Manolo for the Brides

Bridal showers are subject to all sorts of factors, from friends spread out around the country to delays caused by a complicated postal system to bridesmaids’ budget woes. Can your best friend afford to travel across two states twice — once for the shower and once for the wedding? Your favorite cousin didn’t receive her invite until two days before the event, oops. And air travel is just too much of a pain these days. Long story short, it would seem that tricky logistical problems are not at all uncommon, if the existence of Tutto Liccica is any indication.

Tutto Luccica specializes in remote (or, as they call them, “In spirit“) showers meant to transcend geographical differences. It works like this: Tutto Luccica helps the hostess pick a date and provides invitations, shower favors, and an event web site with information about the guest of honor. They then mail said GoH a centerpiece gift package that she is barred from opening until the specified date. I won’t go into that, but I can safely say it’s something you could easily put together yourself.

Finally, the hostess is given instructions that outline how to make it all work…instructions, I might add, that aren’t explained on Tutto Luccica’s web site. I can only assume that invitees are encouraged to send a gift that will arrive on or around a specified date, at which time they can use their powers of imagination to envision the bride-to-be happily unwrapping her bounty alone, in her jim-jams. Maybe it’s like the time I played Hour of Power with The Beard over IRC when I lived in NYC and he lived in Boston…

Does this seem a little weird to anyone else? In essence, you’re getting invited in spirit to a party that is only taking place in spirit, but you’re being asked to send a real gift. I’d be much more apt to send a gift to the bride-to-be if I were to receive an invitation to an actual bridal shower that circumstance kept me from attending. Am I just a stick in the mud who is not hip and with it enough to recognize the future of bridal showers?

Goodness me, I hope not.

No, not a lot of duct tape like that, you pervs. I mean there will probably be a lot of duct tape on the man registry* that will precede what some are calling the newest trend in weddings, the man shower. Googling “man showers” — see what I do for you? — brings up plenty of results, which could indeed point to a growing trend. EXCEPT that almost all of the results lead to a single AP article reprinted in papers across the U.S.

The gift-laden dude you see above is Brian Wigand, whose FFIL Jonathan Morris welcomed him into the family by throwing him a man shower as a warm up to, not a substitute for, the traditional bachelor party.

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