Free Bridal Shower games

Bridal showers are a fun way of getting together and having some fun with the bride before she’s no longer ‘single and so free to mingle’. It gives the bride a chance to enjoy the company of her family and friends before getting caught up in the frantic pace of last-minute wedding preparations.

If you have designated yourself as the shower planner, you will need to organize a few games to play during the bridal shower. It’s nice to have games centered on the theme, i.e. the bride and the wedding. But general games will also do, as long as everybody is having a good time.

While you might think that prizes are suited more for a kiddies' party, you will be surprised at how competitive some adults get when there’s a prize at stake! You might notice more enthusiasm and active participation in the games if there are a few prizes up for grabs.

Along with games you could also organize some other fun activities where everybody can join in and have a few laughs.

Here are a few games you could play during a bridal shower:

1) Pass the Garter

This is a good game to play if it’s a small group, mostly women. All the ladies should stand in a circle, men too, if they are up for it. Keep a garter ready - not the bride’s – you could borrow one from somebody. To the accompaniment of background music, each participant should slide the garter all the way up to mid-thigh, take it off and pass it to the next person. When the music stops, the guest with the garter on is out. So on until the last one left is the winner!

2) Pass the Hula-Hoop

Another variation on the above, though not with a bridal theme, but a lot of fun, is to stand in a circle in pairs. It is nice to play if there are a lot of couples. The variation on the above is that each couple has to wriggle through the hula-hoop, step out of it and hand it over to the next person. Sounds easy? Try it! It’s good exercise and worth a few laughs. Obviously the couple caught with the hula-hoop when the music stops is out. And so it goes on…

3) Place the Veil

Cut out a large picture of a bride from a bridal brochure. Paste it on a placard. Cut out pictures of proportionate veils and hand them to guests. Blindfold them one by one, and secure a veil to the picture with the help of a pin or tape. The one who places the veil closest to the bride’s head in the picture is the winner.

4) Create a Bouquet

Keep an assortment of flowers and greens ready, as well as some tulle, twine, ribbons etc. Divide the guests into smaller groups and get them to create a bouquet. Have the bride pick the best bouquet and click a picture of her holding it with the winning team, for posterity.

5) Guess the Honeymoon Location

Cut out from brochures or holiday guides, pictures of popular honeymoon destinations and number them. Everybody has to put down their guesses on paper and the one with the most correct answers wins.

6) Bridal Charades

Make a list of movies based on wedding themes like, ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ or ‘Runaway bride’ or popular love songs played at weddings like, ‘Endless Love’. Based on how large your crowd is, divide them into two, three or four teams. Each team selects a person who is given a movie name/song that has to be acted out to provide clues to his/her team. The team with the highest number of correct guesses wins.

7) Bridal Ballads

Select some of the bride’s favorite songs but make sure they are relatively well-known ones. Choose only the choruses and write out the lines on separate slips of paper. All choruses should be of the same length, i.e. every chorus should be of either 4 or 5 lines. The slips should correspond to the total number of guests.

Scatter the slips on the floor in different corners and have each guest pick up one. They have to identify the song and figure out other people with matching chorus lines so as to form a group. Instead of giving the traditional prize, this one’s got a catch. The ones that form a group the fastest have to perform a soulful rendition of the whole song. You should have the words handy and if you have the equipment for it, make it a spontaneous karaoke session. The rest of the groups then have to sing all their choruses together – it makes for a crazy, fun-filled session.

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8) Once Upon a Time

Ask each guest to bring along a photograph of ‘Myself when young’. Get these together, number them and lay them out on a table. Ask everyone to make a list of his or her guesses and often there is a hilarious case of mistaken identity, with someone saying, "Oh! Did you really think that was me?" and someone else going, "Are you implying I looked that bad?" Of course the guests have to all know each other really well.

9) Sing-a-long

Split the guests into two teams. Write generic wedding related words like ring, church, altar, bride, love, cake, dance, etc. on slips of paper and have each team draw one. They have to come up with at least a few lines of a song containing the word on the slip. If they can’t, the other team gets a point. It’s funny when teams sometimes try to make up songs when they can’t find a legitimate one!

10) ‘Know Your Bride’

Make a list of questions relating to the bride, for instance, her favorite food, television show, color, how did she meet the groom, etc. Make copies of the list and circulate to all the guests. The first one to come up with the most number of correct entries should get something really special!

Fun activities to try out to entertain guests

1) Spin the Bottle

This one’s good for entertainment. You might want to get only a few, say about eight or ten friends of the bride, to sit around in a circle. Set a bottle in the center and spin it. The person that the mouth of the bottle points to has to give an impromptu speech relating to the bride. Topics should be kept ready beforehand and could range from the sentimental ‘Why the bride is a great friend’ to the heartfelt ‘Your wishes for the bride’ to a lighthearted ‘Suggest ways to the bride to make up after a fight’. You could record all this for the bride to listen to and laugh about, years later.

2) Piñata with a Difference

Fill an empty piñata with naughty or suggestive items and get everyone to take turns at hitting it. When it breaks, there is generally a mad scramble to collect things. The one who collects the most stuff will have to come up with innovative uses for what she has collected, other than the most obvious one. It can prove hilarious.

3) Make-up Artist

Keep a few make-up kits handy with slightly garish colors or the brighter ones that you never end up using. Have the bride sit in the center and have some of the bridal party like the matron of honor, bridesmaids, etc. apply makeup on her, blindfolded. When they are done, reveal the results. The entire process can be a scream! Don’t forget to take a few photographs as a keepsake.