It's hard planning a party!

Aside from work, it's been a very busy time in general. For the last month or so, I had been planning a trip to Santa Cruz for a Bachelorette Party. Trying to coordinate nine girls coming from different cities, from Lake Tahoe to Sacramento, is not the easiest thing.

The biggest drama was getting the house rental. I don't know anything about Santa Cruz or the Capitola area, so all my research relied on what I could find on the internet. If our party was able to stay the whole weekend, there wouldn't have been any problems - but, as it was, most could only stay Saturday night. Our search limited us to a one night rental.

Let me tell you, people who rent beach homes do not prefer renting them for one night only. So, that made our search drop from say 100 results, to about 5. And lets not mention that people book way in advance, and I was looking within a few weeks of the actual trip.

Long story shortened, I found a perfect place by the beach. I made the agreement with the owner and sent in my deposit. A day later, I get an email from the management company saying that they received a deposit from another group who wanted the house for the same night, and I was bumped. What had happened was, the owner didn't tell the management company that she made an agreement with me - and I never new there was a management company that I should I gone through. What a mess. I never heard from the owner again (not surprisingly), but the mgmt. company was very apologetic and offered discounts for other nights and such - but I didn't need that. I needed the house that weekend.

Luckily, one of the girls going to the party has a friend, whose parents own a house in Capitola. God bless them, they let us rent their home for that one night. We were set.

Now we had to plan the games and such for the party. Ordering goodies online (that was interesting research), and making sure each girl brought things. In the past few years, I've been to several bachelorette parties, so I was able to pull ideas from those. Most were drinking games that we modified a bit so that we all wouldn't be sloshed before dinner. ;)

The party was last Saturday - and it turned out to be a perfect weekend. The most important thing is that our bride-to-be had a blast. Whew! Lots of laughs, and pictures I'm not at liberty to share. Hee hee... It was a great weekend.