THE PARTY SCENE - Shower Daily If Possible

The one piece of advice I can give as a 100 percent–sure thing is to encourage your fiancée to have or attend as many bridal showers as possible. Once you’ve acknowledged that everything you receive and all the accolades are for her, you can sit back and increase your worldly possessions, safely out of sight, in your boxers on the sofa. Most gifts come off the registry you created together, so you might even get something you want, if you were crafty in the registering process.

My impressions of showers, from the perspective of someone who heard the details, are that they are an opportunity for (in descending importance):

1. Holding a group intervention to discourage the bride from going through with the wedding, if the attendees feel that is the correct way to go
2. Telling the bride-to-be everything that is not blissful about marriage and revealing what the warning signs are, in the form of a game
3. Giving advice on how to manipulate husbands into doing what they should be doing
4. Reinforcing the realization that all men are morons and that, in the long run, all you can really do is laugh off repetitive stupidity
5. Contributing lots of advice on what they don’t like or would change about your dream wedding
6. Getting away from their significant others for an afternoon of refreshing cocktails, cake, and finally, enlightening conversation
7. Giving you a gift in the hope that you don’t take any of their advice in the wrong way

Needless to say, reason one was completely unnecessary, as I am quite a catch, probably due to my mom’s secret, productive house-husband training. She is a retired special education teacher, and I believe that may have been a more suitable title for her work on my brother and me. I can wash clothes by color, make excellent loose meat sandwiches, and operate a vacuum. That last point will be contested by Christa, as I believe about everything outside of the toilet bowl can be cleaned with a vacuum. She disagrees.

Here’s a sample conversation on this subject:

“Did you dust? They (my parents) will be here in an hour,” she said, concerned about our home’s appearance.

“I vacuumed,” I stated, confident in my accomplishment.

“That’s not the same.” She sighed in disbelief, knowing her workload had increased.

“It’s better,” I claimed. “I didn’t push dust around; I sucked it up. The dust is now in the vacuum.”

“For whatever reason, in our society, the cleanliness of the house reflects on my abilities as a homemaker, not yours. I don’t have time to explain this to you. Your parents are coming over, and your mom will notice. She may not say anything, but she will notice.”

My mom’s training may have worked, to some extent, but I apparently missed the lesson regarding dusting with a vacuum as a sign of inferior homemaking. She probably assessed my talents for homemaking early on and decided that it was not a battle worth fighting. Back to showers.

Shower objectives two, three, and four usually involve games that use index cards. People write down their advice on these anonymous cards, and then the bride reads them aloud, in what is called the “Circle of Trust, Sympathy, and Advice.” The cards offer such gems as:

“Aspirin and bourbon are synonyms for love and devotion.”

“An attentively listening husband is either asleep or dead.”

“The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but all your effort usually amounts to shit.”

In fact, I made those up, because, had I seen the actual cards, their hints and trickery would no longer be useful.

Inevitably, shower conversation turns to how the wedding planning is going. As the details are relayed, the bride will politely, or out of obligation, ask for feedback or advice. In our case, whatever feedback Christa received could be absorbed, processed, and passed, unless it became clear that The MOB or The MG seem to be strongly opposed to something. The MG and MOB acted as a consulting firm to our wedding planning organization, infiltrating at all levels to recommend revisions in strategy. No matter how off-base these recommendations were, they had to be considered, because, in our wedding organization, our consultants were significant contributors to the budget and not the budget drains consultants normally represent.

Cake and cocktails need no explanation. I’d put on pants for cake and cocktails. Heck, I’d take pants off for cake and cocktails, not as a profession, but tastefully in a controlled environment, perhaps. I like presents too.

On the day of a shower, the groom’s part is minimal, but he must contribute beforehand. He must help pick out, or glowingly endorse, the new cocktail dress that is needed for each event. He must also describe the interrelationships between any of the guests the bride doesn’t know, relative to those guests she does. Christa asked all the female follow-ups: Married or single? Children? Interests? Is my dress an inappropriate pattern, given her history of voting Republican?

If the groom were helpful, I learned, he would also go out during the shower and buy some pretty thank-you cards, but nothing like the ones we’d sent for the previous four thank-you-card-necessitating events. Each must be unique, and trying to economize is to no avail.

“We have five of these left over from event one for the new guests, and I got these for the veterans,” I said.

“First, those are unattractive, and second, you can’t send different notes to people from the same party,” she returned.

“They aren’t going to reconvene and compare them, are they?” I asked in disbelief.

“It’s just not right. Once you evolve, all will be clear.”

I still await my moment of clarity. But this is clear: bridal showers equal maximum presents for minimal effort. I recommend having them elsewhere to minimize the vacuuming—I mean dusting—needed.
- Drew Lloyd
From "Will You?" to "I Do.": A Groom's Tale of Survival