My mom and I have had recent arguments over what constitutes a bridal shower. Personally, I’m not a fan even though in my entire adult life I have never been to one. I probably didn’t go to one as a kid, so it’s fair to say I’ve never been. By my estimation there are two groups that like and believe in bridal showers: all the women from my mom’s generation and any girl who gets married right out of college or high school. Everybody else is sane.
I am getting ready for my own shower this Sunday. I relented partly as reparation to my mom for eloping and partly because since I don’t live in my home state it’s a chance to get everyone together to see my loved ones. I gave my mom strict guidelines – but if you read this blog you will know that my mom doesn’t look at guidelines as instructions, they are more like oxygen just going through a process of becoming carbon dioxide and nothing more. I told her that there will be no games and no tacky door prizes. This was met with protest and confusion. When I argue with my mom, confusion always seems to be part of the equation. She was confused because she didn’t understand what we would do if we had no games to play. Then she protested and said “People will be expecting games.” Now, I don’t know about anyone else but there are two events that I may expect to play a game: a child’s birthday and a Halloween party. I told my mom I would rather not equate my shower to either of those, unless the game she was planning was bobbing for apples and in that case, I could get into it. Her protests continued, contending that if there was nothing to do, we would all just be sitting there staring at one another. I pointed out that somehow, and in some way, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and New Years are all successfully celebrated without a game.
I understand that there other non-traditional things we could do for a shower. One that caught my eye was a wine tasting party. I could get into that, I love wine, nice cheeses and crackers. I gave pause to the idea because I know that too many people in my family believe wine in a box is “good wine”. I then remembered telling my mom that if a wine has an expiration date, it’s not a good bottle of wine. Of course I can’t expect much from a woman that will only drink wine if it’s pink. My mom is a lot of things, great quilt maker, decent cook but she is no sommelier. Other ideas seemed too out there or expensive, spa days, skydiving and an arts and crafts day just wasn’t going to do it for me. So we are keeping it simple and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that my mom doesn’t decide to do a festive round of pin the tail on the bride….
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