On the night of the shower for Graciela Braslavsky, Andy Cohen was still working through some of the issues that gay men have when a woman they worship gets married. . . . Cohen, a thirty-year-old senior producer at CBS News, who was hosting the bridal shower for gay men only in a friend's East Village duplex, . . . was feeling other things, too: threatened, even by the bride's "incredibly tolerant" fiance; concerned that the bride's downtown divadom would be dissolved by what he called her "unfathomable lunge into possible domestic bliss"; and alarmed that she had already moved to the Upper East Side. "This is such a mindblower on so many levels," Cohen said with a sigh. Although he was excited about the upcoming wedding in Vermont, Cohen doesn't normally like weddings. "They depress me," he said as his guests arrived. "I usually end up dancing with my mom." . . .
The bride-to-be, an ebullient producer for VH1, arrived with a new Britt Eklund hairdo. . . . The lights were dim, the drinks were stiff, the music was loud, and in the bathroom the toilet seat was up all night. . . . But in most respects it might have been any bridal shower. There were guests who love weddings and guests who hate them, guests in black and guests not in black. . . . The invitation had specified "no gifts bought above Eighteenth Street or having to do with kitchens or bathrooms or china," but the admonishment hardly seemed necessary. . . .
The bride, who is registered at Bergdorf Goodman and Trash and Vaudeville, looked up and asked, "Hey, who's keeping a list for my thank-you notes?" Nobody, but by then it was too late to worry about anything, even two female crashers who had come in around midnight and were getting drinks at the bar. "Should I throw them out?" Cohen asked the guest of honor. "No, I'm open," Braslavsky told him. . . .
BY BOB MORRIS