Me, Turn 30?

I thought you all might appreciate reading parts of my "Candidly Caroline" print column from this week. I've been in a weird mood this week, but, what's new?:

"My original plan was to write a poignant and profound column about leaving behind my twenties, looking forward to my thirties, and what it is like to have turned the ripe age of thirty, as this is my very first column since hitting that next candle on the birthday cake. Unfortunately, my brain is somehow not allowing me to process the information still so I’m not going to talk about how thrilled I am, how many new goals I’ve set for myself, how my thirties will be my best years yet, etc. (and all that other stuff people keep telling me.)

Instead, I’m going to talk about the Bachelorette party weekend I just threw in South Beach. Shallow, no? But, us 30-year-olds have to cling to something.

The weekend was beyond any of our expectations. I was the hostess, being that I am the maid of honor, but I had never been to Miami. Needless to say, I was nervous about how it would all work. I planned and planned and planned (as I do) and traveled to Florida hoping for the best and reminding myself to go with the flow.

It worked. It was a perfect combination of planning and luck. For example, the planning part allowed us a contact inside the hottest club in South Beach and granted us his graces. Luck provided us a group of men who had just sold their company for $250 million.

(This is starting to sound really shallow, I know, but it’s not - I promise.) They just wanted to have a good time; so did we. They wanted to buy us (at least) eight bottles of Cristal; we didn’t mind drinking it. They had an empty VIP section waiting to be filled; we filled it with dancing. They had a limo driver; we graciously kept him driving.

The weekend was about as over the top as you can imagine. For one thing, I learned South Beach is all about rockets and sparklers. There were rockets on each of the bottles of Cristal (and the magnums of Cristal we had the next night,) and there were sparklers on the desserts we ordered for our farewell dinner at Barton G's - a chocolate fountain with four pounds of Belgian dark chocolate and everything possible to dip it with and a three-foot tall cotton candy tree surrounded by chocolate, white chocolate, and caramel popcorn balls. Did I mention this trip was way over the top?


Literally, everything was great. Our hotel, Loews, rocked. They would spray us with Evian and bring us frozen grapes as we lounged at the pool, and the beach was just beyond our gates. The Cuban restaurant I’d worried would be “too” authentic was a hit. Nobody got in any arguments (a miracle with eight women in only two rooms, together for four days.) All of the logistical efforts went as planned, too.

As I’ve been telling everyone ever since I got back, her Bachelorette party weekend was so good, I could get married now. Seriously. I guess that’s as good a way as any to celebrate the weekend before my 30th birthday, the last weekend of my twenties."