Everyone hates bachelorette parties…except the bride. There’s really no bridesmaid that is super pumped about spending all night spending money and pretending their bride is a queen, following her around in matching outfits attending to her every whim. But my bridesmaids are not just any bridesmaids…they are super heroes. They are grand adventurers. And without a doubt, they are the best friends I could ever ask for.
This is the tale of our Weekend at Gary’s.
Our story begins with me having no idea what’s going on. My bridesmaids had planned a surprise weekend (which I did eventually find out was in Nashville) of which I knew none of the details.
Friday evening I met with two of the girls, we loaded up on Red Bull and Rhianna and hit the road to Nashville.
We arrived to what seemed to be not a hotel-type neighborhood and rolled up to a condo looking house. This would be Gary’s house, and our home for the weekend. Gary’s house, as it turns out, was an AirBNB. I’d never stayed in one before and if you’re not familiar with AirBNB let me inform you.
It’s where super awesome, trusting people, open their doors to strangers and rent out their home to travelers. In our case, Gary the architect (*made up backstory fact) lent us his super gorgeous home, decorated in vinyl records and Nashville themed art clad with photos of his loved ones that helped fueled our ongoing backstory of who Gary was in real life.
When I walked in I took in the amazing spread of snacks and décor that looked straight up outta Pinterest, and also my favorite wine ready to go. My ladies had clearly outdone themselves, and we were ready to party. The hashtag #weekendatgarys and #garybeforemarry was created and my excitement over the hot tub started the evening.
My MOH freaking made this. With her bare hands. LIKE CUT THE WOOD AND DREW DESIGNS ON IT AND MADE IT. DYING.
My future sister and mother-in-law made Pinterest come to life with these adorable snackages. The jello shots were too delicious. TOO. DAMN. DELICIOUS.
Now, this is how you know you have the right kind of friends. When they have an itinerary for the whole weekend (legitimately printed out, thanks to your super-planner sister-in-law…a girl after your own heart) and have scouted all the must-dos in Nashville. (P.S. The itinerary had cowboy boots and hats on it!)
And like that we were off...
They whisked me off to the most hipsterish place I’ve ever been…the Pharmacy. Apparently this is where all the cool kids go, as evident by the boatloads of handlebar mustaches and beers I didn’t recognize.
We had the world’s least enthusiastic server which only made it even better as we tried anything we could think of to make him smile. (He didn’t, though.) The burgers were AH MAH ZING and probably exactly what I didn’t know I needed for the night that would follow.
Afterwards we retreated to Gary’s where one of the girls suggested we go to Play. We were pretty much convinced after learning that there would be a drag show and that Ke$ha had a song about it, but we were COMPLETELY convinced after she mentioned there would be a foam pit involved.
We piled into our Uber in our swimsuits and outfits and headed to a gay bar. Already this party was more than I could hope for, and I just didn’t even know what was coming.
After paying the insane cover charge, we found our way to the drag show. The place was packed and after a few acts we decided to further investigate the seemingly endless hallways and rooms of the club. We found our way to the main dance floor and decided we definitely made the right choice. It was full of lights, a disco ball, and dubstep. Although the dance floor was empty, it gave us a chance to admire the bartenders and pre-game with cheap tequila. And boy, it was cheap tequila.
Soon enough we felt brave enough to find this rumored foam pit. We traversed down the hallway to a door way where people covered in suds were flowing out from and ventured in.
This is all I want out of life every day.
You know when people say that if they won the lottery they would fill up a pool with jello or something? This was basically that feeling but about a parking lot. The lot had a fence all the way around it, a stage with a DJ, and bubble machines raining down over the crowd. The bubbles were about knee high, but that was enough for us. Most of us dove in, and the others stayed behind to capture proof that this was real life.
As we danced our faces off, swimming around with a bunch of strangers in bubbles, they began to rise. Before we knew it, the bubbles were up to our shoulders. We’d dive down and disappear, and people would suddenly appear up from the tide. I can’t describe the feeling, but it was bizarre and incredible and probably the most fun I’ve ever had on a dance floor.
After a while we exited off the bubble-floor and headed back inside. It was very cold, and we were covered in soapy water. We toweled off though, and headed in to the now packed dance floor. There was twerking. There was a lot of twerking. Not by us, although I fell victim to dancing to close to someone’s behind as they twerked into my face. THANKS, DANCE PLATFORM.
He had that booty, tho
Before long we befriended a lone dancer, flailing around in khakis and a button up shirt. Clearly, he was misplaced and alone and we decided to make him ours.
His name was Brandon, and he told us he was a banker. We had guessed as much, but we let him tell us how important he was. He seemed to need it.
Although we prefaced our conversation with the majority of our group was taken and the odds were not in his favor, he insisted on buying us all drinks all night.
Maybe because he knew he would eventually take off all his clothes in the foam pit and we would need to stop security from hauling him out.
We headed for round two in the foam pit and danced until they shut it down. We helped Brandon find his pants then headed back into the bar.
While we were ordering, Brandon decided to climb up onto the wall divider. A simple mistake, as it's located mere feet from the dance platform. But it was too late. Apparently Play has a no tolerance rule for dancing on the wall, and he was pulled down by security.
My loyal bridesmaids party pulled me back from arguing with the bouncer, and even the bartender tried to plead with him, but it was too late.
He hauled Brandon out, and he waved to us. RIP Brandon in Khakis. We barely knew ye.
For the remainder of the weekend, we would drink in his honor.
We cabbed home and ended up in the hot tub before finally getting to bed around four.
But the party began again the next day with breakfast at T Swifts favorite place in Nashville, Fidos.
I came prepared in my tiara and sash, and we attempted to get the story of when my wedding actually was straight because we got sick of explaining why we were celebrating and it was in January.
We were rockstars, though.
We then went to our first secret stop...which ended up being the Arrington Vineyards. It was beautiful and we were all in our matching wedding party gear and it was a blast. We did a wine tasting and relaxed and it was perfect.
We had a quick nap-stop back at Gary's where we piled in bed (Gary's wonderful, massive, king sized, super soft bed) and watched Broad City before the ultimate evening began.
It started with us getting ready, and then me coming outside to find a limo waiting. A FREAKING LIMO.
The plan was to drive around Nashville, eat pizza, and drink champagne like freaking badass bees.
Our first stop was this amazing look out, where you could see the whole city. It was right at sunset and it was perfect (they literally had all our stops planned and I couldn't get over how much time and effort was put into this weekend).
Then we visited the Nashville Parthenon and took a bunch of pictures and got to pet some super soft adorable pups.
Unfortunately, everything in our limo was broken. The AC, the lights, the radio. At this point, we were really starting to realize the AC part of the problem. My sister-in-law got on the phone like a BOSS.
So we got the limo ride free if we got out where we were, which happened to be the County Music Hall of Fame.
We hopped out, and as we were deciding what to do we ran into two rickshaw drivers who convinced us that they would bring the party, and they totes did.
They gave us some pretty cool stories to tell, and pictures like these...
It was pretty much the best experience I've ever had in my life. They paraded us up and down Broadway and made me feel like a parade princess and made us feel like the coolest bachelorette party of all time, which really, what else could you ask for?
via GIPHYWe said our goodbyes in front of Coyote Ugly and bid the Tims farewell.
And then the dancing began. There was lots of dancing.
And well, that's all we'll say about Coyote Ugly. But there was this guy:
So.
We ended up at another ball that had a disco ball, and that's pretty much all I remember from there.
Somehow our Uber got us to a Cookout where we met Jeff-Michael-Rick whom we convinced to buy us all food.
We ate with him, and then retreated back to Gary's.
The next morning, we assessed whether or not we were going to live much longer, and came to the conclusion that none of our legs worked and we would probably all be dead soon without breakfast.
We headed to a place that Tim #1 had pointed out on our tour, Monell's. It's an all you can eat, family style place that serves down home Southern food. IT WAS SO GOOD OHMYGOD. We sat with strangers who had just gotten engaged and so that was fun.
I was still wearing my tiara and I have no regrets.
We headed our separate ways after leaving Gary a lengthy note about how much we love him and his beautiful house.
It was one of the most fun, memorable weekends of my entire life. I laughed so hard, and I got to scream Rhianna lyrics at people from a rickshaw and dance in a foam pit so I really don't know where my life goes from here.
Thank you to my beautiful, intelligent, generous friends who went above and beyond the call of duty making this bride feel like an all out QUEEN.
X THAT WHOLE WEEKEND.
If you'd like to check out some of the things we did in detail, check out my blog board on Pinterest:
Follow Marvyl's board Weekend at Garys Bachelorette Party on Pinterest.
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