A Bridal Shower Dinner For My Future Bride

Mallorey's bridal shower here in Louisville is coming up on Saturday. I know my sister is very excited to be hosting the event at her house in Fisherville, Kentucky (about a 20 minute drive from our house). My sister, Mandy, has already requested my involvement without actually attending, so I'm sure there will be some sort of surprises, along with shower gifts, for Mallorey. She loves surprises but gets anxiety over the anticipation! Its almost tortuous for her really. In fact, she caught me on our computer yesterday and asked what I was doing. After making up a poor excuse as to not give anything away, I simply told her I was doing something for Mandy. Turns out Mal immediately knew it had something to do with a surprise for the shower and turned violent towards me because I refused to tell her what it was. Violent you ask? She took a nearby spray bottle of Febreeze and doused me and then quickly escaped the room! Not fair!!! But it was all in good fun. Regardless, I know she'll have a great time on Saturday and, from what I hear, there will be about 10 people in attendance at the shower. Most of which are from my family which I greatly appreciate because they are showing outstanding care and support for Mallorey.

As for me, well, unfortunately I have to work on Saturday afternoon. So there will be no relaxation time for me while the gals are away having their fun. That theme will hold true even after I come home from work. Provided Mallorey, her mom and sister are back home by the evening hours, I intend to make them dinner. The menu: grilled salmon with some type of sauce or glaze (undecided yet), a vegetable and Derby Pie for dessert. The salmon should be fairly easy to prepare as I've grilled up this dish before but without any sauce/glaze. I'm sure foodnetwork.com or some of our home cook books have some great recipes. A complimentary side veggie will be the simplest part of the dinner. I might even attempt a salad. But then again that might be too much food. Just depends on how hungry everyone is I suppose. Now seeing as how Janann and Marin are travelling down from Chicago to stay with us for the weekend, and I've heard how Marin loves Kentucky so much :) - I thought it would be a great idea to deliver some sweet and rich flavor for the occasion: the Derby Pie. I'm sure there will be plenty left over so they can take some back to Mallorey's dad. No one appreciates good cooking like him. It never hurts to try and impress the future father-in-law!

I'm confident Mallorey and I can get the house cleaned up for this weekend after our recent interior remodeling sessions. She is the most important person in my life and I want this weekend as well as her Louisville bridal shower to be just as entertaining and fun as the one she was thrown in Chicago about 7 weeks ago. Time is flying and she and I will be married in 3 1/2 weeks and I couldn't be more excited to know I will be committing the rest of my life with the greatest woman I've ever known!

(I know I will get some "you're a softee" comments for this post, but I don't really care! Ha ha)

Love you Mallorey,
- Randy