How to Host Your Own Wedding Shower

As more and more women wait until they are in their late twenties and thirties to get married, they are finding that it may be difficult to have friends throw the type of wedding shower they want. Having an extra decade or two to think about how you want to celebrate your upcoming nuptials can make you pretty demanding about everything from the petit fors to the bachelorette party. Sometimes, the best way to have the perfect party is simply to throw it yourself. In this article, we will discuss how to host your own wedding shower.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Make a list of the top five things that you want at your wedding shower. These things can include food, games that you want to play, people that you hope will attend or an experience that it is very important to you that you have.

2. 
    
   Nothing gets a party started like a good sugar high.

   Plan the food. Girls' parties tend to be best when there are lots of chocolate and sugar dishes. If you wish, add in some sandwiches. An easy way to start things off is to have an ice cream sundae buffet where guests build their own banana spits or other frozen treats. This is also relatively inexpensive and easy to do on your own. If you prefer to have the party catered, set up this appointment at this time.

3. Make a party timeline. This is your event from start to finish, so it should run just how you want it to. Make a rough outline of what you want to happen and the order that it will happen in.

4. Recruit a "mistress of ceremonies." Even though you are hosting your own shower, you still do not want to have to worry about whether things are going as planned on the day of the event. Get one of your friends to help you run the party on a schedule and to help keep things moving when the action slows down. If you like, you can get her a big white megaphone and a special badge or crown to encourage people to listen when she speaks.

5. Design the invitations. Make sure that it is very clear that this is a wedding shower, not a general celebration. Face it, part of the fun of a wedding shower is being the center of attention and opening presents. If you present your party as a get-together rather than a shower, you will get fewer gifts and less attention.

6. Bond with your mistress of ceremonies as you plan. This will help her run the actual event and also make things more fun for you since you will have a partner to bounce ideas off of. Let her have a fair amount of input into party games, decorations and food. This will make her feel more dedicated to your party as well, which will keep everything positive if the two of you start to stress out as the date approaches.

7. 
    
   Now that the party is here, do not waste time worrying about how it's going. Have fun!

   When the day arrives, relax. The only way your party can be perfect is if you let yourself enjoy it. Hand over the megaphone to your mistress of ceremonies and just let yourself go!