Then there’s the classic request that shower guests bring recipe cards. My friends and I love to cook, but as soon as you make it “womenfolk only,” you suck the fun out of it for millennial women.
It makes me want to write, “ORDER TAKEOUT” or “WHAT’S FOR DINNER? I DUNNO, ASK HIM” in protest.
And about the card part—I never have one, I always have to make a special trip to Staples to buy a pack of three hundred index cards, and, after using one for this recipe, promptly misplace the other 299. And I’m sorry, but no woman my age has a physical recipe box.
Today’s recipe box fits in your pocket and it’s called the Internet.
Maybe we could email our recipes to the bride and groom, unless email is too impersonal.
But then the happy couple could store them on the Cloud along with their naked pictures.
The Cloud is the most personal.
And while old family recipes are worth passing down, older female relatives have a lot more to offer than casserole recipes. My friend’s shower had a great twist they called “words of wisdom” cards, where the married women read aloud their best marital advice.
These grande dames got real.
I found myself wanting to take notes on the back of my recipe card.
Maybe I was so into it because all the women in my family have been divorced.
At my bridal shower, only those divorced once can offer wisdom cards.
The ones divorced twice will provide the business card of their favorite lawyer.
Just for the prenup, of course. Do you really think I’d let Pip’s custody fall to litigation?
I need pre-pup.
Secondly, I completely understand the need for icebreakers among bridal-shower guests, often an intergenerational group from different families and social circles. But why are so many bridal-shower games vaguely humiliating?
As a guest, I can’t say I love the toilet-paper-dress game. The one where teams of guests compete to create the best bridal gown out of toilet paper.
Toilet paper stopped being hilarious when I turned ten.
You TP the house of the neighbors you hate, you TP a wet public toilet seat, and you TP your actual butt.
Don’t TP your friends.
Every gown comes out looking like a lazy Halloween costume. Toilet paper is a really difficult material to work with. I’m pretty sure there’s a Project Runway episode to back this up.
Not to mention the awkwardness of choosing teams, then choosing the “model” bride, and finally naming one team a winner and the rest losers.
There’s enough tension among the bride’s friends as it is—bridesmaids vs. regular guests, Maid of Honor envy, the childhood friends and the college friends facing off like the Sharks and the Jets. We can’t handle any more competition.
Although, if the games are going to put someone on the spot, I’d rather it be the guests than the bride. I once went to a shower where the bride was quizzed on trivia about her fiancé in front of everyone.
You might as well rename this the “Future In-Laws Judge the Bride” game.
I’m not a fan of quizzing the bride on anything, but if we must, let’s ask her questions about the hubby that are helpful for a wife to know.
Questions like, how many drinks can he tolerate at a dinner before he puts his foot in his mouth?
Does he really know how to fry a whole turkey, or is he going to blow himself up in the backyard?
What’s his email password?
Credit score?
At least these answers could come in handy.
Why are we giving the bride a hard time? The woman is planning a giant party to feed you expensive finger food while she herself is suffering through a yearlong pre-wedding diet. Do not push her right now.
Instead, let’s ask the guests to play a game to see how well we know the bride. Maybe have everyone bring a favorite picture with the bride and share the memory behind it.
Flattering memories, obviously. Not spring break ’07.
Never spring break ’07.
This would give the groom’s side of the family who might not know the bride as well valuable insight into the many wonderful facets of the bride’s personality and past.
I basically want the whole shower to be one giant advertisement for the bride.
The groom’s family should leave not only wanting her to marry their son, they should want her to run for office.
The purpose of the bridal shower is to celebrate the bride, and to make two different families and many groups of friends unite in support of her marriage. That’s a tradition worth preserving.
And I guess, if it really means a lot to you, TP me.
House Dreams
Lisa
I finally figured out why I’m addicted to home improvement.
It’s all Barbie’s fault.
To give you some background, like most little girls, I had a Barbie doll. I remember her distinctly because she had a blond ponytail with weird curly bangs, red lipstick, and a strapless black-and-white bathing suit that could never stay up.
Slutty Barbie.
This was back in the days when kids only had one Barbie, but bought a bunch of different clothes for them and dressed them in different outfits.
The Dark Ages, Toy-wise.
Back when blocks were made of wood, books were made of paper, and a remote-controlled toy was one you pulled on a string.
I had a Gaylord The Walking Dog, now sold online as a vintage toy.
Oy.
Anyway, to stay on point, though I had Barbie, I didn’t love her as much as I loved her house.
Who can forget Barbie’s Dream House?
It was a rectangular box of turquoise cardboard that unfolded to make a layout of a living room with a cardboard console television, squarish cardboard furniture, with a cardboard pink vanity on one wall, inexplicably.
Or maybe not inexplicably, since it was Barbie’s, and God knows she was vain.
Amazingly, I don’t have to remember what the Barbie Dream House looked like because I got my Dream House back as an adult, and like many things in my life, it came to me through the beneficence of my readers. One day I got an email from a wonderful couple in New Jersey, saying that they had found an old Barbie Dream House at a tag sale and that my name was inside it, and to make a long story short, they gifted it to me.
And now I have my actual original Barbie Dream House.
Which needs as much work as my real house.
But I never made the connection between the Barbie Dream House and my real house until last weekend, when I got another harebrained home-improvement scheme.
To wit, I decided to paint my front door.
Maybe because the new garden room, still under construction, looks out on the flowers, which are so colorful, but whatever the reason, it started to bother me that my front door is plain white, like the front of the house. I’ve always liked houses that have a different color front door, so I became obsessed with the idea of doing something bold in my front door.
I even found a paint company that will sell you a paint-your-own-door kit, complete with brushes, high-lacquer paint, and a bottle of wine.
I’m only kidding about the wine.
But the question is, what color should the door be?