Planning The Bachelor Party: A Husband To Be's Story

Hey, I'm Neill.  I'm not much of a party planner unless I'm the host of the party, and in truth, it's been several years since I've thrown a bonafide shindig.  For my bachelor party, I assumed it was expected that it was planned by the best men or others involved.  I'm not entirely sure why I assumed that, but my only experiences with bachelor parties in the past were more or less planned out before I knew about them (even though I was the best man for one of them ... hrm ...).  But needless to say, I wasn't involved in any kind of planning in that capacity ... likely for the better ;-)

My awesome best men (Tom and James) waited until near the last minute for getting all of the details together.  Not to knock them for delaying their planning though -- it was more like they shot ideas around and I was single-handedly so incredibly indecisive that they didn't put their feet down until the week of the event to tie together all of the loose ends.  Thank jeebus for them really.  If I had it my way, I would have just stayed home and drank beer all day.  Not because that's what I imagine a good bachelor party being, but because I'm so easy to please sometimes.  I think at any given time I've got enough worries on my mind that when it comes time to plan something that should be a lot of fun, I tend to just go with the flow and not sweat the details.  In my experience, if you want to have a good time, a good time will be had -- particularly in good company.

Anyway, I shot down a ton of fun ideas including the following: skydiving, whitewater rafting, renting motor cross bikes/4 wheelers/dune buggies, a booze cruise, go carts, whirly ball, lazer tag, a segway tour, dave and busters, etc.  My best men shot down checking out the Windy City Rollers (Chicago Roller Derby) solely on the basis that Alisha and her crew were going to be there.  C'est le vie.  Oh, and I've never really been comfortable at strip clubs, so that was a no-brainer.  Not that I hadn't read about what goes on in them (*wink wink*), but it's just not my cup of tea.  And they smell like strippers ... kind of like new car scent or something, but with a latex dashboard.  So I heard.

In the end, James and Tom decided that we were going to a White Sox game during the day and dinner in the evening, followed by drinks.  I enjoy sporting events, but in my ~15 years living in Chicago, I had been to exactly 1 Cubs game, 1 White Sox game, and 1 Bulls game.  I wasn't really sure what to expect since I hadn't seen the Sox in probably 9(?) years or so.  Not following any sports doesn't help either.  But I knew it would be a good time with a lot of my besties there.  And that's the most important part.

Maybe next time I'll spill some details of the day, but I'm ok with that being private.  I wonder who thought it would be a good idea to have a guest post by me anyway?! :-P

I'll add one important thing that you probably don't know about me.  I started an online journal many years ago for the SOLE purpose of sharing the mundane things during the day.  Highlights include eating a sandwich, doing laundry, going to band practice, etc.  Then I discovered twitter.  With twitter, I can describe all the boring things in MUCH less time.  So now I can tweet about sandwiches and band practice.

So all of this could have wasted far less time if I was allowed to tweet it cause it would have been something like this: "can't decide what to do 4 bparty, but tom & james decided to go to a sox game, followed by dinner and drinks -- yay!  everyone's happy!! :-D"

Follow me on twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/neillm