If you’ve been around me lately, you may know that my sister is getting married in June. This past Sunday was the bridal shower. This was the first time I had ever been to one, which isn’t that odd considering its mostly a women’s event.
I probably asked no less than four people what was the purpose of a bridal shower. Now keep in mind that there have already been two engagement parties for the couple. The answers to my questions ranged from basically another scam to get more gifts to ‘traditionally this was the opportunity for the bride to get what she needed to make a happy household for her husband’ to ‘its just tradition.’ No matter who I asked, I could not be satisfied with the answers received. I needed someone to make this make sense to me. Unfortunately, noone was able to do that. In talking with my father, he had the hybrid theory. Basically, a bridal shower was a long standing tradition that has morphed into another excuse for money to be spent and gifts to be bought, much like Christmas (my words, not his!). The more he spoke of the tradition, the less sense the event made in a modern sense. I’m pretty sure I asked him when we were going to dance around the fire in hopes of a plentiful harvest.
After a surprisingly delicious meal, the gifts started to be opened. The bridesmaids made note that there were bingo cards under our plates and that we were all welcome to play along. When I looked at the bingo card, each square had a sticker on it with an item that had been on the gift registry and across the top, instead of saying BINGO, it read BRIDE. At first I found this to be incredibly tacky. The whole idea of specifying gifts you want to be given is a pretty tacky concept to me as well, but I understand the reasoning and it makes sense. To take this list and make a game out of it just seemed to cross that line. However, the further into the unwrapping we got, the more interested I was in each item they opened. If it were not for the Bingo game, I would most likely be bored and disinterested. Instead, I had a vested interest in what was taking place. After realizing this, I no longer felt contempt toward the concept. It made sense and served a functional purpose.
The whole concept of a bridal shower, however, still does not make sense to me. It feels like an arrogant concept to open gifts like this is such a public manner. That being said, it was nice to see some of the friends and family again.
51 days until partial normalcy returns.
