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When we last left our intrepid couple (re: me and P), I was completely stressed out and P was trying to help with damage control. You see, our shower was being hosted by a very sweet lady who grabbed the "let's-throw-the-poor-as-church-mice-couple-a-party!" idea and kind of...well, ran with it. And when I say "ran with it," I mean it in the "someone-just-hijacked-this-bus" sense of the phrase. I don't want to go into details, because she meant extremely well, but things went downhill to the point that she was talking about canceling the shower because her plans had gone so incredibly astray. Luckily, my mother stepped in and asked that she not cancel, since this was going to be our only shower, and some other lovely ladies from the small group helped dig the shower plans out of the ground. And so things progressed!
I made a dress to wear to the shower a few weeks ago, but then realized I hated it. Ah, such is life. So I dug through my projects bags and dug up a dress that I had started this past summer (Simplicity 2951 in a white floral knit), then stayed up till 1am on Sunday to finish it. It turned out decently, although I still want to alter it a bit.
That whole day was fun. After church I went out to Panera with P, his mom, and his sister. Also, if you have not tried Panera's white cheddar macaroni and cheese, YOU HAVE NOT LIVED, MY FRIEND. You have not lived. It was fun, but I was antsy with excitement. I had received notifications about presents that had been purchased off our registry, and I was totally excited about it.
(But I didn't know what had been purchased. I'm sneaky like that. With the Target registry, they tell you the numbers at the top of the page. For the Bed Bath and Beyond registry, I put a magazine over the left half of my screen and scrolled down.)
(Please don't judge.)
Anyways, we arrived at the annex of the church and were immediately welcomed. And this is where it dawned on me that I was about to spend the next two hours with EVERYONE STARING AT ME while I opened presents that came from well-wishers that I may or may not know personally. And you might not know this, but while I'm not shy, I am easily intimidated and get anxious pretty quickly. So my excitement quickly dwindled into panic! mode.
Luckily, I was greeted by friends. And that made it easier. I was so excited that Heather came all the way from Union! And I was excited because they were excited. They bustled around the annex, showing off the decorations they put up and the food they helped put together and in general just oozed pride over my bridal status. That was awesome.
Also, we had a lot of pictures taken. Let me demonstrate:
First, we have the couple looking sweet. I look rather demure, don't I?
And then we have me and my ENTOURAGE. Just kidding. These are some of my super awesome friends. And Mrs. Dallas is photobombing by the cake table in the back.
(Rose, Kat, Rebecca, Sioda-Heather, and Crissy-Heather. The short girl with the rosebush on her shoulder would be me.)And now P gets stuck in the pool of estrogen, and is apparently being seduced, threatened, and ogled by turns. Except by Emma, who leaped into the picture without knowing that we were all making faces and instead flashed a lovely smile towards the camera.
(Also, I love his face. He is total awesome sauce to obligingly pose with a collection of girls in dresses who make odd faces at him.)Anyways, after the initial photo session, we were propelled to the seats of honor, where we were instructed to open gifts. We were happy to acquiesce to this request.
We got into a pretty good system. Rose handed us a gift, we took turns opening (one would hold and the other would unwrap/lift cautiously out of the bag), and Kat wrote down who gave what. Also, we opened the cards and read them together prior to ripping off the paper. My mama raised me right.
I know I showed this picture yesterday, but I just love it to little bits and pieces. We were given a glass cake plate and dome (which actually wasn't on our registry!) and I exclaimed that it needed cake. on. that. plate. now. So Emma booked it over, tossed us a cupcake, and the darling little baked good lived cheerfully in its glass habitat for the rest of the party.
(It ended up at Death of a Salesman rehearsal, where it was happily devoured by Stephen Moss.)
Also, there shall be pizza. (P was checking the tag that came with the bag.)
And OH LOOK MOAR CAKE. P was amused by my rapacious joy.
This is a little ridiculous, but I love how my nose looks in this picture.
Also, I would like to point out that Rose's torso and legs are lurking in the backgrounds of all these pictures. Girlfriend is tall. Her hips are the same height as my waist, thereabouts. I am short.
Our shower turned out to be a lot of fun. The hostesses did an excellent job, and were very, very, VERY generous to us. We had lovely vanilla cake, and my one request- CUPCAKES! The decorations were yellow and blue, to match the wedding colors, and I appreciated the detail. I also deeply appreciated the fact that life didn't stop so that everyone could stare at us opening gifts. Usually people dropped off the gift, greeted us, enjoyed some cake while chatting with their friends, and stopped to say goodbye and congrats before they left. It was very calm, very chill, and very fun.We had a lot more people show up than we expected. I've been told that Woodmont showers are usually pretty quiet, but we had about 40ish, maybe 50ish people stop by, including one of my favorite people, P's grandmother Baba.
It was so much fun. And we were incredibly blessed by all of our generous friends and well-wishers! We were pretty astounded by the overflowing gift table!At the end of the party, P and I opened up our cars and we all teamed up to get the gifts. By the time we were done, both his Hyundai and my PT Cruiser were completely full! We drove back to my parents' house, and he unloaded the cars while I sorted everything onto the wedding table in the rec room. And I changed out of my dress, because even though I'm a freaking ridiculous girly-girl, I need my shorts and tank tops.
(Lora, you better be still holding your girl card. No need to turn it in. :P)
We finished our super fun day of reveling in our bride-and-groom-ness in a decidedly low key manner- eating a Big Mac (him) and fries (me) in front of the TV while tidying up our registry and discussing where the crap we're going to live. (Answer: we're apartment-hunting on Thursday.)
We're still just completely stunned by how generous people have been. We were a little worried for while, because neither of us have lived completely on our own (he lived in an on-campus apartment and I went back and forth between a dorm room and Disney housing) and we don't have much in the way of practical stuff. I'm not quite as worried anymore. The only necessities we need are the bedding stuff and our everyday dishes. But everything else is just icing on the cake!
(Although that yellow KitchenAid mixer will be the queen of icing. It's the vanilla bean buttercream of our registry...)
But yeah. I am one happy bride/almost newlywed!
