Girls Night In: Celebrate the Release of Bridesmaids on DVD

You may recall that I was quickly trying to throw together my Bridesmaids party on a few days’ notice. This was the only weekend we could host our Bridesmaids parties, as we received the DVDs on Friday before the official release – Bridesmaids on DVD will be available in stores tomorrow. Of course, that meant that I had a little trouble with the invites. Out of the 12 friends I invited to my Girls Night In, only two could make it. Another two had an actual wedding to go to (and OMG, I heard there was a bouncy house, cotton candy, and carnival games), a few people were going out of town for the weekend, and some others just failed to respond at all. But you know what?

We had a great time without the rest of them!

In my previous post, I talked about how I wanted to make my own mini “wedding cake” for the festivities. But as I perused the aisles at Target with my $100 gift card in hand, I thought to myself, Cake? This is my party. I’m making brownies!

So I made up two pans of brownies, frosted and iced them, and cobbled together a double-layer brownie cake:

By the way, it was as mouth-wateringly delicious as you would expect two pans of fudge brownies + two cans of buttercream frosting to taste. (Also? I agonized over what to write on the cake all day long before deciding on “To Happy Endings!” Insert immature giggle here.)

I ended up spending $71.90 out of the $100 Target gift card the PR agency sent me, but I made up for the difference by spending another $25 at the liquor store so we could have some Glenora Wine cranberry chablis and make our own amaretto sours. (We ended up not even opening the wine. Aww. More for me!)

Along with the food and drinks I found at Target, I also bought stuff for party activities and party favors. Much like how nothing in the movie went right, I also had my share of mishaps in planning this – I remembered my digital camera, but the memory card was inside my husband’s laptop at home. Since my home was not conducive to hosting a Girls Night in, my friend Jillian from Whatchamagifts was nice enough to offer up her home for the occasion. She also ended up offering her camera to take the pics that mine did not have the memory for – and I forgot to ask her to photograph the party favors. They were cute little fuschia buckets I filled with M&Ms, Junior Mints, and matching heart locket necklaces for the three of us. (It was a Bridesmaids party, so I needed to have approrpiate bridesmaids gifts, right?) The lockets were $4.99 a piece. Classy stuff. I forgot to include the vanilla and autumn berry sachets I also bought for everyone. Oops.

As for activities, I thought of something appropriately embarrassing for, say, a bachelorette party. I bought us all foam tiaras to decorate with colorful foam stickers. Jillian was game for it, but my other friend asked me to leave her name off because of it. I will happily mock her insistence on anonymity while simultaneously respecting her wishes. Jillian’s mother ended up joining us (and was gracious enough to snap this photo) – and she was a good sport who made her own tiara and wore it throughout the entire movie, too.

And since bridal parties are supposed to work together, we all decorated for the party together. Or, you know, Jillian did most of the streamer design while the rest of us blew up balloons to inadvertantly terrify the dog.

Finally Watching Bridesmaids on DVD

So once the tiaras were on and we had both drinks in hand and brownie cake on our plates, it was time to press play on the movie. (Don’t worry – we moved the streamers out of the way.)

I’d never seen the movie, but my friends both had. And this was the Bridesmaids Unrated version, so there were things scenes they hadn’t seen in the theater.

OMG. Parts of Bridesmaids were so funny I thought I would laugh myself to tears. Other parts were genuinely sad. We all wanted to smack Helen’s perfect little face on more than one occasion. I spent half the movie trying to figure out why she looked familiar, but after perusing IMDB, the only thing I’d really seen her in was as Dormé in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. Maybe she just reminds me of Chrishell Stause from All My Children.

Bridesmaids was not the funniest movie I’d ever seen, as some of the movie critics had led me to believe it would be, but it was definitely one of the funniest chick flicks I’ve ever seen. What really took the cake though? The Bridesmaids Unrated DVD bonus features. The gag reel, Line-O-Rama, the deleted scenes, and the extended and alternate scenes had us busting a gut laughing and shouting, “Oh my GOD!” I hadn’t laughed so hard in a really long time. Bear sandwich. OMG. (Also? It made me glad that my mom decided to stay home. It would have been really uncomfortable laughing at those while she was in the same room!)

Would I have laughed as hard at Bridesmaids if I’d watched it at home with my husband? I don’t think I would have. He certainly wouldn’t have commiserated with me about Helen, as my girlfriends and I did as we rolled our eyes and gagged ourselves as she moved in on Annie’s best friend. If you buy Bridesmaids on DVD or Blu-ray, I highly recommend kidnapping your best female friends and cloistering yourselves with chocolate, baked goods, chocolate baked goods, and your favorite adult beverages until you’ve watched the movie and all of its bonus features.

Disclosure: I was provided with the DVD, the party decorating supplies, and a $100 gift card from Target to buy food and drinks in exchange for hosting and blogging about my Bridesmaids Girls Night In Party. Also, if you click on any link to buy Bridesmaids from Amazon, I get a small commission from that. Consider it a tip for hooking you up. 🙂

Christina Gleason (976 Posts)

That’s me: Christina Gleason. I’m a writer, editor, and disability advocate. I'm a multiply disabled autistic lady doing my best in this world built for abled people. I’m a geek for grammar, fantasy, and casual gaming. I hate vegetables. I cannot reliably speak, so I’ll happily conduct business over email or messaging instead.