Unique Bridal Shower Games That Aren't the Usual Ones

If you have read The Budget Savvy Bride's 35 games or Today's Bride's 25, you have met the usual ones: the toilet paper dress, the purse game, bingo. These are the games we would play instead. Each is short, funny for the right crowd, and listed with what it needs.

Proposal-story telephone

Set-up: none. Crowd: any seated group; good when guests don't know each other.

1. Before anyone hears the full story, the bride whispers a short version of the proposal to the guest beside her.
2. Each guest whispers it to the next, once, no repeats.
3. The last guest tells the room what they heard. Then the bride tells the real story.

The gap between the two versions is the joke. It also gets the proposal told, which guests always want to hear.

Fake or real registry

Set-up: a printed list. Crowd: family-heavy showers, older guests.

1. Copy real items from the couple's registry and mix in invented ones that sound plausible: a heated butter dish, a monogrammed pizza stone, a smart egg tray.
2. Guests tick real or fake for each.
3. Reveal at the end of gift opening. Most right wins; the most-believed fake gets a laugh.

Blind portraits of the bride

Set-up: paper and pens. Crowd: silly or artsy friends; also works at a work shower.

1. The bride sits where everyone can see her.
2. Guests draw her without looking down at their paper.
3. She picks a winner and keeps the portraits for the scrapbook.

Soundtrack of her life

Set-up: a playlist of songs from her life: a childhood favorite, a school-dance song, the song from the couple's first date. Crowd: close friends and family who have the stories.

1. Play the opening seconds of each song.
2. Guests write the title and, for a bonus, why it matters to her.
3. The bride tells the story behind each one after the reveal.

Wedding-word taboo

Set-up: a stack of cards, each with a wedding word and the words you can't say when describing it (bouquet: flowers, throw, hold). Crowd: competitive guests, couples showers.

1. Split into two teams.
2. One player describes the card's word without the banned words while the timer runs; their team guesses.
3. The other team watches for slips. Most cards guessed wins.

Find the groom (scratch-off)

Set-up: print and cut the cards, cover each picture with a scratch-off sticker. Crowd: any size and all ages; no knowledge of the couple needed.

1. Hand out the cards face down.
2. Everyone scratches at once.
3. The guest who finds the groom wins the prize.

Who Has the Groom? Scratch-Off Cards has 32 scratch-off cards: 1 groom card and 31 decoys drawn from 16 original illustrated characters, a prep page with a sticker test circle and a how-many-to-print table, and personalise.html, an offline page that adds the bride's and the groom's names. Each card measures 3.5 × 2.5 in (89 × 64 mm), printed 8 per sheet with crop marks, in US Letter and A4. It needs opaque white cardstock and 2 in (51 mm) round scratch-off stickers, one per card, which you supply. How well stickers hide the pictures depends on your stickers and cardstock and is untested, so do the sticker test before you cut.

Mishap improv

Set-up: slips of paper with small, harmless wedding mishaps: the DJ only plays polka, the cake arrives sideways, the ring bearer is a goat. Crowd: outgoing friends who like to perform.

1. A volunteer draws a slip.
2. They have a moment to act out how the maid of honor fixes it.
3. The bride awards the prize to the fix she would actually want.

Whose memory is it?

Set-up: slips and a bowl. Crowd: close friends who share history with her.

1. As guests arrive, each writes one memory with the bride, unsigned.
2. The bride reads them aloud and guesses who wrote each.
3. She keeps the slips. Guests whose memory fools her get a small prize.

Mini cake decorating

Set-up: small plain cakes or cupcakes, tubs of frosting and toppings. Crowd: hands-on groups with table space, couples showers.

1. Teams decorate a "wedding cake" against the clock.
2. The bride judges, and the cakes become dessert.

How to make your own bridal shower game

The games above all follow the same recipe. Use it to build one that only fits this bride:

1. Pick a format: guess, match, draw, race, rank or vote.
2. Fill it with the couple: their trips, their texts (with permission), their pets, their running jokes.
3. Write the rule in one sentence. If it needs two, simplify.
4. Decide the scoring before the party: one point per right answer, closest guess, or the bride's pick.
5. Test it on one friend. If they laugh, keep it.
6. Have a prize and a tie-break ready.

Activities that aren't games

Some brides would rather skip competition. These give guests something to do without a winner:

• A flower crown or bouquet bar with seasonal stems.
• A time capsule: guests write letters to the couple to open on their first anniversary.
• A recipe swap, with a card from every guest.
• A photo wall with an instant camera.
• Adventure cards for the bride.

For the last one, Bucket List for the Bride is a card where each guest writes one adventure for the bride (or the couple); afterwards she copies them onto a keepsake list and ticks them off. It has a card sheet with 4 guest cards per page, each 3.75 × 5 in (95 × 127 mm), a table sign and a 2-page keepsake list numbered 1 to 50.

Choosing by crowd

• Lots of older relatives: fake or real registry, the soundtrack quiz, find the groom.
• Friends who all know her well: whose memory is it, blind portraits, a quiz about the bride.
• Guests who don't know each other: proposal-story telephone, wedding-word taboo in teams.
• Co-ed or couples shower: wedding-word taboo, mini cake decorating, and He Said, She Said.

For the classics, with steps for each, see our full list of bridal shower games. If a quiz about her is on the plan, take the questions for the bride quiz.

One limit: "unique" depends on the crowd. A game that is new to one circle of friends may be the one they all played last month, so ask a bridesmaid what the last few showers in the group included.