If you ever plan to do a surprise birthday party for someone, just be prepared -- it's going to be nerve wrecking and stressful leading all the way up to the moment. You constantly think someone is going to blow the surprise and you literally have to tip toe with every move you make for weeks.
For this birthday, I also wanted to make sure we went somewhere different than the typical downtown bars we hit up every weekend -- luckily a brand new piano bar called "The Baby Grands" had literally just opened weeks prior. Also, Kristen had no idea this place existed...even better!
Danielle once again was a huge help as she always is. She offered up her place as a meeting spot for everyone to pop the surprise and she and Kristen's mom also hooked up a cake and some food for the party. The plan was to go by to Danielle's to "pick her up" and just head to a bar downtown for some drinks.
Now the sneaky part about all of this is I let Kristen know that we were taking her somewhere cool, but that it was a surprise. So if there's any surprise element involved, she would think it was ONLY where we were going, not that Danielle's apartment would be packed full of people when we go to pick her up. To add another layer of surprise, we also had her little sister Lauren come up from Ft. Lauderdale for the weekend to be at Danielle's place when we did the surprise. It was a well crafted 3-layer surprise.
Well the first thing that happened on the big day was Kristen's mom accidentally blew Lauren's cover. Casually chatting with Kristen on the phone, she mentioned she was "cleaning up the house getting ready for Lauren." Something told me deep down that this might happen because too many people were involved. I played this off like it was "the other surprise" we had in store for her and it was no biggie. Her mom felt really bad and it was an honest accident that we all ended up laughing about, but not all was lost.... Luckily Kristen still had no idea of the other 20 people that would be over at Danielle's when we arrived.
We got over to the parking lot and I told Kristen that I had to use Danielle's restroom, then asked if she could go upstairs with me...here's how this exchange went:
Me: Hey, I actually need to use her bathroom real quick, you mind going up with me?
Kristen: Uhh...well I'm doing my make-up, can't you just go up by yourself?
Me: Well I feel kind of weird, you can't just come up for a sec?
Kristen: Well I'm not done, I really don't want to, just go up, it'll be fine.
Me: OK......
10 seconds pass
Me: Uhh wow...actually, hey I just got a text from Danielle, she says she needs you to come up and look at her outfit
(I totally made this up on the fly)
Kristen: OK well let's run up there real quick.
At this point she had only finished half of her make-up. I didn't take this into account, but I couldnt really say anything because it would sound suspicious, so I just let it ride.
We got up the steps, opened the door and Kristen was greeted with a room full of people and a deafening "SURPRISE!!"
She then spins around and automatically smacks me twice and shouts "you didn't let me finish my make up!!" I simply laughed and was like "I'm sorry, it's not like I could say anything...."
Here's a pic a few seconds after she came into the room (and I was able to shove her through the door).
We knocked back a few birthday cake shots (one of her favorites), had some wine and the house party portions was a definite success.
After we rounded everyone up, we then headed to the Baby Grands. Again, Kristen didn't know where we were going, so when we came up to the bar she had no idea where we were at. Soon after she learned it was a new piano bar, she became super excited. We also had another 10-15 people show up to the bar who couldn't make it to Danielle's so we had a great group and the party really kicked into high gear.
Everyone ended up getting especially sauced because of a brief altercation I had with the bar management. I paid a hefty fee to get an area reserved at the bar. Everyone at the party also pitched in to help pay for it which was super awesome. When we arrived, there was hardly any special arrangement set up. We had a few high tops off to the side and our waitress was nowhere to be found for the first 10 minutes. When she did come by she was kind of rude about everything and the whole thing seemed like a scam. I could have just as easily had everyone show up without reserving anything and paying any fee. This sent me into a tail spin so I sent a pretty nasty message over my blackberry to the person I arranged the party with...not really knowing she would actually read it at that point in time.
About 10 minutes later I was approached by the bar manager and the bar owner. They proceeded to tell me that our party was taken care of with the tab and to basically knock ourselves out.
From there, we all took full advantage of the situation. Here's a few more pictures from bar...
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| They let us sit on the piano during a song....they probably preferred it only be Kristen, but I crashed the stage too. |
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| This one always cracks me up. When she hopped off the piano she spilled a little bit of drink on her dress and I tried my best to console her....just look at that face haha! All in all, the whole night was a smashing success. Everyone that came out was awesome and we all had a great time. Now the only question is, how do I top that next year??? - Smitty |
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