Hey, im having a bridal shower In June. my wonderful bridesmaids are putting it on. There is a guest list of 92 people. im very fornunate to have such a big family but I just feel like it will be me opening presents for 2 hours straight? my family likes to watch the opening, so waiting until we get home wouldn't be an option. has anyone had a shower like this? what would you do to help it flow nicely?
Re: huge bridal shower
Unfortunately, no way to get around the gift opening. That's the point of a shower. But for a guest list of 92 people is a bit ridiculous to me.
I would hate to attend a shower that large and fairly certain I wouldn't be sticking around for 2-3 hours of gift opening. That's insane
Take a break part way through. It will be the only way to keep you and those being kept hostage... I mean those watching the opening... sane. Give them a chance to get up, stretch their legs, get more alcohol or food, or whatever.
As much as I wish gift openings would disappear as a part of showers, it won't. But at least it's better than the stupid shower games, those are just another circle of hell in an already estrogen filled hell.
Maybe someone could make the gift opening more fun, like with the bingo game or having a timer that gives prizes to the hostages at certain intervals during the opening (could be something like a prize for whoever's gift is being opened when the timer goes off or something along those lines).
And for those who say it's for the nearest and dearest, that's not always how it works. Everyone on the wedding invite list is invited in many situations which can make for a big list. Nearest and dearest would be eliminating a lot of important people.
I went to one last year that big. It lasted about 3 hours and that was with no games. They had a nice buffet lunch. The groom came too. What the BM (she had 10 so it helped) is they had all the presents in one area & the bride & groom sat side by side in front of the presents. One BM had the responsibility to write everything down. One BM had the task of handing the bride & groom the present, another BM took care of the trash (Bride & groom where instructed, hand trash to this BM), after a quick opening & yelling "thank you aunt sue" it was handed off to another BM who put the presents in another area. It was very well organized, but still took them 2 hours I think to open all the presents. The open bar & food still out helped.
One thing that you can to do help your BM that is writing down the gifts received is, give her a spread sheet with the name of all of your Bridal Shower guests. Put the names in some sort of alphabetical order, maybe by first name, then the BM just has to find the name on the list and write the item next to it. On the spreadsheet, also put the addresses of the guests. Then you can take the list afterwards and have a details list of the guests that gave you presents, what they gave you & their addresses, which you will find very helpful when doing all those thank you cards. Best part is, you'll be able to read your BM writing on who gave you what because it will make it easier for her to keep up with the unwrapping.
First off, wasteful or not, I put a lot of effort into wrapping a pretty package. Clear wrapping isn't fun, and turns it into a who spent the most money jerkoff.
secondly, the bride wants to spend more time with guests comes across as such bullshit on an invite.
Formerly martha1818
Hungarian/Polish families. We're cool like that.
My family is into the whole "every bow you break is a kid you're going to have" thing so I wound up opening all of the gifts by hand. I don't feel like I rushed it and it definitely took way less than an hour to get through everything. Since I had gone around to the tables a few times during lunch so I had a good idea of where everyone was sitting which made the thank yous easier.
I don't know what games and things your ladies might have planned, but we did a lot of that during the present opening to break things up. We did drawings for prizes every so many presents. We also had people write down their top pieces of marriage advice and read a few here and there.
I've been to showers where there was more or less an assembly line
where the bridesmaids opened gifts and recorded what was from who, then
the bride made the announcement about what each gift was and thanked the
guests. If you're really anxious about opening presents in front of
everyone this is a great way to cut down on the time.
But honestly, you'll be fine. Even if people gave you a couple gifts each there's no way it's going to take the amount of time you're dreading.