When a Family History Nerd Gets Married: The Bachelorette Party

I had some misgivings about allowing myself to have a bachelorette party at all. Clubbing and loud music and dancing are not my style. Wearing "BRIDE" or "Last fling before the ring" t-shirts is not my style. Luckily, my fantastic sister had something else altogether in mind: a genealogy-inspired bachelorette party designed just for me!

A normal bachelorette party location:

A Dance Club

My bachelorette party location: A tour of NYC's oldest bars!

Ear Inn (image source)

McSorley's Old Ale House (image source)

Normal bridal party shirt:

My bridal party's shirt:

(I think they were making fun of me.)

Normal bride's shirt:

My shirt:

Probably from here?

It reads:

#1 Leave no stone unturned, unless it is a headstone.

#2 Handwriting legibility is inversely proportionate to a document's importance.

#3 The further away a cemetery or library is, the more awkward the opening ours will be.

#4 The relative you most need to talk with is the one whose funeral you are currently attending.

#5 Wherever you find two or more sibling, there also will you find two or more surname spellings.

Normal bachelorette party pin:

My bachelorette party pin:

designed by my awesome sister Laura!

Is my bridal party not obviously the very best ever?

Next time you're in McSorley's look for the "Genealogy is Cool" pin stuck above the door jamb!

(Several of the links in this post are Amazon.com affiliate links.)

(Cross-posted at You Are Where You Came From)

Bridesmaids' Dresses!

I went shopping with 3/5 of my bridesmaids last week. My sister Laura, and my cousins Gina and Jamie are local, but my sister Anna is away at school, and Ben's sister Laura lives on the other side of the country. We went to the J. Crew Bridal Boutique in Manhattan, and then hit up a couple other stores - some combination of Bloomingdale's, H&M, GAP, Banana Republic, Zara. 

I was not the nicest person to shop with. I find making clothing decisions to be very stressful. I am not even remotely qualified to make fashion choices for myself, much less for anyone else. 

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The above was the part of this post that I had written before today happened. It was going to be all about how I was an unlikeable grouch while we were shopping, and the salesladies at J. Crew were unhelpful because the dresses I wanted were only available online, and they played (or were) dumb about what was available online, but (after I apologized for being a grump) it all turned out okay in the end, because we ordered the dresses online and that was it!

And then the dresses showed up. Awesome, right? Or it would have been, if they had all been the right color! And if I were a good practical bride with my priorities straight, I'd still be writing a post about how it'll all be okay in the end, because the color of anyone's dress has nothing to do with my wedding, my relationship, or my marriage, and that's what's really important on my wedding day.

Instead . . . I'm pissed. And frustrated, and freaking out. Because they were on sale, which means all sales were final, and what if they won't take it back, even when the mistake was J. Crew's and not ours? And what if they run out of the right color (which is being discontinued) while we're resolving this error, and there's NO WAY for my sister Anna to wear the same color as everyone else? And the dress was labeled as being the right color (clover), when it was actually the wrong color (wintermint) . . . what if all the "clover" dresses left in their inventory are actually wintermint dresses labeled as clover dresses, and there's ALREADY no way to buy another dress in the same color as everyone else's? Do I have to start over and pick a whole new dress? And eat the cost of the dresses already bought? Do I leave Anna in a different color dress, which is in no way complementary to the color of the other dresses? She's one of my maids of honor, but I need to either have both of my maids of honor wear the same thing as everyone else, or have them both in something different . . . if I have one maid of honor in something different, it looks like I'm just having one maid of honor, and then my sister Laura gets left out, and THAT'S not right. 

Anyway, this is what the dress is supposed to look like: 

(Silk chiffon Sophia dress by J. Crew)