I have the worst luck with parties, I know what your thinking but no mines worse. It's got to the point that I don't even dare throwing parties for myself or my partner now and shuder with dread and worry when planning birthday parties for my kiddies.
It all started when I was 19 and planing my very first party. My dad was out of town and I was home alone, what better time to throw an all night party. It had to be sneaky of course, I wasn't ment to have anyone over at all while dad was away. So I invited everyone, bought lots of snacks and stuff and on the day spent hours making sure everything was just right. Party time came and the guests started rolling up....all 3 of them, all guys (I ask you where were my girlfriends) and they spent the night playing dirty games on my dad's pc. Well at least we had lots to eat, too much in fact. I abhore waste so I couldn't just toss it when dad got home there was a conspicous amount of party food left in the fridge despite my attempts to give it away to the 3 guys who had showed. Dad wasn't happy but didn't comment thank god, just gave me the 'I know what you've been up too' look.
not to bad you think? lets move on to the next party I dared throw, my engagement party.
70 people invited to my parents home (mother and step father) and us without the funds for catering. So we spent several weeks in advance making meals on the weekend, I clearly remember putting onions through the kitchen wiz while sitting in the pool and peeling 10kg of shrimp, I have never been able to look shrimp in the eye since, but strangly still love the smell of onions on my hands. Finally the day dawned beautiful blue sky's allowing us to set up outside, but of course Brisbane in autumn doesn't do much BUT blue sky's. All day while we were getting ready the sky's remained perfectly clear, 10 mins before the first guest arrived clouds started to appear, we weren't particularly worried it doesn't rain here in Autumn only in summer generally 10 minutes after that the heavens opened up and dumped a whole summers worth of rain on us in about 80 minutes. We moved the party and what food we could save into the garage until the pool overflowed and water came streaming in....after that everyone mostly just waited to go home.
Big deal I hear you say. Parties get rained out all the time. Ok let me tell you about my wedding.
I'd been planning it for months, the church was booked as was the hall, caterer, horse and carrage, dj and all those other bits and peices. Now I don't know if you've ever planned a wedding but all these things have booking fee's although if you give them a fortnights notice some will give you those back, some places charge the full amount even if they don't need to show up because you've cancelled but when your booking you don't care, I mean you know your going through with it so what does it matter. Nine days before my wedding the caterer called, they'd double booked and couldn't do my reception. Let me tell you now there is no way physically possible to cater a wedding reception with only 9 days to prepare and absoloutly no caterers left unbooked at that time. In the end we had to cancel the hall booking, non refundable deposit. We booked in at the local Sizzler, it was the only place we could find that would take us at that late date. Unfortunatly you can't take a DJ into sizzler so we had to cancel, we got charged full fee's on that one. So feeling a bit put out I called to confirm the horse and carrage and to let them know the change in drop off spots. Sizzler was 1.5km past the longest distance they can run the horse and carrage, the company which also did limo's unfortunatly didn't have any not booked for the day, at least they gave us back our deposit. I ended up travelling to the wedding in my mothers car. The wedding day dawns and everything's going swimmingly until I go to get my veil so I can get my hair done....it's not there!!! and neither is the peticoat for my dress which was custom made for me...thank goodness the dressmakers was close to the hairdressers while I was getting my stubornly straight hair curled my best friend and maid of honor dashed over and got them to make new ones (no one ever did figure out what happened to the original custom made versions) she sat and sewed combs into the veil while they went to arrange the flowers for my hair. The ringed cirlet which was ment to sit on top of my head was to large but at least that problem was easily fixed. Only 15 late to the ceramony, which was lovely even though for some strange reason only 2 peoples photo's actually worked out and that's not including the professional photographers who just like most people at the wedding got all black shots.....that's right an electromagnetic discharge of some sort happened specifically to screw up my wedding photo's, photographer offered to go out to some of the city's most romantic spots to take more wedding shot's but really what's the point. We get to Sizzler, they are of course not ready for us. That's ok we hit the video game arcade across the way first it was fun, they even gave my partner and I free games as we obviously didn't have any money on us. Finally we get into Sizzler and I've gotta say the folks there that night did their level best to make sure everything went smoothly, even down to asigning us someone to wait on the head table (the manager didn't want me spilling something on my dress) my cake was as perfect as it can get when you hate fruit cake, it was made by the same woman who made my mothers and grandmothers cakes, I often wonder if her death was the reason I had all boys, I mean who would have made a daughters wedding cake.
That sounds ok I hear you say, afterall it did work out in the end
Later I'll tell you about the rest of the parties I've attempted to throw
