If your engaged friends have all the home furnishings essential to a happy start in their new house, there is still a good gift-shower party for you to give them. This one can provide them with some of the accessories for leisure, especially games of various kinds to enjoy together and others to use when they entertain.
A games shower can be planned around an evening of bridge, or some other game such as Chinese checkers, backgammon, darts and mixed games, or some other pastime that your crowd particularly enjoys. Guests for two or more tables of bridge make a good number for a surprise shower.
Guests are invited by telephone or in person to come and play bridge on a convenient evening. All but the engaged couple are told that this is a surprise shower party, and they are asked to bring card games and other game gifts for the bridal pair. Stationery, toy, and novelty shops sell not only bridge decks but other playing cards and various card games, score pads, gift packages of score pencils, backgammon sets, Chinese checkers, Scrabble, chess sets and many other familiar favorites as well as new games. Books on backgammon, bridge, chess are welcome in this assortment of gifts. All should be giftwrapped, the giver’s card enclosed, and all packages kept out of sight until suppertime.
If the party is planned for eight o’clock, the hosts may want to provide cold drinks during the evening for the players but withhold more serious refreshments until later. As ten or ten-thirty approaches, the hostess can bring out supper accessories to a buffet table. She may supply covers and napkins for the bridge tables, or she can bring in decorative supper trays for each guest. This is the time to request the engaged girl to go to the kitchen and bring in the cart of good things she will find there. Instead of food for the party, the cart is stacked high with gift packages. Her surprise and the pleasure of opening them with her fiancé are part of the evening’s fun.