Book and Record Shower for Couple Gift showers for an engaged couple are as popular today as those for a bride-to-be. Such a shower gives an excuse to men and women friends of the pair to entertain them in some easy way, such as a buffet or barbecue supper or a kitchen party, and to give them gifts that they will appreciate.

A Book and Record Shower is especially appropriate for some couples. Books about a hobby in which they are interested, or some profession of one or both are welcome, such as gardening, fishing, decorating, cooking, stamp collecting, bridge, photography, travel, dress designing, biography, poetry, music, art, animals. Some records can be chosen by the guests to fit in with a library started by the man in his bachelor days, others selected to please his fiancée and her musical taste.

At one such party, the guests gave records of wedding music as part of the shower gifts. These included "Wedding Bells," with chorus and soloists from Victor Herbert's Red Mill; the beautiful Wedding Day at Trollhagen, a lyric piano piece composed by Grieg for his own wedding day (the Walter Gieseking recording of this is especially charming); "Through the Years," theme song of Vincent Youmans' musical by the same name; "If I Had A Cow, A Plow, A Frau" from Arms and the Girls, wonderfully sung by James Melton; "Marrying for Love," Ethel Merman's solid rendition of the hit song from Irving Berlin's Call Me Madam; and Jerome Kern's "Will You Marry Me Tomorrow, Maria."

There are many other records of wedding music listed in record catalogues as well as selections of dance music for the couple's own at-home entertaining after the honeymoon. Or friends can give special albums or collections, which they know definitely that the couple want.