Showers on Saturday with a chance of irritation in the afternoon.

The Girl is a bridesmaid in an upcoming wedding.  I was so excited when I heard this because I love all the things that go into a wedding and the duties of the bridesmaids.  Guess who is the only bridesmaid who has a mother who has a clue as to what bridesmaids are supposed to do?  Seriously, how does anyone learn this stuff if their mother doesn't tell them?  Was I born in 1952 or something?  Is it odd that I know what the Maid of Honor and the other maids are supposed to get done?  The Brown Eyed Man knew more about being a bridesmaid than any of those girls.

First of all, the Maid of Honor has a boatload of duties and the Maid of Honor in this case has followed through with none of them.  That's why The Girl was throwing the shower, because if she didn't no one was going to.  And we weren't about to let that happen.  We actually had more help from a friend of The Girl than we did from any of the other bridesmaids.

The day started out with humidity around 252%, then heavy, warm rain, then more humidity.  I know I should be happy that we weren't experiencing the hot hot weather the rest of the country was going through, but I think I sweated as much as if we were.

Anyhoo...the shower turned out to be lovely, with a few exceptions I will get into later.

It's hard to make a deer antler chandelier look Bridal shower-ish.  What you can't see very clearly is the branch that The Girl found and added gold leaves and two blue birds.  This matches The Bride's invitations.  It was so cute.

We framed one of her invitations (an idea I remembered from the bridal shower that was thrown for me).  The Girl made Olive and Almond sugar body scrub for favors.  The dark lump on the floor was not part of the decor.  I think it's The Girl's purse.

I've spent the evenings for the last week or so, making puffy tissue balls.  We stuck a few on sticks to simulate flowers.  The sticks in the vase were ugly so I wrapped burlap in there to camouflage them.  We served regular party punch (Hawaiian punch, pineapple juice & ginger ale) and lemon water.  I bought those jugs a few years ago and have used them and loaned them many times.  They were a good purchase.

Since we had exactly FIVE rsvp's by the morning of the shower (we sent out 42 invitations), we weren't sure how much food to have on hand.  We settled on cold cuts, chicken salad, fruit skewers, antipasto skewers, and pasta salad.  It worked out fine.  I think the final count was about 22 people.  Again, I would like to know whose mother never told them what "rsvp" means.  We'll probably have sandwiches and salad for the rest of the week.

Finally, the party began....but wait, the mother of the bride isn't here yet.  The Bride knew this and was willing to continue as she knows her mom is a flake.  However, the Grandmother of the Bride insisted that we wait.  And wait.  And wait.  She finally showed up a little over an hour after the shower started.  Then she sat in the driveway for (not joking you) 20 minutes.  Just as I was about to go out in the driveway to tell her to either get her ass in the house or leave the property, she came in.  When she walked in she said "Mom's here!"  When no one acknowledged her she stepped a little further into the living room and said it again.  Then she went straight to the bathroom for 10 minutes.  Again, not joking you.

Half an hour later her sister showed up.  We had already eaten, opened gifts, had cake, people were putting their jackets on and we were putting food away when the sister came over and opened the saran wrap on the chicken salad and said "I'm going to sneak a little of this since you put it away before I got here".  I have incredible self-restraint.  I really wanted to remind her that the shower started two hours before she got there and had she rsvp'ed we might have known she was coming. But I just smiled and said "Oh that's fine."

Later, The Girl told me that the Mother of the Bride rsvp'ed that morning and then wanted to know what kind of gift to get her.  The Mother of the effing Bride.  Seriously.