The Bachelorette Party
The bachelorette party was a day-long adventure that started out with cake and cocktails at the Barefoot Bar, then progressed to a day of meandering down the lakes in a pontoon boat stuffed full of twenty-something ladies, bottles of booze, and various “gifts” that will not be shown in pictures on this blog due to their – ahem – phallic nature. But these were responsible ladies, and they had the foresight to pay the boat rental place to supply them with a driver for the boat.
Meet Tyler.
Tyler is 19 years old. He is also the lucky employee of the boat rental place who got chosen to drive our boat. He was pretty happy with this outcome.
During the boat float we did the usual: jumped on giant trampolines in the water until the homeowners came out and shooed us off, stopped at Arnold’s Park for a quick roller-coaster ride, danced while wearing stick-on mustaches (yes, that’s what Tyler’s wearing in the first photo), and attempted to learn how to get back in the boat without a working ladder.
After the boating was more bars, and outdoor concert, and a surprise appearance from a pirate (okay, he was actually a Captain Morgan sales guy, but he did give out free hats to everyone at the bar).
All in all, a successful party to celebrate the impending end of A-Star’s single days.
The Wedding
For the wedding, my father-in-law re-purposed his barn as a reception area. This was a family affair, with everyone chipping in to help clean up the place, arranging a makeshift stage for the hired band, setting up tables and chairs inside plus hay bales around the outdoor dance floor, and organizing buckets of ice for the refreshments.
Aside from one really minor incident when the bus that was supposed to take the wedding party to the wedding venue broke down, things went pretty smoothly.
I should say, things went pretty smoothly except for my husband’s big mouth.
We had just recently found out that I was pregnant. This wasn’t a surprise to us, as we were hoping for such an outcome, but it also was very early and we weren’t ready to share the news with everyone yet. Besides, we didn’t want to take any of the spotlight from A-Star’s special day.
If you recall from the beginning of this post, I had to attend a bachelorette party on a boat, with alcohol. It was through quite a lot of effort that I managed to let all the ladies on the boat think I was partying along side them, when in reality I was abstaining from drinking.
At one point, this involved ordering a beer in the bar, sneaking off to the restroom, dumping out the beer, and then refilling it with lukewarm tap water from the bathroom sink. This was… not something I hope to ever repeat.
Well, during the wedding reception my husband let it slip to his father that we were expecting. So then at that point we just told the whole family.
I mean, I get it. He’s excited. I’m excited too. But I made sure to let him know, in no uncertain terms, THAT I DRANK LUKEWARM TAP WATER OUT OF A BEER BOTTLE FOR THIS ILLUSION. I could have saved myself quite a bit of that effort if we’d just decided to share the news a day earlier.
