It never rains but it pours......

I am having the bridal shower for my daughter at my house tomorrow.  This should be interesting as before Wednesday evening I had never even attended one.  I am not sure I get it, it just seems to be financially motivated.  An attempt to give/get more presents.  My daughter did not really want one, she would have been perfectly happy with a stagette/hen party i.e. a drink and get together with her girlfriends, but as I have found out with this wedding, it takes on a life of it's own and so now not only is she having TWO showers, but there is a Stag & Doe as well. None of which my daughter wanted.  Her registry list is pathetically short, as she says, she had a house, her fiance has a house, they have almost everything they need and they feel bad asking for more, for stuff they don't really need.  

Anyhow as the shower is a my house I have made an effort to impose my wishes on it.  No games, please!  No four hour present opening session - boring!!  I was overruled on "no presents" so we took donations are have bought two of the larger items on their registry - hopefully that will take up 10 minutes and we can spend the rest of the afternoon, mingling, eating, drinking and having a lovely time.  My daughter hates being the centre of attention (so major stressing going on about the big day as you can imagine!!) as I know she doesn't want to sit in the middle of the room being the focus of present opening and silly games, I am trying to make this an afternoon that she will enjoy.

As a side note, consumerism and all that, we decided that our ancient dishwasher needed replacing before the shower and onslaught of visitors, so I shopped around diligently to get a good price.  No problem I thought (so naively) a quick swap over job, and Bob's your uncle - nice shiny new dishwasher and ...bonus.....clean dishes.  No such luck, it looks like the house was built around the dishwasher and it is hard plumbed, no hoses for us, nice copper piping. So while my blood pressure shot through the roof, just three days before the aforementioned shower, I rang around to get prices for this little job.  Huh!  One lady was embarrassed to tell me how much they charged for this job - $260 - so much for my shopping around!!  Luckily one of my real estate colleagues came to the rescue with the name of a guy who will do it for half that - still a lot when you consider I thought I could do it myself!!  Anyway hopefully he will be here this evening, however, this also brought on the added expense of a taxi from the airport for my husband because, talented as I am, I cannot be in two places at once.  Did I mention that it will probably damage the kitchen flooring when he gets it out ....arrrggh!!

Now fingers crossed for a sunny afternoon, as they chose my house as a venue because of the pool and garden so it would be nice if we could actually use both.    Two weeks today is the BIG day!!!