What's the Weirdest Bridal Shower You've Ever Attended?

For a few weeks now, a handful of loyal Pissing Contest commenters have requested a blog with a bridal shower theme. Let this be a lesson: if you ask, you may receive. Now deliver the goods!

Having never actually been to one, my only understanding of bridal shower culture is from the 2011 movie Bridesmaids, where Kristen Wiig gets hella champagne drunk, freaks the fuck out and destroys a massive heart-shaped cookie. Her BFF, played by Maya Rudolph, is the bride-to-be and matches Wiig’s screams with a reliable “WHY CAN’T YOU JUST BE HAPPY FOR ME?” cry, which, if movies have taught me anything, is what you yell at your jealous, single friend when she’s being jealous and single. That’s a dumb trope, but it’s a pretty funny scene.

If real bridal showers are even a fraction as chaotic, I’m sure there are some entertaining stories out there. So, tell us, what’s the most bonkers thing you’ve ever seen at a bridal shower? And was it your own? First prize is the satisfaction that you lead a much more interesting life than anyone else here.

But first, let’s check out your most extravagant expenses from last week.

PatFanda’s story of familial love wins, because holy shit:

After my granFanda died, I discovered she had snuck little bits of money into money markets, CD’s and savings accounts in my name since my birth. I was notified of this by her sister via a post card with my first clue (because she made it a treasure hunt). All told she left me 24k. The knowledge of that money, of the time and effort she made into hiding it from her ex-husband, from her controlling son, from my abusive mother, the knowledge of the sacrifices she made in her own life so that I would have it left me fucking devastated. How much better would her life have been in 1986 (the year she stashed a whopping $1,500) (the year my grandfather broke in and beat her for nothing) if she’d spent that money on safer housing. If she’d moved across the state. If she’d finally found a lawyer to stand up to that man.

I thought about that money for an entire month before I knew how to spend it. I bought a brand new 16 seer hvac system, with hepa filters and a new thermostat. Mine was original to my house, so about 25 years old, but it was also to honor the decades she lived in a house with no AC and a coal oil furnace that stank and made us cough in the winter. And all the winters she and my mother and her siblings were hiding out in unheated rented houses around the state trying to survive the divorce a judge had granted them. I bought a tankless water heater and every time I use it I think of the years she lived on well water, and had to walk 3 hundred feet to the pump house to plug in the pump, then do it again when her chore was done. It never provided adequate water pressure for a dishwasher, a washing machine, a shower head. She frequently had to heat her bathwater in a tea pot. I bought a whole house filtration system for our water, because hers sat in a cistern before it was pumped, and as children my cousins and I would wedge little pebbles under it’s cap and listen to the sound of water against old concrete, never realizing that was her drinking water.

I thought of the times before I was born, when she was still on the run from a madman, and 20 bucks meant the difference between staying in a town where she knew he knew she was near, and moving on to a new one. I thought of the times she didn’t have that twenty, and I found a microloan program for survivors of domestic violence and I invested 5 grand. Then, when I got it back, I invested it again. Then, when those women who had received her money repaid it, it came to 12 grand and I donated it to Planned Parenthood and MO CASA and the domestic violence center who gave her shelter (even with 2 boys in tow) in 1970.

She came from a good family. She had a college education. She tutored men in mathematics who would go on to build computing machines, knowing that she wouldn’t get a job herself, and was barely tolerated in class. She knew the power of money. She hoarded it after growing up in the Great Depression, and then her personal hell. She may have left it to me, but it isn’t, can’t, will never be FOR me. Its for my child, for my neighbor’s child, for a stranger’s child.

CodcoFanBurnsAgain!’s miscarriage lead to an incredible adventure:

Do non-tangible things count? I spent $2000 or so on the kayak trip of my dreams in Gwaii Hanaas National Park. I’d had a miscarriage, so I decided to take a 10 day remote trip that I definitely couldn’t have done if I’d become a parent. It was pretty awesome and I was a much better paddler by the end of it. Plus it gave me the confidence to try other backcountry trips outside national parks. 🙂

AlexisCarringtonColbyDexterRowan’s Chanel x Versailles wardrobe is now their album cover, hopefully:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times……jk, it was the best of times. Early last month I got to visit France for the first time for vacation (with a major reason being to see Versailles in person) and naturally my gay ass needed an appropriate outfit fit for a King (or Queen, I’m definitely a Queen on most days) which brings us to this entry. As someone who works in luxury fashion, its my every day so I’ve become an encyclopedia on collections, designers, creative directors, etc., etc., so when I started planning this trip to Versailles, a light bulb instantly went on in my head. Chanel launched a ‘Versailles’ collection for their 2013 Resort line and I was able to snag a lovely 18th century inspired tweed coat (affixed with shimmering gunmetal buttons with the Sun King’s face and detachable lace collar and sleeves a week before I left) from the line through a premium personal shopping service. Wearing it to Versailles was the only reason why I purchased it and I paid both arms and both legs for it. Was it worth it? I looked more like the portraits than the other tourists there and got plenty of looks and people asking to take photos of me, so my answer is ‘Oui!’

(also I swear to god I did not photoshop myself there as my Mother thinks!)

And theobscureobject saw Hamilton. Come on, there had to be one:

Tickets to see the original Hamilton cast with my best friend. We were in the last row of the theatre. 600 bucks. I regret nothing.

Let’s hear about those bridal showers: the good, the bad and the hilariously unfortunate.