Bridal Showers of Pandora Beads

Last weekend was so wonderful! My friends and family surprised my fiancé and I with a bridal shower. I had discussed a bridal shower with a couple of friends and wondered what they would do. I didn’t think I should plan it, but it didn’t seem like they were going to have one. I didn’t want to show it but I was hoping they would have the get together soon. It made me so happy seeing that they had planned this party and without me having a clue. They said they thought our engagement party was enjoyable and wanted more people to share in the excitement of our upcoming wedding.

Since my fiancé and I are both a little bit older and own our own houses, we really don’t need a lot of the gifts that typical bride and grooms receive at showers. So my family and friends thought it would be fun to buy Pandora beads for me and tool gifts for my fiancé. It was definitely more than fine to me and my husband also thought it turned out to be a great idea because he said he can always use more tools.

I received the hanging star bead from my father, and I knew right away why he picked this bead. When we were little we used to sit on blankets outside and watch the stars in the sky for a long time. He showed me many different constellations including the big dipper which I became very good at finding in the sky. We would teach each other the different stars by researching in books we had checked out at the library. There were so many stars and constellations. One day my dad surprised me with a large manila envelope he had received in the mail. I was very curious and when I opened it I couldn’t believe he had been so thoughtful and named a star after me. There was a certificate enclosed and it stated that a star in a certain constellation was now named after me. It said exactly how to find it in the sky. It was the neatest thing he had ever done for me and so thoughtful. I still am not sure how he figured out a way to do this. I’ve seen it in movies but never really thought you could actually do it. So every once in a while on clear nights we think we can see the star that was named after me. It will always be something that just my dad and I share.

A friend of mine who is also going to be one of my bridesmaids gave me the apple-worm bead. She thought I needed this bead because I am a teacher. She also is a teacher and we love to share in stories from our different classrooms. We both attended the same college and both remember the time we received our first apple from a student. At least they did not have worms in them. Mine was actually the first day of school from one of my first graders. I think his parents must have known it was my first day of teaching and I had just gotten out of college. They were probably trying to take the edge off my first day and it helped to ease my tension. I shared a laugh with my new student and automatically thought he would be one of my better students, which he turned out to be. This was the perfect bead from my friend. Teachers share a bond that other people cannot replicate and this bead will always show it to me.

She also gave me the football bead because when we were in high school we both were football cheerleaders together. We laughed at how we never understood the rules to the game and had a hard time sometimes cheering because we didn’t know if the team was on offense or defense. At least some of the other cheerleaders knew how the game was played. Throughout the season though we ended up knowing more that we thought and truly enjoyed the game. I guess having boyfriends on the football team helped us with this. We had fun cheerleading for football because you weren’t stuck inside some gymnasium like basketball cheerleaders were, but were outdoors. I remember cheering when it was snowing and probably ten or twenty degrees. This was when we would make some of our best memories on the football field and wearing many layers of clothing.

I received the orange butterfly bead from my niece. I like that I now have two butterfly charms on my bracelet and they are two totally unique beads. I also have the silver butterfly bead. Her story with picking out this bead had to do with the new Barbie movie called Mariposa. It is her current favorite movie and in Spanish it means butterfly. So she said the bead reminded her of her favorite movie and also her favorite aunt, which I thought was so cute and made me blush. She said she also likes to chase after butterflies in the summertime and wishes she could fly like one. One time I asked her to wish upon a shooting star with only one wish and she told me her wish was to have wings so she could fly like butterflies. Out of anything in the world, this was what she wished for. I always wonder what she will think of next and will always associate butterflies and wings with her.

My mother gave me the seashell bead as a remembrance of all our family trips to different beaches. We took trips to Myrtle Beach, South Padre, Seattle and Florida. We would always wake up early to collect seashells. For some reason my mother thought right around sunrise was the best time to find the most unique seashells. We would each bring a jar to collect our very favorite shells in. Then we would bring them home and create different art projects with them. I remember stringing a necklace with some of mine and also decorating a frame, which I remember fell apart a few weeks later because I touched it and played it with so much. I also remember taking them to show and tell at school and telling about the beach I had just visited. I felt so special, because all the children were so interested and listened so intently. They loved it when I told them they each could keep a shell or two for themselves. I just found out recently that the reason we would do this seashell hunt so early was actually because what else is there to do early in the morning? My parents thought this was a good thing for us to do when we woke up in the morning to keep us busy and a nice way to start a family tradition.

My sister gave me the princess and the pea bead. She said she was so excited to see Pandora had a bead like this. It reminded her of when we were little and would sit on our Grandma’s lap listening to her tell us stories. She used to love to read to us and this was one of her favorite books she owned. My sister and I used to fight over who the real princess was in our family, going back and forth saying, “I am” or “No I am.” We would lay on the couch and act like there were peas under the cushions and that we could feel them pricking our backs. We would do this over and over until someone yelled at us to stop. My Grandma always would tell us that we were both princesses and then she would get on with the story. She was so animated when she read the story, which is why we loved when she would read to us. She always remembers when I was about two years old and she tells how I would run and get the Princess and the Pea story from her bedroom bookshelf and throw it up on her lap. I would then inch my way up on her lap and have to get in just the right position on her recliner with her. This would tell her it was time, yet again, to read me this story. I’m sure she always stopped whatever she was doing because she loved us so much and knew how important reading to us was.

She also gave me the shirt bead. I was intrigued as to her explanation for picking this bead and when she explained it to me I understood. She said the reason she picked it was because when we were growing up we both enjoyed watching the cartoon called Shirt Tales. They were animals that each had different shirts on. My favorite character was Digger and I had his stuffed animal. I slept with it every night and took it on sleepovers. It was one of a few stuffed animals I slept with and would arrange each night in just the right position on my bed. Our brothers always made fun of us when we would watch this cartoon and they would try to turn the channel. They also would take my Digger animal and hide it from me. Usually my mom would stick up for us and we would get to watch the show. It was something we looked forward to every Saturday morning. It wasn’t like we had much of a choice anyway, because we only had three channels on our television. So when my sister reminded me of this I understood why she bought the bead. She said she just recently remembered the Shirt Tale cartoon when she was going through some old things and came upon my Digger animal. She returned it to me with the new bead. What a fun surprise!

My other sister gave me the Christmas tree bead. Christmas is always a very large holiday in our homes and not just because our family is so large. My mother started out the tradition of using an extreme number of decorations. She starts decorating on December 1st every year. She likes to keep this tradition and only if she brings out one wreath or one imitation tree on the first, she can say that she started decorating this day. So now my sisters and I have joined in on the festivities. We like trying to outdo each other. I am not sure how many trees each of us decorate in our houses, but it is more than four. Some people come over and can’t believe how many different trees you can have. My fiancé first thought my mother was crazy and couldn’t believe how much time and energy she put into decorating all her Christmas trees. After a couple years though he has now joined in on the craziness. He even bought a few ornaments for her when he was traveling on business. They were Santa Claus ornaments and he was golfing and fishing on them. They were ornaments she didn’t have yet on the tree and were a special gift.

Another friend of mine gave me the car bead. She couldn’t give it to me without laughing because she said she was thinking about my car in high school. It was a grocery getter—a Bonneville, and they were very large cars back then. It was great for fitting many friends in. We have many memories in it. I was lucky my parents let me use it, although I don’t think they knew about all the girlfriends I was transporting in it. I was the first to get my license in my group of friends so a lot of them depended on me for rides. It wasn’t cool to have your parents pick you up anymore from dances or sporting events. We used to cruise down Central Avenue with the windows rolled down and blaring Anne Murray’s song, Can I Have This Dance or The Class of 57 Had It’s Dream by the Statler Brothers. I even got pulled over once and received a ticket for Illegal Use of Horn. I don’t think I honked the horn again until years later.

It is so much fun looking at my Pandora bracelet and reminiscing about all the fun times I had in the past with family and friends. It is wonderful to see that all these people enjoyed these memories as much as I did and still recall events that had happened twenty or more years ago. I think everyone should have a bracelet like this to remember all these past memories. It is a great keepsake and one that I am sure will be past on for generations to come.

-Judy Heeg