Music City in color

I’m a terrible traveler. I get anxious, I cry on the plane, I fret about money, I worry about safety and I overthink what I pack. I’m nowhere close to a world traveler, so flying by myself to Nashville was definitely an adventure in itself – before I even landed. 

To explain to you exactly how my soon-to-be sister-in-law Jamie’s bachelorette party went (the “Nash Bash,” as apparently it’s commonly called) would take more than the inch space I have here on the page, so I’ll break it down into something rudimentary. As basic as it gets.

Colors. 

Colors are easy. We learn colors in preschool, right? So let me walk you through the rainbow that was our bachelorette party in Nashville.

Pink – the color of the cowboy hat that I (and the other bridesmaids) wore throughout our jaunt in Music City. 

We wore the hats on the honkytonk party bus tour. 

We wore the hats to the cowboy burlesque show. 

We wore the hats to go dancing. 

We clutched the hats to our heads as we walked around the downtown area, trying not to let them blow away. 

White – obviously, the color Jamie wore all weekend. She was the cutest little white-clad bride-to-be that Nashville has ever seen (and believe me, from what I experienced this weekend, the city has seen A LOT). 

Coincidentally, the name of the Mexican restaurant we ate at Friday night was called “Blanco,” which means “white” in Spanish. 

Yes, I had to Google that just now to make sure. 

No, I still don’t regret majoring in French. 

(Or as Edith Piaf would say, “Je ne regrette rien.”) 

Blue – the color of my lips, hands and feet the entire weekend. It was FRIGID. It’s hard to dress fun, flirty, funky and fresh when you’re shivering. Long johns and turtleneck undershirts don’t really match with leather skirts and going-out tops (and pink cowboy hats, of course). 

Green – It so happened that our bachelorette experience coincided with St. Patrick’s Day – so, as I like to say, “the crazies were out.” 

Everywhere you looked, it was fringe and shamrocks as far as the eye could see. I don’t have much by way of going-out clothes in green, so I tied a green scarf on my belt and called it a day. 

Red – the color of my face when, while at Kid Rock’s bar on Broadway, I saw on the TV screen that the Purdue men’s basketball team lost to Fairleigh Dickinson. 

I mean, where even is that? WHO even is that? It sounds like the name of an off-brand motorcycle, like if Aldi ripped off Harley Davidson. 

Purple – The color of the Economy lot I parked in when I reached Dulles at 7 a.m. on Friday. And the color of the shuttle that I had to wait 25 minutes for – outside in the wind – upon my return to take me back to my car (see “Blue”). 

Brown – Have you ever been inside the Nashville airport? Have you ever looked at the carpet? Just Google it; I’ve never seen an uglier design for a carpet in my life. 

“Hi y’all, welcome to Nashville! Our brown carpet will give you a headache if you look at it longer than 15 seconds – we hope you have Excedrin in your luggage!” 

In exactly a month, Jamie will marry my brother and be a Grosskopf officially, and she’ll be wearing white again. The rest of us bridesmaids will be wearing “dusty sage,” but I may bring my pink hat.

Just in case. You know, for emergencies (or in case the DJ plays “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy”). 

Emma June moved to Romney from the D.C. metro area after she graduated college in 2019. She’s the Review’s editor, and her days are filled with all of the emotions, challenges, delights and frustrations of being a 20-something-year-old in today’s world.