Before a women’s wedding her friends, relatives and coworkers often get together and give her a bridal shower. This is a party where someone close to the bride, usually the maid or matron of honor, invites other women and the bride is given gifts. This custom is practiced mainly in Canada and the United States. Although it is supposed to have been begun in America there are stories of early showers that can be traced to Europe. It is believed that this custom grew out of the practice of a women coming into a marriage with no dowry.
A story is told of a woman from a wealthy family in the middle ages who was in love with a peasant boy. Her father did not approve and forbid the relationship. This did not stop her from loving him. So strong was her love that she went to him so they could be married. Her father cut her off; no dowry, no inheritance. But the townspeople were so touched by her love for the peasant boy, a miller by trade and one who was respected by the people where he lived, that they threw a party and gave the couple things that would help them to set up their first home. They showered the girl with gifts. This is where the term bridal shower is may have come from.
Whether this story is truly where this custom originated or it is from a European practice that sprung up because the father could not afford a dowry for this daughter, where there family had no male head of the household to provide a dowry or the father just refused to because he did not like his daughter’s choice of husband, the dowry practice is likely an influence in the origins of this tradition. The first bridal showers can be traced back to the late eighteen hundreds. At that time it was something that the upper classes practiced though by the early nineteen hundreds it had caught on in homes throughout the cities and spread into country families.
The way the bridal shower is organized often depends on family traditions. Those who have recently come to the Untied Stares are more likely to treat a bridal shower as a community party and invite everyone around them. While others prefer a more personal touch and invite only close friends, relatives or co-workers. Neither one is right or wrong. A bridal shower is conducted for the enjoyment of the bride and so should be done with her customs and traditions taken into consideration.
Today the bridal shower is a little different than the staid affairs they once were. In a way they have evolved into a party that is more like a man’s bachelor party then simply an evening for the girls to get together and give gifts. Though the giving of gifts is an important element of the bridal shower and is perhaps one of the major differences between what a woman does at her pre-wedding party in comparison to what a man does. Unlike the old days when a women lived with her parents until given to her husband to marry she is now an independent women, just as likely to already be living on her own, and be working. She is less in need of the first items to set up her home. Equally her husband is likely to be living away home. As a matter of fact here is just as much chance that the couple is already living together than not.
