Bride Wars

My posts do seem to be taking on a wedding theme recently. Sorry about that but it continues..

Firstly, I have some historical news. Last night I was round the White Horse's and...I was allowed to watch a chick-flick. I know. Stop the press. I do realise that of all the chick flicks I could have chosen, Bride Wars isn't the greatest but I was going to take what I could get. It happened to be on. The White Horse and his roommate weren't in the room so I decided to take a risk and not change the channel. It worked. It was amazing.

Of course the subject matter is all about brides and weddings which leads me nicely on to my topic du jour: weddings.

I'm sure you're all wondering how things are between me and Elsa after the Hen Weekend from Hell. They're OK. I was still pretty pissed on the Monday. Matters weren't helped by the fact that Rae was texting me adding fuel to the fire. I was angry. All of a sudden my phone rings (I'm at work) from a flower delivery company asking why I wasn't at home to collect my flowers. Well I'm sorry, I wasn't aware I was getting any flowers delivered. I was excited. Immediately I emailed TWH. They weren't from him. Oops. I jokingly text Rae to find out if she thought Elsa may have sent them. She replied basically asking if hell had frozen over. Huh. I arranged to have the flowers re-delivered on Tuesday morning and pondered over who had sent them to me.

That night I get a text from Elsa. She apologised somewhat for her behaviour over the weekend and thanked me for making the weekend fun for her friends. That was nice. But I would've preferred her to pick up the phone or come round to see me, but beggers can't be chosers. I replied asking if she was the one that sent me the flowers. She was. Sweet. But here's the thing, she didn't send Rae any flowers. I got them as did the other two bridesmaids but according to Elsa, Rae didn't deserve any flowers. Huh. This put me in an awkward situation. Rae knew that I had been sent flowers. I said that TWH hadn't sent them. Rae wasn't going to get any flowers. The drama. I told Elsa that if Rae asked I was going to say that TWH sent them but wanted it to be a surprise (he loved how he got credit for doing nothing!) She wasn't happy about that but by then I was past caring. I'm done with the drama.

Moving on, Elsa and I are OK. We went out on Friday with our respective guys and we had fun. The hen weekend wasn't mentioned. My next dilemma is an email that Elsa sent all the bridesmaids today. No one has replied. I think they're all still pissed at her. Do I reply first thus not showing my allegiance to the other bridesmaids? I decided to text Elsa to say I got the email. I feel less pressure now. Whew.

But oh no ladies, the wedding talk isn't done yet! The Monday after the hen weekend my friend from work who has recently got engaged asked to speak to me. I figured it was to ask me ever so nicely to shut up about talking about the horrible hen weekend as I was probably giving her nightmares about hers. But oh no, I have been asked to be an 'honorary bridesmaid'.

What is an honorary bridesmaid I hear you ask? Basically, my friend needs to have her female family members as bridesmaids (it's a family thing). She's not too happy about that but she realises that it's not worth the fight with her parents. However, she wanted her friends to be her bridesmaids. So she's decided to have four of her friends (yours truly included) as honorary bridesmaids where we get to do all the fun bridesmaids stuff but just not stand at the front during the ceremony. I can deal with that. And with her I am confident that there will be no bridezilla antics.

I just can't understand why the producers of Bridesmaids didn't give me a call.

Hen Hell

I'm sure you have all been anxiously awaiting news on how the hen weekend went.

Not good.

The plan for the weekend was as follows:

Friday Night
Arrive at destination.
Grab some dinner.
Change into pj's for a slumber party in the hotel complete with wine, pizza and hen weekend games.

Saturday
Explore destination.
Go for lunch.
Free time to do as you please.
Karaoke session.
More hen games back at the hotel.
Night out.

Sunday
Recover from previous night and head home.

The outcome?

Friday Night
All went more or less to plan. Elsa (bride to be) may have got upset because one of the girls staying wanted to go out. All the girls knew the plan but Elsa was stressing anyway. She then proceeded to throw up, pass out and then recover announcing at around 1am that she wanted to go out. A couple girls went out with her.

Saturday
Started according to plan: explored destination, went for lunch, had some free time. I had a fish pedicure. It is one of the strangest things.

And then we headed to karaoke. Now, Elsa didn't know any of the plans because it was supposed to be a surprise. We arrive at the karaoke destination and she immediately scowls. We enter the karaoke place and the scowling continues. She didn't participate at all. In fact, she sat for 2 hours on her phone the entire time. Myself and the other bridesmaids sang pretty much every song to try and keep things going. I can't sing.

On leaving the venue the bridesmaid and I had a rant about her behaviour. It was obvious that we weren't in the best of moods but cheered up pretty quickly because we wanted to make the most of the weekend. On the way back to the hotel Rae announces, with Elsa present, that we're not going to the club we had originally planned on going to because Elsa didn't want to. We wanted to make her happy so readily agreed.

Back at the hotel we drank and ate and then headed out. Everything was fine until we arrived at the club that Elsa had gone out to the night before. We thought that was a good option because she had said how much she liked it. We were wrong. She said that she didn't want to go there because she'd been there before, we didn't know her at all, we hadn't planned the weekend, we didn't care what she wanted, blah, blah, blah. We did our best to reason with her. We failed. She stood outside the club, in front of everyone that had spent money and travelled down for the weekend screaming and crying at us.

Eventually we managed to get her into the club where she sat on her phone. One bridesmaid was so angry she left for the hotel. Another one followed suit. Elsa and I managed to make up but every time I left her and Rae alone they were screaming at each other. Which meant I couldn't leave until they were separated. (There's a sub story about these two but it's best not to go there). This all resulted in me not getting to bed until 5.30am.

The next day it wasn't discussed. Myself and the other bridesmaids have yet to receive a thank you or an apology for her childish behaviour. According to Rae who was staying at Elsa's before she headed back to Scotland we don't need an apology because she's buying us dresses for her wedding. An interesting argument. My response? (In my head, not to her)

1. Her behaviour was unnecessary and unacceptable
2. She ruined the evening for people that had travelled a long way
3. She asked us to plan the weekend and said to do what we wanted
4. It's extremely difficult to plan a hen weekend, especially when people have different budgets
5. Her friends paid for her weekend. She didn't have to pay for the hotel or the activities. That's some thank you.
6. We went to a lot of effort organising everything
7. She says that she told us that she didn't like karaoke. She mentioned that to me once, in passing and we'd booked it. The karaoke was in a private room so there were no strangers. And it was never about people singing and everyone listening. It was about people getting to know each other whilst singing and dancing around like idiots
8. A thank you would be nice

According to Rae though, she doesn't think she has anything to apologise for. Needless to say, I am pretty hurt after this weekend and, should I ever get married she won't be one of my bridesmaids.

I'll take the higher ground. I'll upload photos to Facebook. I'll think of nice things to do on her wedding day. I'll listen to all the wedding talk. But I don't give two hoots about it at the moment.

But it's over with. That's something.