Bridal Shower Blues

The Pinterestable Standard

I am hosting a bridal shower for my lovely niece Chandra in six days.  It's been 25 years or so since I have attempted such a feat.  Things have changed.  Back in the day we, with scissors, cut out umbrellas from construction paper, wrote people's names on them with Sharpies, and they pinned them to their blouses when entering the party.  The pin wasn't special.  Neither was the paper nor the pen used to write out a person's name.

We provided guests a cake, cute paper plates with matching cups and napkins, punch in a pretty bowl and possibly some nuts and mints -- No.  Wait.  Those were reserved for the wedding reception.  We played corny, wedding-themed games.  It was all really fun and celebratory and, well, unpinteresting.  No one was going to make a collage or photobook or facebook page of the event.

Preparing for Chandra's shower, I had to accept I could not get my computer to print the printable invites I'd purchased, so by hand I wrote out each invitation.  I look at the baby shower invite I just received magneted to my fridge, and notice how professional looking and creative it is.  The shower has a theme!  It's a sailor theme.  And everything on the invitation rhymes.  Things have changed, a lot.

I saw early in the planning I needed to let go of some standard I was comparing my efforts with.  And I was doing fine with that, until I received an email from a friend of the bride, who is a professional photographer, offering to photograph the shower.  Now as I think about the snacks that are to be served and the arrangement on the table, I keep picturing the photographs that will be taken.  Chandra's color for her wedding is blue, in varying shades.  I did consult pinterest to find a blue punch recipe.  It will look great in the pics!  And there are treats I envision dipping in white chocolate dyed blue.  And the desserts that are not blue and can't be injected with blue or topped in blue, well, they will be on blue plates, of course!

It wasn't until I described an idea I had to my good friend, who is helping plan the shower, that I realized how obsessed I had become, having shifted my eyes from the goal of blessing my niece and celebrating her upcoming wedding to the insistence that everything look amazing.  Oreo offers a cookie in the summertime with baby blue centers!  But summer is over, and the blue-filled Oreos are nowhere to be found.  "I have an idea," I exclaimed, to my co-planner, with my brown eyes now lit up blue with excitement.  "I can scrape the centers out of the cookies then dye the frosting blue and reinsert it into the cookies!"

Mind you, there are much more practical things which need to be accomplished.  "What's it like to be inside your head?" my friend asked, as she looked at me with concern.  We had to both laugh about how carried away I can get and obsess, elevating some unimportant details to the status of way important!

As I was emailing my sister this morning about all of this, God reminded me of a lesson He's been teaching me in other areas of my life:  Only He has to be amazing.  I offer Him back the gifts He provides, the ideas He provides with the strength He provides, and it's His job to make things amazing.

Maybe it's amazing enough that my niece survived a severely premature birth, entering the world weighing one pound, ten ounces, was rescued from the steps of a Calcutta orphanage and delivered into my sister's arms three months later.  That she grew to be a  God-loving, bright, beautiful young woman.  That God handpicked a young man who adores her to be her husband.  That we who love her -- the junior highers she ministers to, her family, friends, those she tutors in an after-school program -- get the opportunity to gather to shower her with love, to rejoice with her as she receives what God has for her.  Maybe the reasons He has given us to party together are enough and He's simply inviting us to join in the celebration.

I'm choosing to accept God's invitation to entrust the day, with its planning and details, to Him.

I hope he has blue sprinkles!