The what Amber's (my brother's fiancee's) bachelorette party
The when: Saturday, June 28th, 2014
The time: 5:00PM - 3:00AM
The who: Amber's closest female family and friends!
The where: All...freaking...over
The why: To celebrate Amber's "last night of freedom," of course!
With a coordinator like maid-of-honor and sister of the bride-to-be like Sarah, how could the night have been anything other than a success? Throughout countless Facebook messages, texts, and an adorable mailed invite to the event, Amber's bachelorette party was bound to be perfect. And it nearly was.
The night started off at my place with dinner, presents and a few shower games. Because really, what kind of bachelorette party would it be without a little B-I-N-G-O? I didn't play.
Everyone who planned to attend the event was instructed to bring something, whether it be food for dinner, munchies or dessert for the limo (that's right...I said limo...we'll get there), or alcohol, we were organized to the max. We ate lasagna, salad and bread for dinner, all piled around my tiny kitchen and living room. My parents brought folding chairs, and a few resorting to sitting on the floor. We made do with what we had, and you know what? It turned out just fine.
As far as presents, the theme was "sexy." Duh, it was a bachelorette party. Gifts varied from silly novelty items to a string of thongs tied together to battery-powered gifts from the sex shop. You guessed right...that was from me. The rules of present opening was simple...ish. No one put names on presents, so Amber had two guesses as to which present came from whom. If she guessed wrong, she was sentences to a jello shot. If she guessed correctly, the owner of the present had to take a jello shot. We class up the joint every where we go.
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| The whole gang after dinner |
After dinner, we carpooled to the hotel at which we would be staying later that night. We quickly disposed of our belongings in our designated rooms (we got three), and hightailed it into the limo, which was awaiting our arrival.
Our driver introduced himself to us, Josh, and helped us compile everything inside, including a large cooler, which would later serve as a much bigger hassle than was worse. But I'll get there. Once we all piled in the limo, which surprisingly fit all 16 of us, we were on our way!
Our first stop was a city called Ames, which plays host to Iowa State University, from where Amber gradated college. We halfway picked Ames because it is about a 45 minutes drive, which gave us some serious limo-party time. The ride to Ames included lots of party music, selected by Courtney who made a limo playlist (are you beginning to see just how organized this group of girls was??), champagne and mixed drinks, and an enticing "drink if you..." drinking game, brought to us by Sarah. Simply put...Sarah wrote up a bunch of cards that all started with "drink if you" and ended with something that some of us may have done, like have a comdon in your purse (no one drank) or knew where Amber and Jonathan met (I drank my water on that one). It was simple enough, got everyone a good buzz going, and got us all to know each other a little better.
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| The girls in front of our limo, just before departure |
Since I've brought up me drinking my water, now would be a good time to tell you that I was not drinking for the night. I wanted it to be a night to remember, and also, someone had to take care of this crazy group of girls. Don't worry...we'll get there.
We arrived at the bar in Ames and held two high tops hostage, playing another drinking game at one and having pleasant conversation at the other. Eventually we merged into one table and all joined in on the drinking game, the only ones drinking virgin cokes besides myself being the few that would drive themselves home at the end of the evening.
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| The "drinking game" table |
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| The "pleasant conversation" table (yup...I'm at that one...) |
After one drink at the bar and a discovery that Amber's desperately anticipated hotdog stand in Ames wasn't open, we hopped back in the limo with Josh (our fearless driver...I'll get there...) and headed back to downtown Des Moines.
Our first and only destination downtown was a bar called Mickey's Irish Pub, a bar with an outside patio/dance floor/bar and that of which we knew several bar tenders. One of them that night happened to be the girlfriend of the best man in Amber and Jonathan's upcoming wedding, Ashley. It was at Mickey's where we ran into our first of several mini bumps in the road of our fabulous night.
- We discovered that my cousin's girlfriend left her credit card at the bar in Ames.
- Worse than that, she lives in Wisconsin! They would have to make a pitstop on the way home the next day. Hopefully not hungover. Zero fun.
- The bathrooms inside were small, crowded, and hard to get into. Not to mention a super long wait to get into one. The tagline for that bar was, "I just need to go to the bathroom!!!"
- It started torrential down-pouring while we dancing on the outside dance floor.
- The inside of Mickey's is way small and was way crowded.
So, as I was put in charge of calling Josh when we were ready to hit the next bar, I did my best to listen for his directions as to where he would pick us up as I stood outside in the pouring rain. Josh directed us to the limo, which was inconveniently not where he dropped us off, due to the cops telling him he wasn't allowed to park there. Josh was not happy.
After losing a few girls to lack of decent communication thanks to the rain and the loud music (don't worry...we didn't leave them...) and some random creepy guy trying to follow us into the limo (Josh - now part limo driver/part limo bouncer took care of us), we were on our way to West Glen, the classy part of West Des Moines (which is the classy suburb of Des Moines!). The first bar in West Glen at which we made a special appearance was called Wellman's Rooftop. And...you guessed it...it has a rooftop bar!
I somehow managed to lose the entire group while using the restroom, scouring the whole downstairs part of the bar. And let me tell you, the downstairs of Wellman's is not easy to navigate through. The tables and people are positioned so closely together, I think the words "'scuse me" have lost all meaning to me. But one good thing did come out of my losing the group: I ran into one of our guy friends, Cam, who is going to be an usher at Amber and Jonathan's wedding. After locating the group on the rooftop and not the downstairs dance floor (how was I to know that everyone had worn out their dancing shoes at the previous bar?), I told Amber that Cam was downstairs, and we made another trip downstairs to see Cam, once again suffering from claustrophobia as we did so.
Wellman's got boring, and we headed (on foot...or should I say...heel) to a bar just across the way called Shotgun Betty's. Although it was fortunately no longer raining, we all know that rain unfortunately brings mud, and we did our best to avoid the mud piles as our heels sunk in the grass on the way to the next bar. We had one single goal in mind for this bar: Logan. Logan is the best man at Amber and Jonathan's wedding, girlfriend to Ashley, who bar tended for us at Mickey's. Logan likes to hook up his best people with drinks, so I only spent $31 (minus Logan's hefty tip, of course) on 13 shots for the group (excluding myself) Why 13 and not 15, you ask? I thought you had 16 girls, you said? Well, two of our group members left after Mickey's (soberly...I promise!) so the count was down to 14.
Speaking of counting, our insanely over-organized group for the night had a way of making sure we were all accounted for every time we were about to head someplace new. We counted off 1-16 or 14 or whatever the count was at for the moment and didn't stop until the count hit as high as how many girls we had. We managed to do a pretty decent job until the evening got late and our drinkers forgot how to count. ;)
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| Limo fun! |
Our stay at Shotgun Betty's was short-lived, and we returned to Wellman's to close down the bar. It was a struggle to get several of the girls away from the boys they had "made friends" with throughout the evening, but we did our best to get to Josh in time to make it back to our hotel before 2am, where we would have to pay extra for the limo if we extended our curfew.
After a feeble attempt at our headcount on the way home, we sang songs (loudly...and off key, might I add...) and headed for our last stop of the evening: our hotel. Two of our Des Moines residents headed home from there (again, soberly), and then there were 12. We thanked (and tipped) Josh numerously and handsomely for the amazing job he did for us, and it was just the girls. But did we go to bed from there? Of course not?
Several of us got into our jammies (of course I did that...) while the rest remained in their dresses (those crazy girls...) and we piled into the middle hotel room for some much needed water, gatorade, and truth or dare. What all-girls sleepover is complete without putting random objects on cop cars which sat outside our hotel or running through the hotel hallway with dresses up and thongs to be shown? Exactly. I'm sure you can't think of one. Not an epic one, anyways.
Finally around 3am, the crew wound down and went to bed. Since all three rooms were occupied with sleeping partygoers and one of the girls and I weren't quite ready to settle down just yet, Aubry and I dragged two hotel chairs (and lemme tell ya...those things aren't light!) outside (we had motel style hotel rooms, so we avoided dragging chairs through hallways and lobbies, don't worry) to drink water, enjoy the cool night air that had finally let go of the rain, and have some pleasant conversation 1 on 1. Aubrey is a friend of Amber's from back home, so I didn't know her too well, but it was so fun talking about the upcoming wedding and what Amber was like in middle school and just life as mid-20-somethings in general. When I checked my phone to see that the time at crept up on 4am, we knew it was time to call it a night. So we dragged the bulky chairs back inside, did our best not to wake Aubrey's sleeping roommates (I think we did anyways...whoops...sorry girls) and our heads finally hit the pillow.
It was definitely a bachelorette party not to be missed! Sure, some of the girls were moving slowly the next day. And Amber was definitely still drunk. It was adorable. But, surprisingly, out of the 16 girls that started the evening with us, not one of us got sick that night or even the next day! And we managed to escape the night drama-free. So what if someone left a credit card at a bar 45 minutes away or we got attacked by insta-rain or sometimes we couldn't count just right? It was an almost perfect night, and the only reason I say "almost" is that nothing is perfect.
So...go Sarah for pulling off an epic bachelorette party, and go Amber for surviving the night as the bachelorette with no injuries, tears or drama-filled stories to share!
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| Amber (left, duh, she has a vail) and Sarah (right) |
My guess is that my next blog will be about the wedding...so stay tuned...August 9th is less than a month away!
~ Lauren