![Wedding Shower Bride's four showers. With this practical haul Peggy Cross is set to keep house.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/150508-bridal-shower-01.jpg?quality=85&w=2400)
If you were to take a time traveler from 1950 and plop her down in front of Monday night’s premiere of the 11th season of The Bachelorette, she’d likely notice a few key differences between the contestants’ lives and those of unmarried women in her day. The dresses are a little more risqué, the sexuality more overt and the plastic surgery comparatively rampant.
When LIFE featured a bachelorette in 1950 — or rather, a “bachelor girl,” as the term bachelorette hadn’t yet taken off — the story’s subject, 21-year-old Peggy Cross, unlike The Bachelorette’s bachelorette, had already found her betrothed. Until their wedding day, of course, she would formally remain a bachelorette, but she was busy making preparations.
By all appearances, these preparations did not include a bungee jumping expedition or a helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon, but something altogether more practical: an accounting of all the accoutrements of housewifery.
Liz Ronk, who edited this gallery, is the Photo Editor for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LizabethRonk.
![Wedding Shower Bride's four showers. With this practical haul Peggy Cross is set to keep house.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/150508-bridal-shower-01.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![00728988.JPG Cleaning mitt that looks like strange tribal headdress was the first gift Peggy opened at her cleaning shower. Friends competed with fancy wrappings.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/150508-bridal-shower-02.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Wedding Shower Peggy wearing one of her gifts.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/150508-bridal-shower-03.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Wedding Shower Peggy testing out her new vacuum cleaner.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/150508-bridal-shower-04.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Wedding Shower Headshot of the bride-to-be.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/150508-bridal-shower-05.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Wedding Shower Peggy trying on clothes from one of her showers.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/150508-bridal-shower-06.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Wedding Shower Shower guests signing a book.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/150508-bridal-shower-07.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![00728987.JPG Peggy and Fiance Steve, brining home all but the bacon from the kitchen shower, need only an apartment and groceries to set up housekeeping.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/150508-bridal-shower-08.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
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Write to Eliza Berman at eliza.berman@time.com