Bridal showers
Bridal shower venues on Long Island.
The shower is the daytime event of the wedding run-up, and Long Island gives it a circuit of its own.
The shower is the daytime event of the wedding run-up, and Long Island gives it a circuit of its own.
Shower-sized means a room you are not renting the whole of. Ask what else is booked that afternoon. Venue owners: claim your listing.
Colonial-era inn and village that has hosted every kind of family party for generations.
Manor house on Jericho Turnpike with gardens that do half the decorating.
Historic Stony Brook inn for weddings that want charm over chandeliers.
Shower rooms live one size down from wedding rooms. The private room at a good restaurant, the garden room at a catering hall, the sunlit side room at a country club. Most run a brunch or luncheon package priced by the head, usually a two-or-three-hour afternoon slot for 40 to 80 guests, with mimosas doing the work the open bar does at night. Because it is daytime and a shorter clock, the bill comes in under anything else on the wedding calendar.
Spring Sundays are the squeeze. Communion parties, showers, and christenings all want the same rooms from April through June, so the good spots book months out. When you call, ask three things: the room minimum, what the package includes beyond the food, and whether you can bring your own dessert and favors without a fee. If it is a surprise, ask about a side entrance and where the guest cars hide. Every hostess on the Island has lost a surprise to a parking lot.
One more move worth knowing. If the wedding is already booked, ask that venue what it would do for the shower. Halls like keeping the whole run of a family's events under their roof, and the shower is often where they will bend on price to earn the rest. Bring the wedding contract up politely and watch the number move.
Three rules, all learned the hard way at other people's showers. Everyone invited to the shower gets invited to the wedding, no exceptions, because the aunt who got a shower invite and no wedding invite tells that story for a decade. Two to four months before the wedding is the window, close enough to feel real, far enough that nobody's frantic. And put one person in charge of the gift list, names against boxes, because the thank-you notes depend on it and the bride will remember nothing after the second mimosa. If it's a jack-and-jill with the guys coming, rethink the venue, because now the bar has to hold up its end of the afternoon.