Showered with Dish Towels

A few weeks ago my aunt and grandma threw me a beautiful shower (and I mean that figuratively and literally). I was unable to blog about it then because, as I mentioned before, I was too emo. That, and I didn't have pics until now! I also had another shower hosted by Mr. Unicycle's family, but that may never get the blog justice it deserves since the pictures have gone AWOL. It's a wedding mystery! So for right now at least, let's talk about my 2nd shower first.

Here I am with the hosts, my grandma on the left and my aunt on the right. And there's my poofy shower dress in the middle.

The shower took place at the Schaumburg gold club, aka Chandler's, which was one of the contenders for the wedding venue too.

Even though my actual wedding isn't having any real flowers because I'm cheap, my aunt and grandma went all out with floral centerpieces for the tables and a yellow tulip at each place setting.

It took people a few minutes to realize the monogram was my initials, and had nothing to do with Mr. Unicycle's!

The cake was delicious (redundant?) and I loved the swirly K on it.

And there were lots of lovely gifts just waiting to be greedily ripped open.

 Here's an extra pic of me and my grandma because we both look like badasses here, don't we?

I was so grateful that all four of my bridesmaids were able to come to my shower. Three of them had to fly in to be there, and it was so amazing having them all together for the first time.

 Shout out to our invitations designer! (Behind the scenes deets: that ain't plain orange juice...)

I spent the first part of my shower saying hello to everyone and catching up with friends and family members I hadn't seen in a while.

Here's me with my work wifey. Our boss calls us The Marquette Girls because we both went to MU for undergrad.

Then the hosts called me up to the front (don't worry, I brought my drank with me) and welcomed everyone and said a bunch of nice things about me. My aunt even teared up a bit! Then they opened up the floor and invited everyone to say something about me or how they know me. It was so amazing to hear everything people said! I can't tell you enough how much it meant to me to hear everyone saying such nice things, and I really wish I had it on video to watch when I'm feeling down. In these people's eyes, I'm like...a legitimate person! I guess that's why I got all Sally Field on you before. 

My mom informed everyone that I'm basically a virtuoso artist and musician (and yes, she's referring to my car singing; I'm not actually a musician.), my sister-in-law said she can't wait until we can raise our kids at the same time, my old boss/girl scout leader said I'm the funniest person she's ever met (though I did tell her to say that), and my future mother-in-law welcomed me into her family.



My maid of honor gave just a hint of an embarrassing speech (wherein she informed everyone of the time I accidentally proclaimed "I'll bring the hot wax!" I'm not explaining further), and some family members rhapsodized about what a beautiful baby I was with cheeks that looked like I was squirreling away marshmallows (um, look at me. I still look like that).

Then we feasted. I don't think there are any pics of the food :( But it was delicious, obviously. The first game we played was the "how well do the Unicycles know each other?" game. Turns out, not very well. My cousin had asked Mr. Unicycle some questions ahead of time, and I had to guess what he said. Hive, he guessed that my favorite food is SALAD. Granted, I do love salad and eat it daily. But favorite food? Bitch, please. (For the record, my guess was lasagna, like Garfield.)

 Derrrrp.

Caption: That ass thinks salad is my favorite food? Poor fool.

I had hinted earlier that I wanted to play the toilet paper wedding dress game at my shower, but I didn't think it would actually happen because this shower was pretty fancy (possibly fancier than my wedding will be) and toilet paper doesn't really go well with fancy. But leave it to my aunt to fancify the game--she changed the toilet paper to tissue paper and also bought a bunch of embellishments from the craft store, which added an element of challenge to the game--each team had to use everything provided. The guests split up into 5 teams and got to work creating a paper wedding dress. I walked around being concerned à la Tim Gunn.

Assessing the situation. 

Draping the fabric. 

Everyone hard at work.

 Everyone hard at work again, this time blurry.

That's right, this team went for the mermaid dress.

My MOH wants to be put out of her misery.

And this team went for Native American appropriation...

I made her turn around several times so I could judge the dress more accurately and because it was fun to watch her struggle.

I loved that this dress had a train!

When I saw this team in action, I literally said "I'm concerned."

Image via Montage Editing

 When everyone was finished, we lined them all up and I judged them, Nina Garcia style.

 Butt shot

In the end, I chose the dress with the train:

 Guess which one of these dresses isn't made of paper:

Take two, sans drink (for once...)

Next up was present opening. I put each of my bridesmaids to work for me, mostly because I felt so awkward opening gifts alone in front of everyone. One made ribbon bouquets to use at the rehearsal dinner, one wrote down who gave which gifts, one handed me the gifts one by one, and one cleaned up my wrapping paper carnage and repacked all the breakables. Thanks, bridesmaids!

If The Ring were real, I'd say one of us might only have 7 more days to live. 

I had fun trying not to break any of the ribbons (since each ribbon you break equals a demon spawn you must give birth to in the future, apparently), but some shower guests knew special tricks for wrapping the ribbon so it's impossible not to cut it. I'm pretty sure I'm the next Octomom, everyone.

The guests looked on adoringly as I unwrapped dish towel after pot holder after dish towel. (I may have demonstrated how pot holders work by making them into puppets as well.)

 But by the end I was ready to feast again.

And that's my shower in a nutshell (no, this is my shower in a nutshell: Help, I'm in a nutshell! How did I get into this bloody great big nutshell??) At the end, it was a little chaotic trying to get all the gifts out and into my FMIL's car (she's generously storing all my junk in her basement until Mr. Unicycle and I start shacking up) and figuring out who was going where next--the young people had a bachelorette party to get to in Milwaukee after this! Stay tuned for tales of our debauchery.

Were you as awkward about opening gifts as I was? And did your shower make you feel more loved than ever?