 And you're watching Bianca Renee today, and today we're talking about everything bridal shower. Now if you guys didn't know, I am engaged. I'm actually gonna get married one month from today. So it's almost here and I just had my bridal shower. So I wanted to share and explain all the bridal shower etiquette that you should know and show some footage from my actual bridal shower. Now what is a bridal shower? A bridal shower is when you get all your closest friends and family and everyone comes together to make sure that you take a shower before the way. Just kidding, a bridal shower is a party and or gathering that your friends and family throw for you so that you are showered with love. Now the only rule when it comes to having a bridal shower is that one, you must be a bride. If you're not a bride and you have no bridal shower, that's just weird. Now let's talk about who throws the bridal shower. Technically anyone can throw the shower for the bride except the bride herself and the groom. Don't make the bride plan her own bridal shower. That's just not fair. She's already doing a wedding and a whole bunch of other stuff so let's relieve some stress from her plate and someone else plan it for her. And the groom shouldn't plan it for the bride because that's just not gonna turn out well. Unless you're marrying David to Tara, then I would let him do it. Now usually a bridal shower is only women so you invite all the women that are invited to the wedding. Now if you're having an intimate wedding, then you might wanna invite all of the women invited but if you're having a large wedding, I would not recommend inviting every single female that is coming to the wedding. That could just be too much. Now if you have the mind to do it and you absolutely love every single female you invited, good for you, you have a perfect guest list but being realistic there's probably some women coming to your wedding that you might not have even met yet. So I would say when it comes to invites, you should only invite your closest friends, your closest family members and the closest relatives to your groom. That would mean the groom's mother, your sister-in-laws, his grandma and maybe some aunts that you actually are close with. My bridal shower was actually about 30 people and that was as small as I could get it and I was really happy with that nice intimate group of people. Now if you do wanna do a co-ed bridal shower which would be more of like a Jack and Jill shower as some people call it, you could but then there will be guys there and you probably won't be able to do much of the florals and lacy, cutesy, little tea party stuff. So just kinda think about what you envision when you think of your bridal shower. Now it's most commonly that the maid of honor is assigned this duty of planning the shower with the help of the bridesmaids. It's also common for the bride's mom or maybe your aunt, someone else, a close family member that might want to do it. Okay now let's talk about where to have the bridal shower. You could have it at a banquet hall, at a country club, at a restaurant or maybe even in your own backyard. If you do do it at a restaurant you might be able to get your own section of a patio or section of the restaurant. If not, maybe you could rent out the whole thing. Depends on your budget. Now I personally want this to be in a backyard outdoor setting so we did it at my mom's house so I would recommend your mom, aunt's house, maybe one of your bridesmaids. Really depends on whose backyard you have access to. Next question is when do you have the bridal shower? It is very common to have your bridal shower between three and one month before the wedding. I chose the happy medium of two months before because I really wanted to spread out my activities of happiness. When it comes to the actual month of the wedding, you already got a lot in your plate so now you're doing the last minute details of your planning. You're gonna have a bachelorette party, the boys are gonna have a bachelorette party, you have the rehearsal dinner, then you have the wedding, maybe you're doing an after wedding brunch and then you're going on your honeymoon. That's a lot of stuff for one month so if you could remove at least one celebration earlier out, I think it would be better. And that way, two, three months out, you might be a little stressed so it is a nice little relaxer breather for the bride to just take a break and enjoy the guests and be happy about the wedding again instead of stressing about it and then you have some more time before the big day. Invitations, invitations should go out at least one month prior and if you have any people coming from out of town or have really busy schedules, you might even wanna just text or call them, let them know even before the invitations go out. When it comes to inviting people, you definitely wanna hit up your VIPs first. So one, make sure the whole bridal party can be there. If half the girls have to work that day, I would not pick that day. So try to find a day where your whole bridal party can come. Also check to make sure the bride's mom is available, the groom's mom, you know certain really key important people and the bride, make sure all those people are available on the day you choose. If everyone's good on that day, then it's safe to send out the dates to everyone else and see who can come. Now when it comes to the type of invitation, you could do the traditional paper ones and send out invitations, everyone likes to get mail. But if you are on a budget, don't feel bad about doing eVites. eVites are really beautiful now. My top favorite eInvitation websites would be places like punchbowl.com, eVite.com, paperless post, those are probably my top three and when it comes to ordering them, I really like zazzle.com. I'll put all those in the description box for you guys. But check them out, eVites are a lot easier. They can click the button and then say they're coming, then you have a whole typed up RSVP list. Makes it really easy. If you wanna do the more traditional invitations and you send them out, make sure you put whoever's hosting's phone number on there so they can call the host and ask any questions and RSVP. Do not put the bride's phone number on the invitation because you probably won't be able to answer anybody's questions and now she's getting involved in the planning and you're gonna stress her out. So now we know who's throwing the bridal shower, where the bridal shower's going to be, when it's going to be and who's invited. So now that we're all here at the bridal shower, what do we do now? A bridal shower usually consists of some type of eating, games and opening presents. Now when it comes to food, this is not something where you have to have a whole buffet food spread. If you can and you have the budget to do so, go ahead. But usually it's more of like a finger food appetizer type of pastry get together. My girls did a really great job with the food selection and the decor around it. They had parfait bar, they had a mimosa bar with a bunch of juice and champagne and everything just looked really, really cute. When it comes to the decor of the bridal shower, I definitely would recommend Pinterest. I kind of made it really easy for my bridesmaids because everything I've ever loved party-wise, I pinned to a folder that says let's plan a party. So all my bridal shower, little cutesy things that I've liked, I have actual photos of what I like already in a folder. So if you want to hint certain themes to your bridesmaids, I like to use Pinterest. That way you could show them exactly the things that you like or you could just be like, hey, this is what I want. I put it all in this folder, go. Up to you. If you guys wanna see what I have pinned, go ahead and follow me on Pinterest at Ms. Bianca Renee. I have folders on folders and folders, folders, folders of pins for bridal showers, for weddings, for just about everything. Now when it comes to actually choosing the theme, it does not have to be a surprise. You could ask the bride if she has some type of theme in mind, especially if you have always envisioned you to have a Disney Mickey Mouse themed bridal shower, they might not know that. So I would make sure you communicate with your crew and let them know I would really like a Disney theme one if you can and then let them go from there. You gave them a hint, they could run with it. All right, now let's talk about the gifts. What do you give someone on their bridal shower? Now you could register for your bridal shower and put exactly what you want, it does make it easy for your guests, but I personally did not register for my bridal shower because I think these are just more of like a personal thing. Depending on how far out the bridal shower is from the wedding, the bride might not have everything that she needs for the wedding, like maybe some pretty customized toasting glasses or maybe she really wants these blinged out like cake cutters, those would be great gifts that she could use immediately for the wedding. If not for the wedding, they also could be for the honeymoon. Maybe get her cute bikini, maybe a little travel bag, you know, just cute things that say Mr., Mrs., Wifey, all that cute stuff, this is the time to give her all of those gifts. Some people like to get the gifts that are already on their registry. Now the wedding registry is pretty different in my opinion, like if I have a toaster on my registry, I don't really want to get a toaster at my bridal shower, you know? But hey, more stuff for you. It's all about what you want. And if you're doing a co-ed bridal shower, you could do something called a stock the bar party. So that way all your guests bring some type of alcohol and it will stock your bar at home if you're really like to drink. When it comes to opening the gifts, it usually is done during the party so everyone could see all your cute stuff and you can do a bunch of ooze and oz. But that's if it's like an intimate setting. If you have 100 people come into your bridal shower, you might not want to open 100 gifts. Your guests are going to be over it by gift 35. Another very important part of their bridal shower are the games. That's pretty much all you do at the shower is play these little girly games. Another reason why guys usually don't go. A really fun game that my girls plan during my shower involves a tissue box and some Hershey's kisses. So you get an empty tissue box. You put about, let's say 30 chocolate kisses in there and then you tape the box onto your butt. Now you have a dance battle. So it's gonna be two girls versus each other and they're gonna shake it until they get all the kisses out of their box. Let me show you the battle between me and my maid of honor. All right, I think you've seen enough kids are watching but just know that it was a tie and they also had really cute prizes for those that won that had themes for each bag like Netflix and Chill, Tea Time, Nail Kit, Spa Kit and it really looked great. They also got the cutest looking cookies I've ever seen that had calendars of my exact wedding date right on them. These are actually cookies that are just too pretty to eat and they made great take home gifts. And my last little tip for you which is actually for the groom to be is the tradition that I just learned about. So I heard that traditionally the groom is supposed to surprise the bride at the end of the bridal shower with flowers. Now if you saw my Snapchat, you saw that Royce did surprise me during my bridal shower and brought me the cutest little flower shaped as puppies. So now I can let all of you know to somehow let the groom know that he could have a nice gesture of showing up with some flowers. I would recommend him coming at the end of the shower because everything's kind of winding down and then you kind of bring your spirits back up with some flowers and he could help take all your gifts to the car. All right, I think that is everything I have to share with you guys about bridal showers. I hope I answered some questions for you guys. If you have more questions, feel free to leave me a comment. We could definitely use my comment as like a board for all brides with questions. We could answer each other's questions and give each other ideas on how to have the perfect bridal shower. If this video helped you because you are a bride to be or you're a bridesmaid planning or you just plan on getting married at some point, please leave me a comment and let me know. You also get this video a thumbs up and subscribe. I post new videos every Sunday and I actually have a lot more wedding videos planned for you guys that have already been filmed. I just can't post them yet because they're wedding related and then all my guests will see my wedding stuff before my wedding. So as soon as my wedding happens, expect plenty more wedding videos. If you wanna stay up on all of my wedding plans as they happen, make sure you follow me on Snapchat and Instagram at MsBeyondGrenet and if you wanna follow me in Pinterest to see all of my wedding boards also at MsBeyondGrenet. I'll see you guys next time. Thanks for watching Beyond Grenet today.