A Tale of Two Wedding Showers

 

I’ve mentioned before that my son and my niece are getting married within two weeks of each other. Rachel is getting married at the end of this month and John’s wedding is on September 14. Both brides had showers, although they were reversed, with Christina’s before Rachel’s. Both were fun, but they were also very different.

My daughter, Caroline, and I flew out to North Carolina for Christina’s shower. We left from and returned to different airports and used different airlines, but we managed to work our schedules to arrive at and leave from the Raleigh airport at approximately the same times. Unfortunately, Caroline couldn’t make it to Rachel’s shower, so I was the only one there from the Camp family, but I enjoyed the 1½ drive for listening to classical music on the way there and an old radio drama on the way home.

Christina’s shower was what I consider a traditional bridal shower with games as well as food and gifts. With probably only two exceptions, including me, the guests were all Christina’s age or younger. Everyone dressed up a little, and it was all women. Not even John was there. (He was on his bachelor party trip to Niagara Falls. Knowing who else went, I doubt that it got very wild, but they probably had a great time.)

One of the three games involved splitting into teams and dressing up a “bride” in a toilet paper wedding dress. That’s the photo at the top of the page. The team that dressed the woman in the middle won. Christina was the judge, and I agree with her choice. (If there had been a last-place pick, it would have been the team I was on.) The other two games were pen-and-paper: one to see how well you knew the bride and groom and one a bingo game based on the presents she received.

Rachel also had food and gifts at her shower, but there were no games. Instead, her guests decorated concrete and clay pipes and turned them into flower arrangements to line the aisle at the planned outdoor ceremony. The next photo shows Rachel demonstrating what was to be done, and the third shows some of the guests doing it.

Since we were painting, people wore jeans or other casual clothing. The casual dress also worked well for the setting, which was the farm buildings on my brother’s property. As you can see from the picture, there were men at the shower, and many of the guests were older than Rachel—either aunts and uncles or friends of her parents who also played a big role in Rachel’s life.

Both were a lot of fun, but they demonstrate how different wedding showers can be.

I’ll leave you with a photo of the three Camp women taken at Christina’s shower, with the bride-to-be in the middle.