Tacky Wedding Shower

A few weeks ago, the book club I belong to threw me a tacky wedding shower. I'm so glad it was tacky for two reasons. (See how glad I was.)

The first is that at my age, there isn't a whole lot that I need for my household. In fact, my fiancé is bringing a lot of his own stuff to the marriage as well. Right now we have four cutting boards in our kitchen! We had three television sets, but one of them went to the thrift shop, where a lot of our duplicate possessions have gone. Bob has even suggested that we bring some of our extras to the wedding ceremony, and that in lieu of gifts, we ask each guest to take something with them. Now that's tacky, but understandable. It was a good thing that the tacky shower brought me small, inexpensive gifts that were also good for a laugh.

The pictures on the right are a small sampling of the shower presents. There was also a honeymoon card game, a dice game, and a magic 8 ball. (Are the ladies of the book club trying to tell me what a gamble a marriage is?) Some of the presents were unconventional as shower gifts, and others weren't necessarily tacky, but I liked them just the same.

The second reason I enjoyed having a tacky wedding shower is that I needed to laugh at the process of getting married. When a woman gets married for the first time at my age, she has to prepare herself for the onslaught of wedding advice that was written for people in their early twenties. You have to laugh, or you'd get really annoyed. Take the time I took a call from a prospective florist on my commute home from work. I had just exited the Forest Glen Metro station when my cell phone rang. I explained to the caller that I was having a hard time hearing her because I was walking where the busses come and go. She asked me what time I got off school. I said, "what did you say?" because I thought I misheard her. She said, "are you just getting out of school?" I said, no, I'm 51 years old have been out of school for quite some time.

Being older however, makes wedding planning a lot easier. I know that I'm not going to be able to pull off the fairy princess look at my age, so I am not even going to try. And life has taught me that perfection is an illusion, so I don't have as many expectations about what my wedding day should be like as a younger woman might. I bought the first dress I saw for my wedding because it was approximately what I was thinking of for a dress to get married in, I looked good in it, and I was happy to get one more wedding-related decision out of the way.

The tacky wedding shower was perfect response to the preparations for a wedding, and the stress it sometimes causes. It said to me, have fun, don't take this wedding planning stuff too seriously, because after all, it's the marriage that really matters.

Wedding cake topper rubber ducks
from Jan Westervelt

Hands salt and pepper shakers
from Sue Hoegburg

Super fun penis candy necklace
from Ellen Hatton
(can you believe it?)

The table decorations