An Unusual Engagement Party

Not many couples can boast of an engagement party consisting of snow and strangers. However, Doug and Allie can! It is quite a story. It all began with a simply enough, an idea for an engagement party for friends who live in NYC, one of whom used to live in Richmond. Daddy Mac, the other hosts, and I casually tossed around good weekends in January, settling in on the last one for no apparent reason. Little did we know what was to unfold.

Filled with good intentions for a "nice" party, I arranged for a local caterer who is awesome and really reasonably priced. (I can give you her name if you want it, just don't give it out to TOO many other people.) So we were all set. Until -- insert "Jaws" theme music here -- the caterer cancelled the Monday before the party, miserable with shingles and double pneumonia. (In case you are wondering as I was, double pneumonia means pneumonia in both lungs. Not good.) Now if that isn't a good enough excuse to bail on serving up food for other relatively healthy people, I don't know what is. Poor thing, but alas the show had to go on. Onto the next issue at hand -- how could we possibly replace her, especially on such short notice?

So we looked into some other local places, but then the ominous snow predictions for Saturday came rolling in, one after the other. Would it REALLY happen? If so, what would be do with food for 15 people if the party is a snow-bust? Then again, what if the party is a big fat "go" and we have no food to offer other than stale goldfish and neon Diego yogurt tubes? (That's the no-snow-bust angle.) C'mon, meteorologists have great job security -- how many other professionals can be wrong more than they're right and still keep their jobs? And here was another possibility. What if guests were able to arrive but the caterer couldn't get here with the food? What a conundrum. My head was spinning with the various scenarios. I knew I needed to make a flow chart, but I was afraid it would stress me out even more and/or make my head hurt something fierce.

In a burst of brilliance, my co-hostess came up with the perfect middle-of-the-road plan to get the maybe-maybe not party back on track. "Hey, let's just split up the list of things we wanted the caterer to bring and do them ourselves?"

So there I was at Fresh Market on Friday checking out after stocking up on four pork tenderloins, cupcakes, and plenty of petit-fours and my phone rang ominously. It was Daddy Mac calling to tell me that the flight that our guests of honor were taking from NYC was cancelled. No more plane. I had no idea what to do -- should I shove the pork tenderloin aside along with the cupcakes. etc.

Daddy Mac said, "He's onto Plan B. He's crazy enough to drive a car and get down here before the storm hits." And so the conundrum continued morphed into another form -- I had to put SOMETHING back, so I hastily put the petit-fours aside. In my split-second analysis, I figured they were the most likely to be stapled to my thighs if no one was able to show up.

Daddy's prediction turned out to be right on -- Doug and Allie sent a good 8 hours in the car arriving before a speck of show fell. And then they got snowed in with us, the pork tenderloin and the cupcakes. (Thank God I hadn't put them back.) As the snow fell and fell and fell on Saturday, the guests progressive called to give their understandable regrets. Alas we were guest-less, so we called our handy handy super cool next-door neighbors to come on over to an engagement party at which it is totally acceptable to have never met the bride or groom. And you know what? We all had a great time despite the randomness!

Allie and Doug get the award for the coolest couple ever -- who else would drive eight hours just to get snowed in and never actually see any of the officially invited guests? That's not to mention the HOURS they both spent playing with Sam, building countless paper airplanes as well as constructing a huge international compound consisting of Haiti, NYC, and Midlothian -- all out of blocks. It was pretty mazing when the Playmobil pirates trained to be NYC firefighters and then went to Haiti and started pulling people out of the rubble.

Thanks for coming to pull us out of the snow, Allie and Doug!

LibbY