My best friend is getting married soon, and as her Maid of Honor, one of my main responsibilities was to plan and throw her a bridal shower.  I plan events for a living, so I felt up to the challenge, but I also had some hurdles to jump.  Julie and I, for starters, are not very traditional people.   I had a child before marriage and she married later in life.  Considering our upbringing, I knew that some of our guests might have trouble understanding the type of party that I was organizing. 

Julie has been an educator for some time now ; she has her masters in education.   She has her own apartment and all of the necessary accoutrements inside it that make her apartment a home.  The one thing that she did not have, that she wished for more than anything, was to have a post-wedding week to breathe, without financial strain.  She, unfortunately, is still paying off college loans and her fiancé, who has two children of his own, has responsibilities with regard to his children.  Julie and I agreed that she already had what she needed, and all that was left was what she wanted most of all – a honeymoon.  I had heard of, but had never visited “Thebigday.com.”  I knew that it was a honeymoon registry, and figured it could be a solution for Julie, and ultimately, something that I could share with you.

Thebigday.com is like Christmas for adults, but more specifically for honeymooners.  You register for use of their site, tell them when your marrying, who you’re marrying and where you’d like to honeymoon, and the rest is bliss.  You can upload pictures of your destination, write a general note to guests of your registry and put a dollar amount on gifts you’d like to receive, with regards to your honeymoon.  For example, after Julie registered, an arbitrary list with interesting options like, “a romantic dinner for two” or “a taxi ride into town” came up for Julie to either accept or eliminate as gift options.  The price of each gift is left to your discretion, so if you feel that most of your friends are strapped for cash, you can choose to make every gift $20.00 or so.  Julie loved watching the gifts pour in, but the best part was that, if desired, she could pool the money and pay for high ticket items, such as airplane tickets or hotel stay, in the event they had not been covered.  Thebigday.com takes a small percentage of the proceeds collected, but use and ease of its’ service is worth every penny. 

I created bridal shower invitations in Photoshop, in the form of a plane ticket.    I used the Jamaica emblem (but you could also use the map of Jamaica in silhouette) and filled in Julie’s name and Destination in the appropriate sections.  I asked everyone to “purchase a piece of Julie’s Honeymoon.”  I, then, referred everyone to Julie’s registry at Thebigday.com.

We played 3 games, and gave away 4 gifts.  I had all of the guests fill out envelopes with their names and addresses, so that Julie would have pre-addressed envelopes for her thank you notes, and before the end of the party gave a door prize to the name that Julie drew.

I went to diva-girl-parties-and-stuff.com and drummed up three bridal shower games, that I thought my group could handle.  We played Pack Rat Paradise, How well do you know me and Wedding Trivia. I used the printable versions of the games made available on their website, made 30 copies and was good to go.  Pack Rat Paradise places a value amount on items found in one’s purse.  Since most women carry purses, this game’s a no-brainer and elicits lots of laughter.   Women were amazed at the amount of senselessness they carried in their purses.  The guest with the highest value amount won a door prize.  How well do you know me is a fill in the blank questionnaire that the bride and all of the attendees fill in at the same time.  The bride then reads her answers aloud to the crowd, and the guest with the most answers that match the brides wins.  Wedding Trivia is as it sounds, a multiple choice Trivia game about wedding related content.  Again, the guest with the most correct answers wins.

I served Caribbean fare that included shrimp, a pineapple boat filled with tropical fruit and jerk chicken on sticks.  We played Reggae music and decorated the food table with fake palm tree leaves, greenery and bamboo as the centerpiece surrounded by sea shells.  I, fortunately, secured the help of Julies’s mother to help with the decorating, since I, myself, am useless in this regard.

In the end, I believe that everyone was happy to contribute to Julie’s happiness.  Showers are supposed to “shower the bride with gifts” and I believe, in our own customized way, that is exactly what we did.  We gave her the gift of financial reprieve on her honeymoon and the ability to enjoy herself without reservation.  Gone is the post party process of returning unwanted or duplicate gifts.  Julie is GOING to Jamaica.  EVERYTING COOK & CURRY.