One of the worst parts of living so far way is that you often miss out on milestone events in your friends' and family's lives. I guess I would have to count myself luckier than most, as I was able to travel back to the states to see all of my closest friends and cousins get married. But unfortunately, due to the high costs of transatlantic travel (and my apparent inability to inspire any random single millionaires to just throw some free airline tickets my way) I had to miss out on everyone's bachelorette parties. So naturally, this posed a bit of a problem when i was faced with the challenge of planning one for Gabi! How could someone so poorly schooled in all of this bachelorette business actually organize one herself?After all, the only bachelorette party I really had ever managed to go to was my cousin Patty's since it was held a few days before her wedding in Miami. But that was about 5 years ago! I was so inexperienced that surely everyone would laugh at my feeble attempts to act like I was "in" with the bachelorette scene! Also, we're in Spain- I had heard horror stories of parties here where all the girls are forced to wear big phallic head adornements or where the entire party would revel in humiliating the bride at every turn only to finish off the night by leaving her tied to a lampost in the middle of the city dressed as a slutty cat!!...
Although plagued with a complete lack of knowledge about the whole experience, I at least knew that I did not want to incoporate any of the traditional Spanish bachelorette customs that I had been hearing about. Gabi would most definitely have killed me if I had dressed her up in flamenco gear and carted her to a drag queen extravaganza...not to say that that wouldnt make for a great party, I know plenty of girls here that have been to parties like that and have had a blast, but each bride is very different and I knew this one would want something a bit more low key.
Needless to say I was extremely nervous about planning such a big day, yet somehow I managed to pick and confirm a date for the festivities and even began to map out the day's events. As the date grew closer and I became more immersed in the party planning I was plagued by horrific daydreams in which I would imagine everything turning out to be a total disaster : 20 women sitting in a blacklit cafeteria (for those of you that don't know this about me, I officially detest blacklight- I refuse to go to bars that have it. Aside from the fact that they make everyone look like they have rotted teeth, they also highlight lint and otherwise invisible stains on peoples clothing- kind of like a cross between CSI and zombies ) bored out of their minds as I lead them in games like "Pin the Cojones on Fabio" with a midget exotic dancer grinding away in the background to the Macarena...
I would awaken from these disturbing visions in a cold sweat, yet with newfound purpose- there was no way I would make Gabi suffer through an excrutiating night of lame innuendos and tiny male strippers, I was more committed to my duty than ever!
After weeks of planning and biting my tongue in order to not spoil any of the planned suprises, the big day arrived and luckily went off without a hitch- we all ended up having a fabulous time and didnt end up stumbling home until 7 the next morning. And when I say stumbling, I really mean stumbling- Gabi and I hit the floor big time in the dance club we were in when I had the bright idea that it would be so much more fun if we used the handcuffs we had given her to handcuff ourselves together! In a drunken haze I managed to secure the handcuffs on both of our wrists as we balanced our cuba libres in our other hands and proceeded to make our way through the club. (fun fact: in Spanish the word for handcuffs is esposas, which literally means WIVES! hahaha gotta love those crazy spaniards...)
Unfortunately we didnt get too far before taking a massive nosedive and landing on our knees while trying to navigate some stairs with our increasingly compromised sense of depth perception. Luckily we were drunk enough to no longer have the ability to understand that we should have been mortified and instead laughed it off without a care in the world, our only reminder of the incident being the unsightly matching knee bruises we were left with the day after.
Nursing my injury and thinking about how I would be condemned to wearing long pants to cover it in the scorching heat of the weeks ahead, I was at least happy that my secret was safe- noone had guessed that I really had no idea what I was doing! I spent the rest of the week gloating in triumph, I would have probably strutted a bit too... if I hadnt had to limp!
