THE WEDDING SEASON
The Bachelorette Party: Are Dick Jokes De Rigueur?
"PLEASE GUYS," CHRISTA IMPLORED. "NO PENIS-SHAPED ITEMS. PLEASE."
Bachelor(ette) parties, the stuff the Overheard websites are made of.
I host Christa's bachelorette party in Chicago. Though I am not her maid of honor (the one who traditionally coordinates the bachelorette party), I am the only one who lives in the city, so I gladly take on the task.
"No dicks?" I ask Laura, the maid of honor. "What kind of party is this?!"
When I marry, I expect everything at my bachelorette party to be phallic. But Christa -- who is slightly more demure than I -- prefers good old-fashioned fun. So she gets it.
We decide to conduct a scavenger hunt. We equip Christa with a bedazzled canvas bag donned the words Bachelorette Scav Hunt. On the opposite side we glue an American flag and scrawl "YER AH-MUR-I-KUN!" to remind her of her "roots" after she jets off to London where she'll live post-wedding.
She's also forced to wear the telltale "Bride to Be" sash and a white tulle veil. Though we are completely aware of the obnoxiousness of all this, we persevere. (I apologize to anyone whose day we may have ruined with our girlish squeals.)
As the day progresses, Christa gets different clues to Wicker Park shops including the sex boutique Batteries Not Included and the aptly-named iCream Café.
Her fiancé Phil, is a pastor (Yes, my friends are very diverse.), so one clue is rolled up inside a cross-shaped box. It reads: "Although Phil is a pastor, you can't only do it in the mish pozish." She snags a Kama Sutra book from
Myopic. She then sings karaoke at 3 pm at Louie’s Pub -- Boyz II Men’s I'll Make Love to You -- before we buy her a lingerie set from Victoria’s Secret, and then we top it all off with dinner and drinks.
We have a spectacular time, but I expect a slightly more wild bachelorette party when it’s my turn. (Zach, on the contrary, insists that my bachelorette party be at a monastery.) Beyond big veiny dildos and copious amounts of wine, I'm not sure exactly what I want. I certainly don't want to wake up the morning after with my eyeballs about to explode out of my head and my pubes doused in stripper glitter (this may or may not have happened to my dear father). Like Christa, I prefer a bachelorette party that is less formulaic.
If there is a moral to this story, it's this: Ignoring the standard is crucial when it comes to the formalities and traditions of weddings. Though the temptation was strong (believe me) to surprise Christa at the restaurant with a cock-cake complete with toasted coconut scrotum hair (Yum!), it wouldn't have been right.
The bullshit thing about weddings is the endless list of expectations. Defying them -- in this case, resisting tallywacker accessories -- is the key to wedding planning that is actually fun, not fake.
Sophia Ulmer, a creative writing major at Columbia College in Chicago, will write on weddings every Saturday through June. When she's not writing for CrabbyGolightly, she's stirring things up at her cooking blog, feckinfranchtoast.blogspot.com
