Witchy Pandemic Bachelorette

How do you throw a Bachelorette Party during a pandemic?  The limitations I ran through in my mind, over and over, were:

• How do I limit invites to a safe number of people?

• Can we safely leave the house?

• If we are limited to hanging out in the backyard, how can that feel like more than just hanging out in the backyard?

I knew I couldn’t invite everyone I would normally invite, so instead I picked just a few special women in my life that hadn’t already celebrated with me locally.  I had a bridal shower/ bachelorette dinner with some of my wonderful Portland friends, and due to the circumstances I decided not to invite them to this event.  I ended up inviting 5 women, 3 who were traveling to Portland for the wedding, and 2 special local friends I hadn’t yet celebrated with.  

We didn’t all feel comfortable sharing cars or taking Lyfts, and we didn’t all feel comfortable biking.  So we gave up on that and stayed home.

Continuing with my fixation on ritual, I asked my friends to work with the theme of forced intimacy, improvised tradition, and witchy ritual.  Oh man and did they delight me with their witchiness.  We had our Tarot cards read, we manifested our wishes for my marriage by burning them in candle fire, and most importantly, we changed my name to Bennett by chanting, spinning, laughing and splashing water on each other.  (text from Meg to the group included in photos)

This all sounds a little wild, but I really did leave that evening feeling like my sisterhood had blessed my marriage.  I even told Mike the next day that it didn’t matter what happened on Saturday, as far as I was concerned I was already married.  If we believe that kissing under a Chuppah in front of our families = married, than touching candle flames with my sisterhood and singing my new name under the stars should work just as well.  

So we had to be a little farther apart and wear masks… it didn’t get in the way of any of the fun and meaningfulness of the night for me.  I felt closer than ever before to my community of female friends, and ready to move one day closer to my pandemic wedding.