Would you hold a wedding shower for yourself?

[shootingstar]

In regards to my friend, who is hosting the wedding shower with the expensive gift registries...she also had an engagement party where in the invite she put 'gift cards preferred'.

She is having a big old wedding in September, and for that, her registry is at Bloomingdale's.

I'm going broke just on all her wedding related parties, which I have to attend, because i'm a bridesmaid. it's kind of sad because we wanted to plan her party, but she flat out refused. Kind of makes me wonder...

Hope she remains married after all this..

It is interesting when an older bride gets married for the lst time. My youngest sister married for the lst time at 38 yrs. She already had her own house and stuff. Still people gave nice gifts...more yuppish. Not sure of all she got. I was at a loss, as her sister, what to give her. So in the end, I got them a handmade teapot..usable but also artsy oriented.

Same dilemma for another sister who married at 34 yrs. for lst time but lived with her now-hubby for 7 prior yrs. They already had a house, etc. So I bought them a framed original artwork.

Both of them had registries but only as an option, not mandatory. But I didn't pay attention to that. It was understood by each of them, they would get gifts from siblings that had nothing to do with the registries....because we know them well and their lifestyle.

Yea...I come from a family of some later-loves in life.

[GLC1968]

I got married late in life, too (35). We hadn't set up a house together yet, but we both obviously had plenty of our own 'stuff'. I actually found the registry extremely helpful because we could pick out things we actually needed.

Like our pots and pans and our everyday flatware, which were a mis-mash left over from college days and hand-me downs! We registered for something nice. What we didn't need was towels, linens or glassware - so we didn't register for that stuff. It made it MUCH easier for friends and family to pick out things that would be actually be useful as opposed to getting things like potholders and bathmats...you know?

But yeah, I could not have thrown a shower for myself. Not so much because it would look like 'gift grubbing' but because I'd feel like a loser with no friends!

And while yes, the term 'shower' is for showering a bride or a couple with gifts, it isn't always done that way these days. I have been to plenty of 'showers' where the bride requested NO gifts. It was a fun, girly get-together (possibly in lieu of a bachelorette party, which I find awful) for the female wedding guests and family members to get to know each other prior to the wedding. If you called it just a party - the the whole feel of 'pre-wedding' fun would be lost.