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PLD Montage Vol. 2.3: Pre-Wedding Wedding Edition (Pt. Twinster)

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To say my life has been taken over by weddings this year is a massive understatement. In the full volume of people that I hold dear to my heart, there are only two other single people, with everyone else now either engaged or married – and most of them are getting married this year. Though we planned an amazing weekend bachelorette/bridal shower combo for my partner-in-crime R back in June, this last weekend was a much bigger undertaking, wherein I needed to plan a bridal shower and bachelorette weekend for my twin sister. And truly, the weekend went better than I could have imagined, and at the end of the day, I wouldn’t have changed a thing. Well.. okay. Maybe I would have *tweaked* just a few moments….

I give you: PLD Montage, Vol. 2.3: Pre-Wedding Wedding Edition (Pt. Twinster)

  • We had a full house at my parents’ the night before the wedding, with myself, my lovely friend M, T, three of her friends, my parents and my sister’s almost-in-laws. The original plan for the night was for all of us to enjoy a nice, relaxing dinner together, and then M and I would head to a dear family friend’s house, where the shower was being held the next day, so we would each have a bed for the night and then could be there early for set-up. M and I both had stressful Fridays – she was coming in from NYC and her plans changed abruptly two hours before her train left, where I mismanaged my time and was somehow running errands from 9am till 430pm – so when the wine came out for dinner, we gratefully accepted. And accepted… and accepted….
    Lesson learned: If you don’t pace yourself with alcohol on a night you’re supposed to drive to sleep somewhere else, you end up sleeping on the floor of the house family room, where the calming noise of crashing dishes being washed at 5:30am will wake you from a Merlot-fueled restless sleep.
  • We all woke up bright and early the next morning (yours truly at the aforementioned 5:30am), shared coffee and breakfast on the deck in the beautiful weather, and planned to get to the shower location by around 10am for last minute set-up and to heat up the food. I was starting to get somewhat eager/anxious for the rest of the weekend, so my usual two-to-three cups of coffee somehow turned into four and a half. Then I had to get in a convertible and drive the 10 minutes to the shower location with my recently-done hair and flowers picked from the garden, all while in a black dress in the sunshine.
    Lesson learned: Coffee makes you sweaty and shaky, which doesn’t help when you’re driving a convertible with sun beating down on your black dress, which in turn makes you more sweaty, and also convertibles mess up hair. TL;DR: No part of my morning was well thought-out or planned.
  • Set-up actually went incredibly smoothly, and we had popped the first bottle of champagne by 11am, drinking slowly to savor the last few minutes of calm before the 40+ guests arrived. The main event of the shower, the CREPE TRUCK, was running late, but eventually made it, and I was really looking forward to a ham and cheese crepe, as I hadn’t eaten much that morning due to nerves and too much coffee. Then crepe truck man proceeds to tell us that he has: forgotten ice, forgotten all of the savory ingredients, brought one can of whipped cream for 40 people, informed us that setting up the stand was going to take 40 minutes, oh, and he let it slip that he may have been “a little hungover.”
    Lesson learned: Always trust and emulate your mother – not only had Mama B planned ahead and made enough quiche and salad to feed an army (“just in case people don’t want crepes!”), but after exchanging a few words Idiot Crepe Boy, she got them to waive the fee for the truck and send us an IOU for our next party. She’s the best.
  • A few weeks before the shower, T and I were texting and she sent the most bridezilla thing that’s come out of her mouth since getting engaged: “Dude, I’m at a shower and we’ve been sitting in the sun for almost two hours watching someone open presents. If we don’t set a record for gift-opening since you’ll be pre-opening everything for me, you’re fired as my maid of honor,.” Challenge accepted.
    Lesson learned: With a joint effort between the bridesmaids, we had every damn gift opened, cataloged and stored for the taking in under 45 minutes. BOOM.
  • I woke up the next morning after the Moulin Rouge themed bachelorette party that followed the shower, and sighed loudly. M and I had shared the futon in the office for the night, and as it was 7:30am, I inched my way out of the bed so as not to wake her so I could survey the damage in the house and start cleaning before everyone else woke up for breakfast. In walking into the kitchen, the sun was just starting to peek over the treetops in the backyard, calling us to the deck for a slow morning with good friends and laughs about the night before. The house was already clean, a joint effort from all the girls there, and as everyone slowly emerged from the various sleeping locations around the house, we all had laughs and good memories from the two parties the day before. The one thing that was missing? Almost no one took pictures from the bachelorette.
    Lesson learned: Maybe it sucks when you can’t Instagram all of the decorations and hard work that you put into a bachelorette party for your twin sister, but when everyone is having too much fun to stop and stare at a cell phone, you know it’s been a hell of a night.

Two wedding shower/bachelorette weekends down, one to go – next up, H and R’s wedding!!

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Soaking.

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“This. Is. Disgusting.”

As my coworkers and I made it into the office this morning, we all stared at each other in some level of shock and unhappiness, having been forced to come into the office on a miserable, dreary, grey, rainy New York day. I shook half a cloud off of my umbrella and squeezed my hair behind my cube, trying my best to wring out what water had managed to infiltrate my umbrella, hat and rain jacket before getting started on my day. I’d actually remembered to check the weather in the morning, and seeing the entire day promised to be a total mess, I didn’t bother putting on makeup, wore my glasses and even did the unthinkable: I wore sneakers on my commute. I got a great look at myself in the mirror of the elevator as I made it up the many floors to my office, and had to laugh at the sight of such a person – I could pass for a tourist or a newcomer, the opposite of the put-together New Yorker I try to emulate in my usual daily routine.

I’ve always loved the rain. There’s something beautiful about a city in the rain, the way the drops bounce off the buildings like a dance, a complete juxtaposition to the gloomy people underneath broken umbrellas below. I love a good pair of rainboots, dancing in a storm, shaking the weather out of my hair, inviting the lion’s mane of curls to wrap around my neck, my face, sticky with raindrops and dripping red dye. Any of the cities I’ve visited or lived in have such a distinct personality in the rain, the torrential downpours in Buenos Aires that come and go as quickly as you can take out your umbrella, the misty showers in Amsterdam, like walking in a cloud, or the languid steps in Paris in the rain, enamored with the romanticism of such weather in such a city. New Yorkers hate the rain; we hate walking behind the idiots with the big beach umbrellas, hate how quickly the street umbrellas break, just as a bus drives by, close enough to splash the city puddles all over your legs. But there’s a part of me that loves it too, loves the chance to see the city without the crowds of people distracted by the skyscrapers, the only person looking up amid a sea of downtrodden commuters.

There’s something going around this week, a misfire in the stars or maybe just a random series of coincidences in which I’ve gotten so many texts and calls from people who had something go wrong, a lost earring, a scolding from a boss, a piece of news that’s been feared for months. I’ve felt it too, sleeping in despite this being the first week I can do yoga again after the tattoo, reaching for potato chips and candy instead of sticking to the healthy fruits I’ve lugged from home. I think it’s just a reaction to the weather and the time of year, like the forthcoming forced merriment of the rapidly-approaching holidays needs the precursor of a rainy week and self-disappointment. I’m very much looking forward to the rest of the week, less rain and more holiday fun, with my company party on Thursday and a trip to Nyack for some shopping and dinner with my lovely friend M and her N on Saturday. And in the meantime, I’m fine soaking in some of the bad parts of the week for a few hours. After all, it won’t be like this forever – a good lesson to remember in all parts of life, whether soaking in the enormity of a life moving on, or just soaking in a New York City rainstorm on the way home from work.