The Bro-dal Shower. Good, Clean Fun for Grooms.

I'm not only willing to admit I pretty much hated every "Jack and Jill" baby shower I attended, I also completely enjoyed every debauchery filled bachelor party. Nothing wrong with having fun with the gang but a shower, with gifts and all the trappings just is not my style. To those joining in these events I say, hit 'em straight and drink up!

I used to work in an office with a gender-neutral shower culture. When the men got married, they were given showers just like the women. Decor and such tended to be less cutsie for the guys, but otherwise it was a cheery office party held in the office, with food, cards, and wedding/love trappings. Generally one large gift was purchased, and employees donated as a group to pay for it. For both genders, the significant other was invited, and usually came, so the party worked out as for the couple, not just for the husband-or-wife-to-be.

In my best Miranda Priestly voice, "A party, to celebrate an upcoming wedding? How groundbreaking." "That's all."

Having been a vendor in the “wedding industry” for nearly 15 years, I can safely say this is another silly copycat trend I find incredibly annoying. It is one thing to have a baby shower for both parents-to-be. But trying to expand into the untapped “market” of groom events is just silly. When I began working in this field, in the mid-aughts, a bro-dal shower (why does everything have to have a cutesy name these days?) would have been laughable. While it is great that men are growing past the debauchery of alcohol-fueled bachelor parties, adding one more event to a sometimes yearlong string of wedding obligations is unnecessary. I will let you in on a little secret: very few of my clients want to go to a shower at all. In fact, they dread them. Especially when all of their friends get hitched in the span of a few years. Every weekend is booked with some wedding-related nonsense. They are tired & broke. And over it. Wedding vendors are not completely to blame. Pinterest, wedding magazines & Instagram have become feeding grounds for competitive brides looking to one-up their friends. The trends are set online, copied & exhausted. Hashtags & professional engagement photos with the same, tired poses. So few original ideas out there. Remember the newlywed dance trend that morphed into a full-Broadway routine? Bro-dal showers are yet another trend that may last for awhile & then fade away. I miss the days when a wedding was just an earnest celebration instead of a spectacle.

Playing golf with your friends, how trend setting. It's not written in stone that you have to celebrate your upcoming wedding with a drunken stripper fest. Do whatever you want, why is this even slightly a thing?

You can have a wild fun weekend without it being disgusting. Go whitewater rafting in the Grand Canyon. Go canyoneering. Drive off-road cars in the desert. Go to Jamaica. “Erotic dancers” and insane amounts of booze are just a stand in for doing something interesting and fun. Seriously people, life is meant to be fun and it’s completely possible to have incredible fun without being misogynist pigs.

Americans love excuses for people to give them gifts....it's frankly gross.

Hold on. This all sounds like a ploy to get more gifts, which is plain tacky. Did all these grooms also have an engagement party with their spouses? So in the end they'll have that event, two showers plus wedding gifts....what a burden for the guests and close friends. And on top of that they all still want the traditional wild bachelor party so they can let loose. What's next - a one year anniversary shower?

My husband and I had a his & hers baby shower and it was awesome. He was the first one of his friends to become a dad, his gang of buddies all attended and made the party so much more fun than if it had been women-only. Great memories for us.

Seriously, just what the world needs - more nonsense standing up the wedding industry. It would also serve equality if we just cancelled the bridal shower.

Seems fine if you're into it, as long as it doesn't become a thing (expectation). But something doesn't ring right. Guys chose this bro shower stuff? Why? Sounds more like a chance to play golf and avoid the nightmare of wedding planning. Also, sample group. Rich NYC guys who have bachelor parties in the Caribbean? Not too representative of average grooms.

this reminds me--1) that the wedding industry will not stop until they empty the bank accounts of every soon to be married person and 2) some people just have more money than they should

In the universe of truly horrible ideas, this isn't as bad as spreading the measles or chickenpox.

Too much. Marriage has become an industry. Gifts, travel, time off work. It's expensive and time consuming. People should put as much effort into working on marriages and communicating with one another as they put into planning the nuptials. After 15 years of dating (waiting for Justice Kennedy'S ruling), I tied the knot in a hotel suite with 2 friends as witnesses. Sure my family and friends were mad there was no "event," but there was also no extreme expense.

This is just another avenue to increase the consumerism of weddings. This feels like a distinctly American phenomenon. It isn't apparent to me, as couples get older and their need for basic household items decreases, why showers are even necessary at all. I'm about to get married for my first time at 28 years old and it is shocking to me all of the ways that weddings are designed to fuel conspicuous spending.

Meh. Neither a formal bridal shower or a bachelor party for us. Everybody came up to the reserved campground for the weekend and both the "bridal shower" and the "bachelor party" started with a trout fishing contest on the river on Friday. The festivities afterword involved all of us including the parents. Too much fun.

I guess I had something like this in the early 2000's. Golf at a municipal course, some beer, but not too much. An errant drive did hit my buddy in the head and he had to be taken to hospital for observation. So we had fun.

I got married on 9/28/19 and didn't have a bachelor party. Many of my friends (wedding party included) were to arrive from out of town so it felt like too much to ask of everybody because I knew they were going to significant enough expense to be there already. And with the never ending parties and get-togethers my wife and I decided against them all together. Things outside of the main ceremony/reception felt like the extra we didn't want so we just skipped them (with the exception of the rehearsal dinner).

For my first wedding 30 years ago we had a shower for both of us (bride and groom) at the same time. No one thought it was really anything out of the ordinary.