Virtual Galentine’s Day
For what felt like all of January, an influencer I follow on social media yammered on and on about this Galentine’s Day party she was throwing. She had girly décor. She had fancy h’ode’overs and dessert. After week I was so annoyed by this party. But by week three, I needed to have a Galentine’s Day party.
(mean girls meme – I need to have a galentines day party)
Behold, the power of Instagram.
When it comes to putting up with my ridiculous whims, there is no one I can count on more than my best friends from high school . And since we hadn’t connected yet in 2021, I figured I might as well pitch this Galentine’s Day party and put them towards my 100 People Project.
Don’t be deceived, this was no easy task. I’ve managed to befriend adventurers and go-getters who went out into the world and conquered it. We’ve landed in two different Illinois cities, two Iowan cities, Michigan, Colorado, Alaska, and Australia. Yes, Australia the country/continent. However, the COVID shut downs had clued us into the magic of Zoom, so why not celebrate with one another from the comfort of our own homes?
It took 47 emails to settle on a time and date, which was obviously made much more difficult when the Aussie isn’t even on the same day as the rest of us and the Michigander and Alaskan are operating 5 hours apart. But we did it with the old whittling system: start with all the dates and times Email Responder #1 can attend. Email Responder #2 deletes all the times and dates that don’t work for her and sends the shortened list to Responder #3. And so on and so forth until you end up with a 2 hour window in which to celebrate Galentine’s Day.
Next up, what to do. A quick swing by Pinterest and a check back with my insta-spiration, and it looked like a game night would be just the ticket. I knew I’d be spending a fairly pretty penny shipping all this fun, so I skipped purchasing a themed Galentine’s day game kit and made my own.
About a week before the Galentine’s extravaganza, I printed, cut, and packed away directions, game components, Dove Chocolates, and a single pink lemonade mixer which I marketed as a cocktail/mocktail starter kit and dropped the whole thing in the mail. My poor little Aussie got a digital version and an apology.
We played a version of “Most Likely To…” which I made friendly for our weird, virtual format by leaving a big space on the card. During the game night, I simply read the prompt, we filled in the name of the most likeliest, and shared our answers with one another by revealing our papers. The gals with the most answers in common each got a point. And then of course, there was no actual prize for winning because I forgot about that part.
We also played an inside joke Pictionary, with silly prompts tucked lovingly into each participants packet, like “The Routine” in reference to the fact that we copied Ross and Monica’s New Years Rockin’ Eve Routine and “performed” this routine at Prom. I definitely hung with the cool kids. Again, no prize for winning, unless of course you count a hysterical dance down memory lane, which I do count.
And that was it! It went way better than I thought it would, Katie actually crafted a pink paloma from her lemonade packet, everyone was actually able to guess and connect the Pictionary references, and bless their little hearts, I’m going to make them do another one next year.
For those counting at home, after the Galentine’s Day Success, my people project total was up to an even 50 down and 50 to go!
