This was the most stressful bridal shower i have ever planned with the smallest group of people! and i have planned two so far, you can check here for the post on that. My friend and colleague was getting married and everything was kinda happening in pretty fast, her traditional wedding was slated for December 7, 2013 and her church wedding for Feb 1, 2014 and she would be relocating to Port-Harcourt after that, so i knew we had to throw her a shower before the wedding prep craziness got real! My plan was for us to make it a surprise initially but that wasn't going to work 'cos she was shuttling PH and Abj 'cos of her marriage counselling and wedding prep so she was informed so that we could get a date for the event to hold when she would be in town.
I already have quite some bridal shower experience so everything is pretty much routine, you can check out my former bridal shower post here for info on that. I created the BBM group for the shower and added our mutual friends and requested that they add her other friends that would be interested in joining the shower to the group. Let me pause here and say my friend is the kinda person that has loads of friends! or so it seemed until it was time for the shower, Long story short i had to add my friend (the bride-to-be) herself to the group so she could add her friends 'cos we were only 9people in the group and we definitely needed more people if we were going to throw a fab shower. I had intended for the shower to be as fun as Mel's own where we had paid for an apartment for the night and had loads of proper fun but that would require at least 20people with minimal contributions or if the 9people would be ready to contribute at least 12k each towards the event which they were not.*sigh.
I have to say the majority of these ladies were the most uncooperative, tight-handed, argumentative and annoying set i have ever had to deal with and even more annoying because of the small number (only 9ppl).
The idea of the karaoke shower came up from that when i realized that funds would not be enough for anything else, i contacted the owner of the Karaoke lounge so we could discuss the cost of us hosting the shower there, food, drinks and bringing in a cake. I informed the ladies after discussions had been completed and told them the cost per person, it was about N6k600 to cover a bottle of the most affordable champagne they had (25k) and the rest was for the cake (12k), finger food and any other drinks for all the ladies. Payment was quite a hassle to get, only Annie and Dubs paid more than the amount which made up for the N600 the other ladies did not pay thankfully. I concluded the transaction with the Karaoke folks and made the necessary down payment. There was drama in the group afterwards on agreeing on the colors everyone should wear and then on the date. I had a wedding the weekend of the shower but luckily got back in time to set things up that Sunday. I hurried home from the car park, changed, picked up the cake and headed to the karaoke bar while calling up the gals to know their location and hurry them up to the venue so the surprise wouldn't be ruined. It hurt a bit that even though i got back from a trip i was the 1st to get to the venue and start setting things up.
Everyone finally arrived in their sweet time and some even came with +1s (which is not bad except that it costs more)*smh. The bride-to-be arrived and it was a jolly time, Annie came with her pro camera i took a no. of pics. I introduced the bride-to-be to the owner of the karaoke bar and luckily he gave us an upgrade to the VIP section which was more private.Once everything was setup i had to leave the fun asap 'cos my back was killing me from the road trip, i handed over to the able Dubs and said my goodbye's. I changed and ran home to crash, can't remember if i even got to taste the cake.
The koko was that the bride-to-be had fun singing away, from the reports i got later, and it was a good way to send her forth to her hubby's home and new city. It makes it all worth it for me. *i should go into event planning, the rate at which i love it. :D
Toodles!XooX
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