March 02, 2004

Shower The People

As I thought about our weekend in Chicago, I kept thinking of some good advice I could give to grooms attending their first wedding showers. Here they are, in no particular order:

  1. Before you go, find out where the nearest packing peanut recycling center is located. You can call the Peanut Hotline at 800-828-2214. If you don't find somewhere to recycle them, you'll probably have enough styrofoam peanuts for an entire year's worth of nursery school arts and crafts projects.

  2. Propose that everyone wear name tags at the showers. I'm not particulary good with names, especially when I have to remember who goes with who. Color-coded tags, such as red for blood/legal family and blue for friends, would be helpful. Even a wedding facebook which you could study before a party would help you prepare. I would also propose hanging a giant family tree on the wall so everyone can reference it during the party.

  3. Buy stock in UPS before you go. If you are travelling out of town for showers, you will inevitably have to ship things back. I'm on a first name basis with our UPS guy and might invite him to the wedding at this rate.

  4. If you're the type of guy whose many responsibilities include the wedding registry - I'm the cook of the two of us - review your potential gifts before the shower. At the women's shower on Sunday, L pulled a souffle dish out of a box and said, "Oh this is, um, something! D will know what it is."

  5. Build runs or excercise breaks into your schedule. I went for a run with L's brother-in-law and it was a great way to blow off stress and fight the Battle of the Bulge.

Wedding showers are good prep for the wedding itself. It might seem strange that someone who keeps a blog doesn't love being the center of attention in a room, but the weekend was good practice for August, when people will toast us at a rehearsal dinner, watch us kiss, and see us dance. As a number of people reminded me and L, "It's all about you guys."

Posted by The Groom at March 2, 2004 01:33 PM
Comments

Like neither you or L knew it was going to be about you all weekend, and besides, L loves it being about you two all weekend, or should I say all year. As I recall, she thinks she is the Queen for a year!!!. It was fun though.
MOB

Posted by: MOB at March 2, 2004 02:50 PM

Although I cannot ethically comment on advice to purchase UPS stock, I will offer some helpful hints when using UPS:

Register as a uper of ups.com This will allow you to:
-save tracking numbers to easily track your packages)
-Prepare your shipments with the site's "Create A Shipment" function. This is cheaper than going to a UPS Store, plus you can still drop off a prepaid package at a UPS store and they are required to take it.
-Save addresses in your personal address book

I'd also like to point out that since the first entry on PlanetGordon.com exactly 6 months ago today (9/2/03) UPS stock has risen from a closing price of $62.79 to $69.85 (closing price 3/2/04). Conincidence? I think not.

Cousin J

Posted by: Cousin J at March 2, 2004 05:57 PM