions in the list above feed the games.
Before the shower
- A week ahead, send the couple quiz questions to both partners, or to whoever knows the answers best.
- Ask the couple for five or six dates from their story: when they met, their first date, a first trip, moving in, the proposal.
- Ask the bride whether any topics are off limits for a family audience.
- Put cards and pens on every table.
The games
1. Love story timeline
Best for: the start, when tables don’t know each other. Supplies: one set of event cards per table.
Write each milestone from the couple’s story on its own card, without the date. Each table works together to put the cards in order. The bride reads the real order, with a sentence about each moment if she wants. The table with the most cards in the right place wins.
2. Couple quiz
Best for: any size group. Supplies: cards, pens, the couple’s answers.
Read the quiz questions one at a time. Guests write their guess, and the bride reads the real answer. One point per correct guess. If her partner is at the shower, ask the “who is more likely” questions to both of them at once and see whether they point at the same person.
3. Advice cards
Best for: mixed ages. Supplies: cards and pens.
Each guest picks a question from the advice group and writes an answer. Guests who aren’t married can write about friendship, sharing a home or getting through a hard week. There is no winner. The bride reads a few aloud, only the ones she chooses, and keeps the rest.
4. Guess the memory
Best for: guests who know the bride from different parts of her life. Supplies: cards, pens, a bowl.
Each guest writes a memory of the bride without signing it. Read the cards one at a time and let the room guess who wrote each. Ask the writer before keeping or posting a card.
5. Wedding day stories
Best for: showers with married aunts, mothers and grandmothers.
Ask the married guests one question from the last group, such as what went wrong at their own wedding. Go around the room or keep it at one table. It gives the older guests a turn at the center.
6. Recipe and tradition cards
Best for: the end of the shower. Supplies: recipe cards, sent with the invitation if you like.
Each guest writes a recipe, a holiday tradition or a small household habit worth passing on, and signs it. Collect the cards in a box or binder for the couple.
Keeping it comfortable
Let guests play in small groups rather than asking for a speech from everyone. Blank cards are fine, and nobody needs to explain a pass. Keep anything about past relationships or wedding night jokes for the bachelorette party, if at all.
For the friends’ night out, see bachelorette party games. If the shower brings out stories from older relatives you’d like to hear more of, the questions for grandparents go much further.