We’ve received a lot of questions from maids of honor, bridesmaids, and moms lately about bridal showers: “We don’t want to do just the standard luncheon at someone’s house. How can we make a shower a little more creative and fun?” Well, your friends at Washingtonian Bride & Groom are here to help.

We asked wedding planner Teresa Lee of Rex & Regina to come up with a few ideas for bridal showers that don’t involve making toilet paper wedding dresses in your great-aunt’s living room.

I Knew You When . . . “For this wedding shower, each guest should bring an object, like a newspaper headline, a song, or a clothing item, from the year they met the bride. As the bride opens the ‘artifact,’ the guest can share with the group how [he or she] met the bride,” says Lee.

This is a particularly great idea to liven up showers at a friend or relative’s house or at a restaurant.

Wine Tasting A fun and informative way to spend an afternoon, no flight to Napa required. Lee likes Zola Wine & Kitchen in DC for this type of shower because of its “open kitchen and casual atmosphere,” but many area restaurants would also be able to do a wine tasting party.

“To make the party even more personal, taste a flight of the bride’s favorite varietal,” says Lee.

A beach wedding might not be what you had in mind, but if it makes them happy...

My son and his fiancée want to hold a small destination wedding on a Caribbean island. This would mean that my parents, who are elderly and can’t fly, won’t be able to make it. Is it appropriate for me to try to convince them to do something locally?

Many couples dream of an intimate wedding on the beach and a future mother-in-law throws sand in the face of this vision at her own peril. You’d be better off offering to host a post-wedding party locally. The grandparents can toast the happy couple and you’ll be getting off to a good start with your new daughter-in-law.

I’ve never had a great relationship with my mother, but now that I’m engaged, she really wants to be involved in wedding planning. My fiancée and I are paying for the wedding ourselves, so do I have to include her?

Can you pick a few small tasks that she can handle for you, so that she doesn’t feel totally excluded? She’s not going to become your BFF after years of tension, but a small gesture may buy you a lot of peace.

Do you have a wedding etiquette question for Leslie? E-mail kforrest@washingtonian.com and we’ll get you the answer!

"I found it, honey! The perfect outfit for your wedding!"

I hate what my mom is wearing to my wedding. It’s clear she’s trying to upstage me—her dress is too short and too revealing. What should I do?

Ah, the “red hot mama syndrome.” For some mothers, the idea of being mother of the bride brings out so much angst about looking or feeling old that they go overboard in the opposite direction.

They get desperate to show that they can strut their stuff and that they still have stuff to strut. This is the time to enlist another member of the family or a close family friend who can talk to her frankly about the dress and the impact it is likely to have. That said, she may wear it anyway. But you are still the bride and no one can upstage you. The most she can do is embarrass herself.

Do you have a wedding etiquette question for Leslie? E-mail kforrest@washingtonian.com and we’ll get you the answer!

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Amanda and the happy couple: Now she's Mom of the Missus.

What a fabulous week we had partying and hanging out. Although the planning that remained for the week was minimal, we were busy every day. My aunt and uncle hosted a clam bake at their house one night. Sarina and her mom, Saskia, arrived mid-week. The wedding itself went so fast that having the week before with family and friends was priceless. By Friday, everyone had arrived at the beach, and the rehearsal dinner was a big bash that included all the wedding guests.

The whole week and wedding went smooth as silk. The closest thing we had to a glitch was what I prefer to think of as a classic wedding moment. With perfectly coiffed hair and our precise makeup applications, Tiffany, her bridesmaids, and I ventured out to the truck—already cooled by the AC—to go to the aquarium to dress there. Albert was driving—and might have been a little anxious. Although there was no hurry, he began driving faster and faster. In the same moment that I said, “slow down,” Tiffany said, “You’re getting pulled over.” Mind you, it’s quite humid in coastal North Carolina at the end of May. I guess as a safety precaution, the officer made us roll down the rear window—maybe to make sure we didn’t pull a bouquet on him? The policeman asked Albert if he knew how fast he was driving. Did he know what the speed limit was? What was the hurry? Where were we headed? You know the drill. Finally, I couldn’t take any more and explained from the back seat that our hair was going to wilt and our makeup would melt if he didn’t let us put the windows up. So after we answered his questions about the wedding, he congratulated Tiffany and sent us on our way without a ticket.

Ready or not, here we go. These past few weeks have been filled with finicky little tasks—all those things you can’t do in advance. With all of the big-ticket items taken care of and nothing huge left to tackle, I’ve had a lingering feeling that I’m forgetting something. To keep myself on track, I’ve gone into hyper-list-making mode. Even the smallest to-do item lands on my list—wedding-related or not. My lists look something like this:

In these past few months, life has gone on without regard for my well-set-out wedding-planning schedule. A few unexpected things have popped up: A skylight sprang a leak and had to be repaired, and a pipe burst in our house, flooded a bedroom, and required hardwood and carpet replacement. And as long as we had to pull everything out of the bedroom, we figured we might as well paint it.

Also in the past month, my son was in a play at school and my life stopped altogether so I could attend the Dominion High School production of The Music Man. In addition to being mom of the bride, I can’t forget that I am also mom of the boy.

But enough with day-to-day stuff. What has been going on related to the wedding in these final weeks?

With two months to go before their wedding, some brides might be in a panic over not having a vendor for their cake or florist. But in North Carolina, it’s nothing but a thang. No problem, no worry.

We recently went to North Carolina to meet with various vendors and scheduled two appointments for one day and six (that’s right, six) for the following day. While driving down, we came up with a list of questions and expectations for a coordinator, talked about music selections, the seating chart, and any one-off groupings that we wanted the photographer to catch. We were on a whirlwind mission. Our weekend went something like this: