The Disaster That Wasn't

Anyone out there have any experience planning a big party? Well where were you when I needed you?

I threw a Jack & Jill party for my daughter and her fiancé last night. I won’t go into the time, effort and planning that went into this event, but I’d like to point out that not only have I never attempted anything like this before, I’ve never even attended a Jack & Jill before. I had no idea what I was doing.

The potential for disaster started Friday, when the store I’d ordered the cake from called me up and told me that someone made a mistake when I’d ordered the cake and it was going to be $10 more than what I’d been told. They told me this after it was too late to order a cake from a different store.

The potential for disaster continued when yesterday dawned cold and snowy. The weather network insisted we were only going to have light flurries, just one to three centimetres of snow. We had more than three inches of snow before noon, and that was before it started snowing hard. Since a lot of our guests were coming from out of town, I figured the party was doomed.

The potential for disaster continued as the snow worsened throughout the day.

The potential for disaster continued when I went to the store to pick up the cake and discovered they’d spelled my daughter’s name wrong. The only person in the bakery wasn’t supposed to do any cake decorating, but she tried to match the colour of the icing to make the correction. Time was ticking away when I asked for a knife and corrected it myself (as best I could). To make up for the mistake, the girl knocked $10 off the price so I was paying the price I was quoted in the first place.

The potential for disaster continued when we finally got to the hall to decorate, only to find it dark and locked. Fortunately, the daughter had her cell phone with her and called her father, who called his uncle who belonged to the service club that runs the hall, who called the person who was supposed to have been there to let us in. By this time it was 7:15. The party was supposed to start at 8. At about 7:45 I went back home to change into my party clothes and pick up a few things that had been left behind. It was still snowing hard.

Despite all the potentials for disaster, we had a really good turn out for the party. A surprising number of the out-of-town guests made it, from my sister in Hamilton, to the daughter’s friends from Kingston. By the time I arrived back at the hall there was a nice-sized crowd gathered and everyone seemed to be having a good time. We ate, drank, and were merry. We even made a fair amount of money with the games I organized.

All in all, I would call my first (and last!) foray into the realm of partying an unqualified success.