The desert: Ed Hardy, palms and a bride to be.

Nothing says nuptial bliss like the drunken stupid fun the bride and groom are allowed one last time before the big day. (Personally, I don't intend to stop having stupid, if not drunken, fun for anything. And my future-husband--God bless you whoever you are--should know this. But I am not most people and I digress.) And this past weekend I had the great pleasure of helping one of my best friends celebrate her last moments of single, un-attached freedom.

Early on Saturday morning, gal-pal A and I rode the long way East to Palm Springs. The trip should have taken 2 hours. I drove. It took 4.

In transit, we got lost, discovering the wonders of 'cities' on route to the desert. The towns may be small, hot and have a disturbingly high ratio of mullets to non-mullets, but even the DMV office appears tropical and alluring when it's surrounded by sand and palms. Heck, if I lived in the desert, I'd make a point of violating traffic more often to get the chance to return to this government building oasis.

No bachelorette party is complete without the offering of naughty gifts to the bride to be. Even the most demure of girls get gifted with lingerie, oils and sex toys to last a lifetime...or, until the sex stops. Here, the winning gift of the night came from K--a paddle from every bad girl's fave shoppe, Agent Provocateur (that is, every bad girl who can afford to drop several hundred for a corset and a bottle of lube).

Later in the evening, all of us girls had the pleasure of attending the most rip-roaring dance club in all of the desert. (For those who've been to Palm Springs during Coachella, note that the crowd during the off season sports a little less hipster flare and a little more Ed Hardy, but who's counting the bedazzled muscle tees? Oh right--the cougars with the fake tits in the corner were keeping tally all night.) The JW Marriot's Costas Nightclub boasts the title of 'Valley's Nightclub of the Year' and calls itself the 'playground to the stars.' Seeing as the rules at the entrance of the club call for no facial tattoos and no Dickies, it seems that nearly every LA star to speak of would be ruled out, but maybe that tranny with all the work done who was on line before us was somebody--I'm not really sure.

Well, we didn't get in to Costas--apparently the doorman didn't find it impressive that we were visiting from LA, had natural breasts and didn't have anything sparkly on. But the men (pictured left) that we met in the Lobby Bar were enough to remind us all that marriage is indeed preferable to the single life. And I couldn't be happier for my amazing bff D, who's about to embark on the journey toward commitment. (Thank goodness because I am planning on returning next week to Palm Springs to score that muscley fellow on the right for myself. Here I come Don Juan de Mentally Challenged!)