There seems a bit of skepticism on that point, but I trust my instincts. True, I may be relying heavily on Hilary's gullability, but what can I say - it's gotten me this far, I can't buck the system now.
Below is the evite for the invitation to the picnic dinner at the park. It's fairly simple and plain, but that's sort of the idea - nothing that will arouse suspicion.
I agonized over several details, many of which I will feel silly about later on as I look back at all the planning that went into the occasion. Here are a few of the issues I've been pondering:1) What time to make the picnic start? Hilary gets off work at 6:30. With traffic, she typically arrives home around 7-ish. In trying to plan out when to do this, I needed to come up with a time that was late enough that we'd have plenty of time to get there early, but not so late that it would start too close to sundown. I went back and forth between 7:45 and 8:00 several times, eventually settling on 8:00 pm because I figure it's more important we have time to get there early than run too close to sunset (it is a fake picnic, after all).
2) What to tell the guests to bring? Hilary is a planner. I rarely am, except in this case. In fact, I may be planning more for this than anything else I plan on, umm, planning for, in the next several years - including the wedding (Hilary, that's all you babe). With most of our pot luck dinners, the guests are rarely required to bring anything, but in this case I need an excuse for us to be toting wine and appetizers and Hil not get suspicious.
If I tell everyone to bring wine and an appetizer, there is a fairly good chance Hilary will plan ahead and pick up those items in the days leading up to the picnic. In fact, it's two weeks away right now, and I'm not entirely certain she won't pick them up on her way home from work today just to get it out of the way. Still, I am hoping I can lead her into thinking we will just pick up the necessary items at Trader Joe's on the way to the park.
If I only say to bring an appetizer, I could have Ben "call" me the day of to ask if we could get some wine, but for some reason that makes me think it could begin to look suspicious. I could also do the opposite of that and just tell everyone to bring wine, but it seems too likely that we could end up with a bottle of wine at the apartment that we can just bring with us.
Therefore, I stuck with everyone bring an app and wine, and if for some reason Hilary picks these up ahead of time, then I can have Ben place the "We need more" call so we can arrive at the park ahead of the (phantom) pack.
3) What to tell the guests and when? As of now, my plan is to alert all of the guests on the day of the event to what is really going down. My dad worries that I might risk someone tipping Hilary off, or that I won't be able to reach everyone in time, but I am not concerned. I know most of these people's emails, IM screennames, and cell phones. One way or another I should be able to re-route them to Hannah and Will's. I did consider just sending out an evite update and just not include Hilary on it so as to save the surprise, but then I bring into play a number of scenario's like people calling to carpool and other issues like that. Easier to just spoil the surprise for a few people but maintain the surprise for the one person who matters most.
So, the evite is now posted, the wheels are in motion, and all that's left to do now is sit back and watch the con unfold...
UPDATE - The first potential road block has been removed. Hilary just made reservations at a restaurant for us that night at some restaurant in midtown (it's restaurant week then, where several nice restaurants offer fixed-price menus for $25 a person). Fortunately, the evite had gone out a few minutes earlier, and I had no trouble convincing her we should change the reservation to another night. So far so good!
No comments:
Post a Comment