For the bride, opening all those beautifully wrapped shower gifts is a highlight of the day, but did you know that you can make the unwrapping session even better for both the bride and for all the guests? Your goal is to make this sometimes very long stretch of the shower more enjoyable for the bride and keep the guests from slipping into a boredom coma. (After all, brides with large guests lists can get a lot of presents, and especially if a fuss is made over each one, the unwrapping session can literally last for hours.)

• If the guest list is large and you expect that it will take a looooong time for the bride to get through the gifts, then do everyone a favor and split up the gift-opening sessions! The bride opens a dozen or so right after the meal, then everyone has cake. Then she opens a dozen more, and then you play a game. And so on. Breaking it up is a welcome relief for everyone, as guests don’t have to dissolve into their seats for hours and the bride gets a break from all that gift-opening, which is tough on the arms after a while.

• Have a display shower, where guests are asked to bring their gifts unwrapped, just with a pretty ribbon or bow on the gift itself. The gifts are set out for display, and then the bride walks down the long table line, commenting on each gift and sharing who the giver is. This can cut hours out of the shower, and it’s a new top trend, even recommended by celebrity wedding coordinators.

• If there aren’t too many gifts on the table, then it may be enough just to have the cake and coffee served to the guests while the bride is opening her presents. That caffeine can perk them up a bit for the ride home or for any games you have planned as a shower closer.

• You can incorporate a fun shower game into the opening of the gifts. Grab a kitchen timer and set it for 10 minutes when the bride starts opening her gifts. When the timer dings, the guest whose gift the bride is holding gets a prize of her own!

• Have the bridesmaids do the majority of the unwrapping for the bride, such as cutting ribbons, opening gift boxes, etc.

• Have the kids rip into the wrapping paper boxes, which is fun to watch.

• Write on the shower invitation that guests are asked not to wrap gifts, but to bring them in pretty gift bags. It’s okay to write a cute note on your trying to save time…which guests appreciate.

• Before the bows go flying, enlist a fellow shower hostess to help out by recording which guest gave which gift to the bride. This helps out later when the bride needs to write out her thank you’s. But you can make the job easier by having the volunteer write directly on the guest’s greeting card an identification of the present, rather than write out the name and the gift on a separate pad.

• If the bride wishes to keep her cards as mementos and doesn’t want anyone writing on them, use a Post-It note pad for an attachment of the gift ID directly to the inside of each card.

• Of course, tradition has it that all the bows and ribbons from the shower gifts are collected by the shower hostesses and used to create a faux bridal bouquet for use at the rehearsal. So make sure your volunteers are stocked with a sturdy paper plate as the base for the bouquet and plenty of tape or a stapler with which to attach the bows and ribbon.

• Throw in a gag gift every now and then from a special section where you’ve stowed them apart from the real gifts. The look on the bride’s face when she opens something completely off-the-wall, like an Etch-a-Sketch toy, a how-to erotic massage video, or a Powerpuff girls lunchbox will be priceless. Smart hostesses can tell when the guests are drifting off into those boredom comas, so here’s a trick that will perk them up. Make those small gag gifts easily identifiable…wrap them all in bright purple paper, for instance. When the guests see that purple gift coming off the endless presents table, they’ll perk up, knowing something fun is about to happen. Ham it up while you’re handing it over, too. It’s all in good fun.

If you’ve instructed guests to bring along ‘wishing well’ presents (little household items like spices, toothpicks, and cotton balls), the bride can use these gift bags to cart the tiny goods home. By the way, the bride doesn’t have to go through all of the wishing well gifts and show them to the crowd. Spices and cotton balls aren’t that exciting.

As a final note, make it easy for the bride to get her presents home. You might bring along an empty suitcase on wheels, a dolly, or a luggage pull cart to help transport everything to the car.