With the Olympics officially over you might think this week’s post is referring to a silver medal but, truth be told, as fabulous as the Olympics were, this week’s blog is about silver flatware.
Let me explain. Last weekend I welcomed a friend back from the United Kingdom, and so I hosted a summer soiree with all the fixings. I hired a local caterer and rented all the essentials. My primary responsibilities would be décor, flower arrangements and of course, the yummy dessert.
The night was warm and clear but humid, yet somehow the sangria and flowing rose kept us all cool. We stayed up way past our bedtime but the clean up (as I remember) was a breeze.
That night we stored all the flatware, glasses, dishes and linen napkins back into the plastic crates they arrived in, and I returned all the rental items. It wasn’t until I was emptying the dishwasher a few days later that I wondered “Where are all my forks and spoons?” Up until that moment, I never even considered the possibility of my flatware getting used and mixed-up with the rentals. As a host of many parties, I have never had this come up. Somehow someone, while trying to help serve dessert, must have unknowingly grabbed my silver. I, of course, being “dosed on rosé”, never noticed.
Here is a sMARt tip for the next time you rent from a party rental store: Double and triple check the items before you return them. Turns out eight forks and three spoons from my Christofle flatware collection were somehow mixed into the bunch. OMG right? I know the flatware can all be replaced, but the sentimental value means so much more than the replacement pieces. Priceless.
Team Mar came to the rescue to help find the missing silver; we packed into the car and headed to the rental company so we could all go through buckets and buckets of silver in search of mine.
Buckets, trays and hours later, we never found any of it, but I did learn a valuable lesson. Renting from a party supply store is like being a competitive figure skater. You need to have a double and triple combination in place to make sure you don’t lose a valuable medal.
