Hen Night

Saturday 14th August


“Um, Mummy. If I have a hen party my cousins could come and we could all wear fancy dress couldn’t we? And I could be a FAIRY!”

The Bride’s mum is invited to the hen night. I hope I get invited to my daughters’ hen nights, then I will know I have been a great success as a mother! It’s like having an A+ in mothering. It is my first night in nine months away from my youngest baby. By 7pm I felt tearful as I expressed the milk feed that my baby usually gets at bed time. But then I felt much better, so I thought it was the hormones. The Bride said it was the champagne.

It is an extremely rare novelty for me to wear make-up and deep red nail varnish! We had an English afternoon tea in a posh hotel and then drank buckets of pink wine in an old fashioned cosy pub. Another hen night in the pub has a 1950’s theme. They are dressed as Pink Ladies and Audrey Hepburn in ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’. Our group is a more sedate and inconspicuous hen night. I say,
“We should all have badges with our hen party nicknames on them really. You know, like ‘Horny Diva’, ‘Drama Queen’ ‘Dizzy Tart’ and stuff.” Except if you’re a mother of young children your badge might read, ‘Mine’s a cup of tea’, ‘In bed by ten’, or ‘Make mine an Ovaltine’! We laugh. So we nicknamed the hen in charge of the drinks kitty, ‘Mistress Kitty’, The Bride’s mum became ‘Mother Hen’ and for organising an Italian themed hen night, I became ‘The Godmother’. Then we ran out of nick names.

The next morning I felt lost without baby sister. I missed her. But I really enjoyed relaxing with coffee, Mother Hen and the bride, sat around the dining room table, discussing the huge church wedding with all the trimmings, that Groom-zilla has got planned for my friend!