Courtney Davis, a mother of two in Westport, Connecticut, spent weeks planning her daughter’s Cinderella-themed birthday party, obsessing over every detail.
She ordered custom-embroidered napkins, bought table covers and meticulously glued lace trim around the edges, determined to create an event fit for a 4-year-old princess.
“It’s my anxiety,” Davis, 40, tells TODAY.com, acknowledging that children don’t care about such touches and would probably be thrilled with a handful of Goldfish crackers and a balloon in a parking lot.
For the adults, there were cheese plates, salads, wine and all the thoughtful extras that make small talk and screaming kids a little more bearable.
On the day of the party, Davis took out her camera to capture the results of her hard work. In an Instagram reel, she pans around the room, admiring the setup, when her husband, Bobby, suddenly appears with a question.
“Do you need help with anything?” he asks, seemingly unaware of the hours of labor that had already gone into the festivities.
Later, he wonders aloud: “Did you get a cake?”
The moment struck a chord. Davis’s post was flooded with comments from people who had lived through the same thing — or some version of it.
As one woman wrote, “Put all the husbands in a bag, shake it up, reach inside … you’ll get yours every time, cause they all the same.”
- “This is my husband EVERY night 5-10 minutes before a full dinner is about to be served. Maddening.”
- “PTSD!”
- “‘Did you get a cake’ needed a trigger warning.”
- “Reminds me of Christmas morning. Did you get presents for the kids lol.”
- “How is he not wearing the cake?”
Davis, who works as a comedian, laughed it off. In the end, she prefers to be a solo act when it comes to entertaining, and still remembers the time Bobby took the lead on their son’s birthday.
“He got these generic party favors,” she says, with a mock shudder. “And I was like, absolutely not, never again.”
She’s quick to point out that Bobby is a hands-on dad who “helps with everything” — except pulling off celebrations.
Asked if there’s anything she leaves entirely to him, Davis laughs, “Our entire life! I have the best life ever.”
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