I Survived The Cowgirl's Bridal Shower

Yesterday was my sister the cowgirl's bridal shower. As the maid of honor, I was nominally in charge of the event; in actual fact, I was graciously, kindly and most expertly managed by the other two women involved in putting it together — probably because they knew that nothing would ever get done if it was all on me to do it. I am not what you'd call a good party planner. I run from that sort of responsibility in total terror as a rule, but this time I really didn't see any way of getting out of it, what with being the aforementioned maid of honor and all.

Just kidding. Sort of. The truth is, I don't usually like being in charge of events because I'm afraid of screwing it up and not getting everything exactly perfect — and in this case, the stakes were rather high because I definitely didn't want to let the cowgirl down, of all people. For one thing, she's my sister and I love her and would hate to throw her a crappy bridal shower. For another, she's way too handy with a rope and spurs and God knows what else, so pretty much the last thing I'd want to do is get her mad at me for throwing her a crappy bridal shower.

You see my dilemma.

But thanks to the other people involved, everything went off quite well. The food was great (of course, since I had nothing to do with making it) and the weather cooperated by being not-too-hot, but just right so that we could all eat outside in the courtyard at my parents' house as planned. The gift-giving time was also lots of fun, though I freaked out at the beginning a little bit because I had forgotten all about the fact that you're supposed to make a "bouquet" out of gift ribbons for the bride until a friend asked me, "So who's making the ribbon bouquet?" Uh, oops. Thankfully someone was there who was good at that sort of thing, and I happily delegated the job.

Unfortunately, no one wraps anything with ribbons much anymore; it's all gift bags these days, and we realized after the third or fourth gift that that might spell trouble not only for the bouquet, but for another bridal tradition — the one about the bride having as many kids as ribbons she breaks. But eventually she did get a few ribbon-tied gifts, and boy did she work hard at breaking those suckers — the ribbons, I mean, not the gifts. She got up to about four, after which point, when she was struggling to break a particularly stubborn ribbon, I said, "You're already going to have four kids, how many do you want?"

"I don't want any!" she said, tugging away at a particularly stubborn ribbon.

"Then why on earth are you breaking the ribbons?" I said as everyone kind of laughed, but kind of didn't because I think they weren't sure whether she was joking or not.

She gave another heroic tug on the ribbon and shouted, "I'm doing this for you guys!"

She's way more selfless than I am, that's all I can say.

Anyway, it ended up being a great day, with time spent praying for her, laughing with her, and just enjoying being together. I'd post pictures, but um, I forgot my camera (I know, I know... I'm probably a strong candidate for lamest maid of honor ever). So you'll just have to imagine it, I suppose, until people forward me some pics from their cameras. Which I probably won't post actually, because by then I'll probably have wedding pics to share instead! Oh well.

Oh and in case you're wondering, she made it up to seven broken ribbons, so... looks like one of these days, I'll have my hands full being the coolest aunt in the world.