Gentlemen: Parties Let The Holiday Shopping Come To You

Mlive:

Let’s see — cold beer, braunschweiger, olive loaf and a big rug in the front hallway, just in case we get into some Indian leg-wrestling.

Looks like I’m all ready to host a home jewelry party for guys only.

If you’re a woman, maybe you already know what I’m talking about — little get-togethers thrown by your girlfriends so you can catch up on the latest from Silpada Designs, a Kansas company that markets jewelry in much the same way that Tupperware and Longaberger baskets make their way into homes.

But ordinarily, men aren’t invited to these private parties. Being naturally inquisitive, I wondered to my friend Jamie DeBruyn what it was like.

To which she answered, “Why don’t you throw one and find out for yourself?”

She didn’t blink once when I ventured that rather than tea and crumpets — or whatever women consume at home parties — I’d serve suds and caveman food. In fact, she went so far as to design the brochure, topping the invitation with the heading “Beer & Bling.”

Even with brew on the menu, though, not all my buddies were falling over one another to RSVP.

A long-time friend, Matt, urged me to consider what I was getting myself into. “Tom,” he wrote me in an e-mail, “you are hosting a JEWELRY party. This is a very bad idea.” And then he added, “There’s still time to save yourself. Crank up the phone bank and tell everyone you invited that you fell out of a tree stand on your head, and woke up thinking you were Randy Disselkoen.”

I told Matt to be there at 7.

He wasn’t, but more than a dozen guys did come, some of whom were on the fence until I asked if they had picked out their wife’s Christmas gift this year. Or were they still shopping for that perfect combination of a plastic red rose and a Whitman’s Sampler?

In fact, Jamie had provided most invitees a Silpada catalog and wish list, so that their significant others could simply tell their beaus what their hearts — or in this case, their necks and wrists and lapels — desired. Could shopping be any easier?

Although I mainly took up Jamie’s challenge to see and write about what a home party is like, she took in more than $1,200. And she characterized the evening as “one of the most fun parties I’ve ever had.”

Screenshot From Silpada Designs.

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