The most exciting things happen when you least expect them to happen. At least that is the feeling that I always get.
I mean, I guess it is logical that it is like that. But for example I have always wanted to host a bridal shower, something about it just seemed like a lot of fun, and I would have the chance to shower my friend(s) with some love. As time went by and my friends got married over the years I realized that this wasn't going to be the case. Other girls were asked to help, they were closer friends with the bride I guess, or they were related and I just got passed over. It wasn't a big deal. I had more than enough to do, and I can remember thinking a couple of times that I was glad that I didn't have to plan for a shower at that particular point in time. So as things went it worked out.
But there was always that hope and desire there that some day I would be able to get to be the one in charge.
Being the hostess isn't something that I find hard, I have done it a number of times for different occasions. I have always felt that if I plan enough ahead, make enough preparations, that everything would go smoothly, and for the most part that is exactly what happened every time, so unlike the stressed hostess that is glad when the last guest has gone, I think that I would be more than pleased and capable to handle it all.
And I was not disappointed. In fact I was more than pleased when my dream finally came true, in part at least.
My sister is a couple of years younger than I am and she was asked to host her best friends bridal shower.
They have been friends since their senior year of high school, and they went to the same college so they have had the chance to stay pretty close. Well, my sister is like me. Super organized and always ready to help. But she had a problem. She was busy.
She had just changed employers and things were pretty hectic for her at work. That said the added responsibility of planning for the shower was almost too much for her. That is were I came in. I am not sure if she knew about my desire to host a wedding shower or not. It isn't something that comes up in conversation, nor did she help out when my husband and I got married. She was going through her finals and it would have been too much to ask. Not that I doubt for a minute she wouldn't have made every attempt to make it special.
Instead my husband and I organized a no-gifts couples shower. We sort of did the opposite of a bridal shower, instead of asking the guests to come and bring something we told them that we just wanted to spend the afternoon celebrating with them, which is what we did, though it lasted into the evening and we had more than enough food on hand to accommodate them all. It was rewarding for us and I would like to think that it was rewarding for our guests as well, though I cannot speak for them of course.
Well, anyway. Here I was with the chance to not only realize a dream, but to help my sister out of a bind as well, it was almost too good to be true.
There had already been a lot of effort placed in getting the plans made and she had put together a list of food she wanted to serve. It was going to be simpler than what my husband and I did, but it was going to be in that sense more traditional so it was also something new for me.
I actually didn't make many suggestions when it came to the plans.
I felt like:
- I didn't know the bride well enough to make plans for the shower
- It would be disrespectful for my to change my sisters vision
- Changing the plans now would be a waste of effort, which had already been invested into the celebration
That doesn't mean that I didn't give input. Usually, it was when I could make things easier. This is actually what I do every day so it was only logical for me to use it here as well. I guess that is why I have always felt that being a hostess comes almost like second nature to me.
Some of the things that we reworked were:
The Invitations
I love to sew, you may have noticed that by now if you have been with me for any amount of time, but what I don't like are paper crafts. For some reason I will have this grand vision of what I expect, and when I am working with a needle and thread that actually somehow materialize without a lot of effort. I suppose that is from having more than twenty years of experience with it, whereas, paper is new ground for me.
The original plan was more complicated in my opinion than it needed to be. She wanted to take a make them all - each individual one - by hand. Not just cutting and folding them, but actually writing them, all.
By.
Hand.
If there is something I had no desire doing it was that.
Thankfully, she didn't either. I think she half hoped that I would agree to do it. But without much debated we decided to make it easy on ourselves so we ordered a set of invitations which we customized to suite our theme for the bridal shower. Thankfully you can order invitations now. When my husband and I got married we went through a local printer, and even after a number of meetings he still had questions.
We chose a "Fall In Love" theme for the invitations since it matched what we wanted to achieve with the bridal shower.
They turned out beautifully.
The Games
She had actually put together a list of different games - some of them were better than others - and some were just plain silly.
There are just so very many different options out there that you really don't know where to start. I came to the idea that we should actually play them. She laughed and gave me the "sure, sure," look that I know so well.
But I was serious.
It was actually a lot of fun, and some of the games that we thought would work were a flop, and a couple that didn't seem like much turned out to be the most fun. The funny part was I had guests tell me that they loved the games. That they had never had so much fun, or laughed so hard. So it was rewarding knowing we did succeeded when it came to the party aspect of the shower.
There were a lot of other different aspects that we fined turned before we moved on but it was all time well spent. And in the end I feel like the afternoon was rewarding for everyone involved.
Myself included.
