Saturday night was our couple's shower. It was a lot of fun. Valerie couldn't come up for it for various reasons, which was sad, but Jami took over in planning stuff and did an awesome job.
I have to admit that I wasn't sure how the party was going to be just because the stress level around it seemed pretty high. I just wanted everyone to relax and have fun (including the planners). But, in the end, that is what we had.
The most major snag was that the air conditioning in the building had apparently gone down on Friday. I didn't actually know that until 4:30p on Saturday because I'd been running around with Jami and the others all day. By that point, I just had to hope that the room was livable for us all. I told Cynthia to call if we needed to bring more fans but I didn't want to worry Jami about it. She had enough on her mind with stuff without adding more stress over something she couldn't control. The room turned out not to be too bad though it did require a huge fan to help.
The shower theme was "Sweet on You" suggested by Jennifer. Valerie had taken care of the invitations (unfortunately limited to those living here -- the shower is supposed to be fairly limited). Some people couldn't come because of family emergencies (hope those get better soon) and other conflicts. But that is the way things go.
The color theme was various shades of blue with some white here and there. That was very cool and shows how well Jami knows us since that's our favorite color.
Cynthia and her boyfriend, Jim, had put together the favors for the event. The center piece of each table was a see through Chinese take out box full of various candies. Around them were smaller blue and white ones for the guests to take home filled with the candy. I loved it because we have planned something similar for the wedding and this made a precursor. Jon, apparently, had a hand in that suggestion since he knew about our candy bar idea. Jennifer and her husband, Tavis, attached balloons around everything.
The food table held a variety of desserts. I'm pretty sure that Jami took care of most of it but I know specifically of the chocolate cake being baked by Kathy (yummy) and I'm pretty sure Jennifer did the cookies (also yummy). If I am not giving credit elsewhere, please forgive me for that. There were various cakes overall. It all looked yummy and like we were gonna be hyper forever. The centerpiece to it all was a Hello Kitty sheet cake from Publix. Yes, you heard that right: a Hello Kitty sheet cake. It's similar to this one:

I say similar because instead of the bubble blower on top, we got a compact mirror. I like the mirror so it was all good. Jami, Jon, and Cindy were waaaay too pleased with themselves over it. (grin)
People wandered around and chatted at first. Then dug into the food. In the end the group cozied up at three tables instead of four. One table "behaved", one was "mischievous", and one was "perverted". lol Michael and I ended up at separate tables. You can figure out which ones we ended up being with. I was actually the last to get food and sit down cause I was just sort of wandering around. It had been a long week and it felt surreal. I have rarely had a party as either a child or an adult. The few birthday things I've done have been low key things at a restaurant. And since I wasn't sure what to expect as far as how people would intermingle, well, it was a pleasure to see everyone getting on so well. If it is any indication of the wedding, we are gonna have so much fun! Not that I haven't believed that, but now I can feel it too!
Time went really quickly. We had thought to do a murder mystery at the party just in case we needed to keep things lively but we didn't need to. No worries, I think we'll do a party like that next year here at the house. lol Save it for then. Jami had set up all of the presents on a table (they looked really nice). I won't go through all of them but I can honestly say that I was genuinely happy to get them all. See, I never know how to react to presents. I always appreciate them but wasn't sure how I would feel to be getting stuff we registered for. But every time Michael opened a package I was like, "Yay! Cool." lol I know we requested the stuff but it wasn't until we actually had them that I realized how happy I would be to actually have them. I guess you get overwhelmed when registering and it kind of numbs you to the stuff. We didn't register for anything we couldn't use or didn't need. And I tried to keep costs down for people even though we registered for a wide price range like they suggest. But if something was cheaper at the one store, I put it on that list. Took forever but I'm happy with the results.
Anyway, it was weird being on the side where people were watching us open stuff. But it was fun too. Jami did a great job of handling the ins and outs of it and Cynthia was really great with keeping track of who gave us what. The whole thing ran smoothly. I'm sure it didn't seem that way behind the scenes at times but it was a wonderful party overall.
Now I gotta get back to working on the main event. I only hope it goes as well. (smile)