Shower the bride with a perfect party

Use the web to plan a fun, effortless pre-wedding celebration

By Natalie Bahadur

Weddings — they're a beautiful time for the blissfully happy couple. But for the shower planner, it can mean stress. Bridal showers are meant to be fun and celebratory, but they can require a lot of effort to organize. Don't panic. Much of what needs to be done can be accomplished at home — you simply need to spend some quality time with your computer.

Cynthia Martyn, a Toronto-based wedding and event planner and president of Cynthia Martyn Events Inc., says using a computer is essential to planning a wedding or shower.

"I use mine to create budgets, guest lists, design invitations, create tags for favours, design menu cards and place cards," she says. "I couldn't live without it."

Set the date

Before you even think about the menu and gift ideas, start with the basics. First, choose a date. Second, decide on the venue. Will it be held at someone's house or will you rent a space? Will the shower be held indoors or outdoors? Third, draw up the guest list. Be sure to consult the bride — you don't want to forget to invite special friends and family members.

Decide on invitations

Personalized invitations can easily be made on your computer; pick up colourful paper and envelopes from your local stationery store and add text with Word or Publisher, or work with an online store, like Paper-Source. "Use their templates to design and print beautiful invitations at home for a fraction of the cost of local stationery shops," advises Martyn.

You may want to decide on a theme or motif that can be designed on your computer, printed on the invitations and carried throughout the rest of the shower. "At a recent Breakfast at Tiffany's themed shower, we had individual cakes in the shape of Tiffany & Co. gift boxes as the centrepieces," says Martyn. "We scanned photos of Audrey Hepburn and added table numbers, placed in a frame on each table and created beautiful invitations on a home computer, printed on lovely Tiffany-blue cardstock." Other fun themes include garden party, tea party, stock the bar or spa day.

Alternatively, you can send e-mail invitations using sites like Evite and Sendomatic.

Offer maps and thank you cards

As a conscientious shower planner, you want to make things effortless for your guests. Include a map in the invitation to direct people to the venue. Streets & Trips offers maps as well as street-by-street written directions that are printable. Or, find a map online, copy and paste it into Word, and add your own directions.

Preparing pre-labelled thank you cards for the bride is a wonderful gift idea. Rachelle Lalonde, who recently celebrated her third anniversary, remembers how much a computer helped her sister Monique plan her wedding shower while adhering to a budget. "She decided that she wanted to spend her budget on refreshments and prizes so she needed to find a cost-effective way to take care of the invitations, print instructions for the games and help me with the thank you cards," says Lalonde. "Using her computer made her planning easier and still kept my bridal shower special."

To make thank you cards, Martyn suggests using Word to design a simple monogram that can then be printed onto cardstock. Then cut and fold to size.

Create computer-made gifts

Personal keepsakes are the stuff that memories are made of. Martyn offers the following suggestions for gifts the bride will never forget.

Scrapbooks: Purchase cardstock from a local stationery store and print sheets with the bride's name at the top. Leave these out on a table at the shower for guests to write a personal message to the bride. Place an instant camera on the table for guests to take snaps of themselves and paste into the scrapbook. (Alternately, you can use a digital camera and portable photo printer to whip off pictures in seconds.)

The bride will treasure this memento when you present the scrapbook to her at the end of the shower. After the shower, you can post candid shots on a personal website, your Windows Live Spaces space, or a photo-sharing site.

Cookbooks: Attach recipe cards to the shower invitations (try our template and change the graphic to suit your motif). Ask each guest to write down their Recipe For Love — words of advice for the engaged couple. Put them in a marriage "cookbook" and present to the bride.