Emily's bachelorette party

Friday evening after work I flew to Chicago for Emily’s bachelorette party. As usual, the flight from Indy to Chicago was late. I was lucky to get a flight up to Chicago at all, though, as the flights there before and after mine were cancelled! When the announced the cancellation of the second flight, they said there were no hotels or rental cars in the city and no available flights to Chicago for three days! It was final four weekend which was hosted in Indy, and everything was all booked up. I felt so sorry for the people on that flight. What are you meant to do if your flight is cancelled and you can rent a car or get a hotel room and you don’t know anyone in the city?!

We had several things preventing us from taking off on time: big thunderstorms with lots of lightning in Indy, strong winds in Chicago that were causing the control tower to delay flights, and our plan had a broken part. But despite all that we did eventually take off and only 2 ½ hours late or so.

I was supposed to take the train to Reena’s when I got in, but as it was late she surprised me by meeting me at the airport because she thought it was too late to take the train safely. We met Emily and three of the girls who were out for the bachelorette festivities out at a tapas restaurant, followed by a few drinks at a bar called Zella’s. Reena and Emily pulled out some funky moves when the songs were right, quite entertaining!

I stayed at Reena’s the whole weekend, and Saturday around noon we finally mosey-ed out to brunch. I had forgotten how nice American breakfasts are! We shared a scrambled egg sandwich on a bagel with hash browns and banana and walnut pancakes. Yum!

I was in the market for a pair of jeans, so Emily met us and we walked around Reena’s neighbourhood looking at various jeans. The sizes were in inches and I never know my size in that case so we all had a good laugh when a lot of them ended up being so tight that once I could hardly zip them up and once I did I was bursting out of them! I didn’t find the right pair in the end, which was probably better as the ones I was looking at were expensive.

The bachelorette activities started at three at Emily’s cousin’s house for the lingerie shower. It was April fool’s day and Reena and I tried to play a joke on her by giving her one pair of underwear between the both of us, but no one really got it because it was a nice pair of underwear. There wasn’t anywhere in Reena’s neighbourhood to buy a really ugly pair as there are mainly boutiques in her area. It would have been great to go somewhere where we could have bought a three-pack shrink-wrapped pair of cotton grannies, but it wasn’t to be.

The shower was good fun, and afterwards in the evening we went to a place called Create where you can make your own jewellery. There are loads of strands of different beads throughout the store, as well as stones and other things. We made necklaces for the wedding. It was really fun! Plus we were able to bring in drinks so we could carry on with the fun.

We stayed there for a couple of hours, then went to another of Emily’s cousin’s house to continue the evening. We played drinking games until the stripper came! Emily didn’t know they’d hired a stripper so it was a fun surprise.

The guy was dressed in Top Gun gear and was called ‘Iceman’. It was hilarious! I don’t think I’ve seen a male stripper before and it was really funny watching him dance around and try to ‘seduce’ Emily with his moves. I guess I think of the whole stripper-dancing-around-thing as a thing women do.

Anyway, he focused a lot on Emily but then wanted to involve us all so we each had to take a sucker (lolly) from his thong. Oh yeah, he had stripped down to a black thong that had FRINGE hanging off of it! We could give him a dollar and pick someone else who had to get their sucker, and in order to get it he would do different things to us involving flipping us around the place. Reena ended up on his shoulders and then was flipped upside down! Emily had to do this swan thing where she was suspended from his waist and it looked like she was flying. It makes me laugh just thinking of it! Somehow my flip resulted in me being on the ground (I think that was the plan, but there had been a lot of drinks by that point so I can’t say for sure!). One of the girls is newly pregnant so she didn’t want to be flipped, but instead of ‘leaving her out’ (I’m sure she would have been SO disappointed!) he made her get two suckers (eating for 2), but he didn’t flip her.

Then we had to take shots of something (vodka?) off his stomach, which at the time was really funny (especially when we thought only Emily was going to have to do it) and Reena rightly mentioned later is actually pretty gross in hindsight. Emily’s cousin Christy and I went together (in my practical mind it meant we’d each have less shot to take by going at the same time – boy do I know how to party!).

When he was finished with his performance he hung around for ages. He lived in the neighbourhood and was talking about his dog and things like that. Anne (the hostess) was saying how embarrassing it’s going to be when she inevitably runs into him at the neighbourhood grocery store!

Next we had some curiously shaped cake and Emily, Reena, Christy and I went to a bar to dance. The time went to daylight savings that night so it was 3 before we even left the house. Emily wore a tiara that her cousins had given her that said ‘Bachelorette’ on it, so the DJ could see it was a special evening for her and invited her up to the booth and let her pick some songs. She tried to get some Michael Jackson on in honor of our good ol’ days (she, Reena and I used to love to dance to Starting Something in Broadripple), but he didn’t have any.

Reena and I got home around 5:30 am. I had completely lost my voice. By the time we got ready for bed and Reena had made and eaten some mozzarella sticks it was coming up to 6. We’re such rock stars! I can’t remember the last time I was out so late. What am I saying? This is my blog and I’ll paint whatever picture I want! I got to bed that late all the time because I PARTY!

CLICK THE PICTURE OF ICEMAN FOR A LINK TO ALL THE PICTURES FROM THAT WEEKEND. HOWEVER, BE WARNED THAT THEY ARE PICTURES OF GIRLS HAVING FUN AT A BACHELORETTE PARTY AND NOT APPROPRIATE FOR THE MORE SENSITIVE VIEWER. ;-)