"From six til nine, mocktails and appetizers will be served and don't forget your parting gift!"
I take my mother because, let's face it, Mike would rather have his ear sawed off than attend an event such as this. However, I do not want Mike to be completely out of the loop so we consult on what he'd like, colors to steer away from, china patterns that he finds mildly desirable, etc. and I am off to Union Square to have some fun with my mom. Shopping without spending any money?! And mocktails to boot! Sounds like a fantastic night out in the city.
We arrive fashionably late and make our way up to the sixth floor where the extravaganza will begin. We are greeted with the pulsing sounds of some pop remix emitting from the speakers flanking a DJ booth which seems slighting out of place amid the Waterford Crystal vases and the Lennox stemware.
We check in and proceed to a kiosk where we get entered into the system and then they give us the scanner! I am mildly disappointed that said scanner is some flat taser looking device and not the gun that we were promised but tasers are cool too so I let it go.
It is fun going around scanning items. We only get tripped up a couple of times but we manage to figure it all out in the end. It is just very surreal to listen to Justin Timberlake singing Sexy Back while I'm sipping on some delicious grapefruit and orange juice concoction deciding between the Tuscany and the Country Stemware. Who am I?
And looking around at the other couples, I am glad that Mike stayed home. There are two kinds of couples present:
1. The tired bored looking grooms following their brides around, laden with glasses and paperwork, who occasionally bicker with their brides-to-be over the uselessness of some vase or picture frame.
2. The uber grooms who have an opinion about everything and for the most part cannot agree on a single thing with their brides. Yikes!
We see one couple who, though they appear a tad sleepy at the end of the evening, leave holding hands and smiling. That's promising. If you can get through a day of registration shopping and not be completely sick of each other than you've got something special all right.
I manage to skip the registration trauma altogether by leaving groom boy happily at home so I get to spend an evening with my mother who makes everything so much fun. She is patient and helpful during the long and tedious task of scanning all our Fiestaware by hand to ensure a wide variety of color and she keeps us focused so I don't get overwhelmed.
By the end of the evening we are nexhausted and dehydrated (Macy's air conditioning is not functional at the moment) so luckily Rose, our lovely consultant who checks us out, is delightful. We leave with our goody bags, smiles on our faces, and a grand sense of accomplishment.
Contented sigh.
But seriously the music was weird.
