Engagement party redux

My brother's engagement party was last Thursday. This was the second one. The first one was two months ago in Atlanta, for all of the bride's friends and family. This one was in NYC, where the rest of us are from. We didn't get a chocolate fountain this time.

For those of us who attended the first one, we greeted each other with uncertainty. No one knew what to call it. Is it The Engagement Party - Part Deux? Do we correct the newbies in attendance that "It's a drinks party honoring their engagement, but not necessarily an engagement party, 'cause we've already done that"?

In Atlanta, there were speeches and the bride's mother serenaded the pair. She had an accompaniment of a dinky little keyboardist, channeling Liberace minus the swish. I still can't answer what song she sang. On the first note, I felt like fleeing the room with the grin/grimace frozen on my face. I could find out which one it was, but I believe part of me is still trying to block it out.

There was none of that this time around, it was much more chilled out, less uptight. In Atlanta, I was going straight to hell for getting drunk at my own brother's engagement party. Here, it's not considered unusual to see a brunette chick all hopped up on coke, five feet away from where my dad is eating the prosciutto.