Categories: general
Date: 31 May 2009 15:02:39
So I got back from holiday on Friday and suddenly had to think about the hen night I'd been invited to on Saturday. The email stated that we needed to wear a dress, bring 2 peices of ribbon, picnic food (specifically including a cup cake) and drink. After examining my wardrobe I realised that the only dresses I owned were either a ball gown dress or distinivitely wintery dresses (velvet and three quarter sleeves aren't exactly appropriate in this heat!). So I went dress shopping.
If Mr B had been around then he would have come too - he's surprisingly good at picking out clothes that I like and that complement my figure. And it would have been much more bearable. Don't get me wrong, I mostly like shopping, but none of the dresses I looked at for the first 2 hours were anything like what I wanted. I imagined finding a nice, light, casual(ish) summer dress. I kept on passing people wearing such items, but couldn't find anything that wasn't horrible in the shops. After a while I thought that I should open my mind up to other alternatives - go for something I wouldn't normally buy, or not without a good friend or Mr B's encouragement anyway. So I found this shop which seemed to sell unique items, possibly made by the shop owners, but they were suprisingly cheap. So I tried on a few. They were quite difficult to get into - they all had bits of material that needed tying in strange ways. But I figured it out. And they looked alright on me. I just felt like I was lacking that encouragement from a shopping partner. So, I took a photograph of my mirror image with my phone, and sent it to Mr B, asking for a opinion. Which I thought was quite a good idea. Whilst I was waiting on a reply, I decided which dress I prefered, and as I was going to till to buy it I received a message back assuring me that it looked v.nice.
Having sorted the dress problem, I headed in search of an ice cream. Thornton's seemed like a good idea, so I picked out the mint choc chip flavour, and as I was waiting for it I noticed they had discounted (soon to be out-dated) chocolates from valentines day by the till. And there was some ribbon tying the box together. So I purchased them as well, solving the ribbon problem. I then headed to M&S and bought some nice picnic food to share, including a cup cake, before I headed home.
It was then that I began to think about how I was going to get to this party. It was being held in a park the other side of the city. Mr B had the car out of town, so driving was out of the question. A bus would only take me half way there, which seemed a bit silly. So I decided that cycling would make sense. My dress had enough flexibility in it. So after relaxing, showering and getting ready, I packed up my picnic food, 2 bottles of wine, the ribbon, my bike lights and sunglasses, and strapped everything to the back of my bike. It was only once I'd started cycling that I began to realise how much of a breeze there was. And my dress had a slit up either side, creating a lovely flap. So I had to cycle with one hand on my dress. It was fine when I was going downhill, because I free-wheeled so my dress stayed in the one place. Towards the end I had to go uphill, so I gave up and pushed.
The picnic was lovely. It was a gorgeous summers evening, and we sat on the grass, in our dresses, eating lots and drinking more. There was a funny quiz game for the hen, where she had to guess what answers her fiance had given. And then we had to find men with different characteristics and get them to kiss us. This mostly involved telling male passer-bys that we were on a hen night and we needed to get them to kiss us because they had X characteristic. Most abliged a kiss on the cheek, only a couple ran away in terror.
One of the bottles of wine I'd brought was a bottle of homemade rubbard and raspberry wine, which tasted just like fruit juice. But given how tipsy I ended up, I'm guessing it isn't just like fruit juice... When it was beginning to get dark we cleared up our clutter and moved to a local bar and the drunker of our party decided they *had* to complete their kissing challenges. I decided I was drunk enough and I still had to get myself and my bike home, so I said farewell. But it was a v.good evening.