I consider myself very lucky indeed that I’ve gotten to help plan and coordinate not one but two bachelorette parties this past year. But what’s even greater about this is that both brides were very insistent that they didn’t want the “traditional” bachelorette party of lingerie, risqué games where the bride has to reveal all the scintillating details about her past love life, and penis-shaped everything. (Sidenote: I’m not judging traditional bachelorette parties at all. I’ve been to a couple of them and they were fun as hell.)
The first bachelorette party I got to plan was for Savanah, the drummer of The Villettes. All she told me was that she wanted it to be a slumber party and to be fun. She was having a themed wedding—outer space—so I decided to stick with the theme and make it an outer space bachelorette slumber party.
The second one I helped plan was for my cousin Emily. She also didn’t give many pointers except that she wanted to go out to the Denton town square and have a baby-free girls’ night out. Our challenge with this one was that her younger sister, Caroline, is only fifteen so we had to come up with activities that everyone could participate in.
So if you find yourself as a bridesmaid in need of some unique ideas for a bride who eschews convention, here are some ideas for ways to make her bachelorette party ROCK.
There’s a lyric by one of my favorite artists, Laura Marling. I first heard it when I was about twenty-one or twenty-two, and I didn’t really know how to interpret it. The lyric goes…
I need shine, I need shine, I need shine. Step away from my light. I need shine.
Ever since Joanna told me she’d like to choose “shine” as our Word of the Month for August, this song has been stuck in my head, this line in particular. It definitely has meaning for me after a year of unprecedented mass shootings and terrible acts of violence all over the world.
I was on vacation with my husband (then boyfriend at the time) when I got a call from Jan Strimple. And to be honest, I always perk up when I get anything from the iconic Jan—no need for a last name. Jan is a kind, considerate, no-nonsense, glamorous woman of the world. She’s booked me on runway shows and print jobs all across the country. So when Jan calls, I answer, or do my best to get back with her ASAP.
As luck would have it, my phone wasn’t working, but she left a message and it went a little something like this, “Hi, Toni, it’s Jan. I heard you’re traveling right now. I have a client and I’m booking a show, and you just have to work it. She’s the next big thing! I hope you’re keeping your overindulgences to a minimum (breathy laugh). I’ll see you in a couple of days.”
Don’t hold me to these exact words, but they’re pretty dang close. Anyway, I put down the phone and the spoon of ice cream, and tried not to put anything that wasn’t sustenance in my mouth for the next seventy-two hours. Needless to say, Jan did not disappoint. The Nhã Khanh collection was simply amazing, and so was the serious and focused woman working diligently behind the collection. I just got this feeling—this woman was going to be a star.
So, it came as no surprise, the hour after I got engaged, I called Jan and screamed, “I’m engaged! I want to book Khanh to do my entire wedding.” And that she did. In fact, members from our families were ordering dresses for our winter wonderland wedding held in Santa Fe. When it was all said and done, Khanh created my wedding dress and welcome party dress, my mom’s dress, my mother-in-law’s dress, my sisters-in-law’s dresses, and all eleven of my bridesmaids’ dresses. She sketched and designed each look specifically for each bridesmaid. They were their wedding gifts, and I wanted them to feel and look their best. Khanh was nine months pregnant by the time our wedding came and had just showed at New York Fashion Week, the week before. She never missed a beat, and she even found the time to share her journey on social media. I was completely floored by this dynamo, and I continue to be to this day.
I’m blessed to call her a great friend, and since my wedding, I order pieces from every collection she comes out with, she’s made all of my special occasion dresses—pre-maternity, maternity, and post-maternity, and she’s even started designing for Darlington. She sells to Neiman Marcus, Barney’s, Saks, 4510, and I’m sure a ton more that I’m forgetting.
I don’t consider myself to be a person who overindulges in life. I believe less is more, but when it comes to Nhã Khanh and ice cream, Ken Downing’s words ring true, “More is more, and less is a bore.”
Thank you, Khanh, for being our Woman of the Month and confessing all to Courtney in our latest WOTM interview.
Y’all. I have a confession to make. It’s deep. It’s dark. It’s something I never thought I would admit to the public. But here goes.
A couple weeks ago, I watched an episode of The Bachelorette. If that wasn’t shocking enough, I took it one step further and I liked it. I’ve watched every episode so far this season, so I guess you could say I’m officially hooked.
You may be thinking, “Gasp! Courtney, no!” Believe me. I still kind of think that about myself. The whole idea behind The Bachelor and The Bachelorette used to make me queasy (okay, it still does). One dude with two dozen ladies all vying for his attention? It puts my feminist bristles up just thinking about it. But then they had to go and reverse it so that there was one lady with two dozen guys vying for her attention. Equality, right? Wrong! Basically, the dudes have to prove their “manliness” by doing macho things like saving the Bachelorette (this season the bachelorette is a woman named JoJo) from a burning building or playing a game of flag football (which included tackling) to determine who gets to go on a date with her.
I can’t count the number of times the guys have threatened to pummel each other or called each other “little bitch” or engaged in some other chauvinistic thing when they feel like their territory with JoJo has been crossed. Let’s also keep in mind that there were literally four men of color out of twenty-six contestants. I looked through photos of them to verify this number, and it turns out that one of the black men was practically cut out of the first episode and never seen of or heard from again.
I’ve been watching the show with my friend, Kolbe (whom you may remember from this post where she shared five tips for beginning runners), and when a message came on the screen about casting calls in Dallas, I jokingly said, “You want to audition?” She said, “I won’t make it.” And when I asked why, she said, “Because they only pick white people.” Yikes.
I really love the word Christine Handy chose for us this month—heart.
It’s different from the words we’ve had in the past. It’s not an emotion or a positive characteristic to strive for. This word has so many definitions. If you look it up on Merriam-Webster, it can of course refer to the organ which beats in our chest and keeps us alive, or it can refer to a suit in a card deck. But it can also refer to a disposition, as in “a leader with heart.” It can refer to courage, as in “she never lost heart.” It can refer to that which is central and most vital to a thing, as in “getting to the heart of the matter.”
Most importantly, it can refer to a way of life, as in “she is a woman who lives with her whole heart.”
This last meaning is the one we’re focusing on today. I’ve put a little video together of the Behaviorists and me where we share what “living with our whole hearts” means to us.
