Friend left me sitting alone at her baby shower ...aibu to be annoyed?

[aailope]

It was my friends baby shower (who is Italian ) and the majority of her friends are Italian and obviously her family.
She asked me if I would help her decorate the venue for her baby shower.
So I went over 2 hours before and helped.
Then she told me to go have a rest and pointed me to a table.
So off I go and sit down,assuming this is the table we are sitting at.
Now bare in mind I know nobody else.
So all the guests start arriving and sitting at tables (nobody sits at my double as nobody knows me )
A hour passes I'm still sat there alone and everyone is here and all chatting away (mostly in Italian )
I notice my friends family all sat at one table and my friend sat with them.
After 2 hours my friends sister comes over and asks me to join there table.
I felt ridiculous.
I felt like a total idiot,I have anxiety to start with so wasn't going to just get up and join any table.
Now if that was me I would of put her on the table with her family from the start.
Aibu to be annoyed ?

In fact I thought I would google that question... Google thinks it is the close friends and family. Probably op in fact, as she was first on the scene.
So I guess she should have been welcoming all the guests and making them feel at home

Probably, if she knew the language

Google is also useful for translation....

I got the impression OP helped with the setting up but wasn’t the organiser or host of her friend’s baby shower in the same context as some hen dos and showers

Perhaps. But then who was the host? The op is annoyed with her friend. But what kind of friend expects the pregnant woman to host her own baby shower? That's for friends and/or family to do, and she was the one organising the room that day and the first there as other guests arrived.

Perhaps on Italian Mumsnet there is a thread complaining about a poor host of her baby shower who sat like a lemon on a table and didn't even say ciao to the guests as they arrived, leaving her, heavily pregnant, to do all the hosting.

This.

Sometimes it is easy to over analyse.

She was busy. You could have just walked over.
Sometimes it about be there for your friend. Smiling and making conversation.

I'm sure she didn't mean it.
Forgive and forget. Life is too short.

I've been to events where I only know the person the event is for i.e birthdays, bon voyage parties, and I've always told my friend don't worry about me, you have loads of people to see to. Then I make it my business to approach and converse with people. I can be socially anxious but the alternatives are either sit alone or don't show up for your friend. I appreciate the language barrier would have added complexity but unless there are other things your friend does, I think you need to write this off as her being preoccupied.

*Mamasnet

"But what kind of friend expects the pregnant woman to host her own baby shower?"

Pregnant woman asked friend to help her decorate. This suggests it was organised by the pregnant friend or her family so OP was not the host.

Poor woman!

Had to organise her own baby shower, was then expected to babysit a grown adult during a party focussed on celebrating her and her baby because said adult couldn't move from a table for two hours.

She pointed you to a table to have a temporary rest at. It wasn’t your assigned seating that you could not move from.

it will not have occurred to her that you would rigidly sit there not moving.

She would have been busy greeting people.

I think rather than be angry at your friend, you need to use this as a chance to assess the impact of your anxiety on your life and what steps you can take to address this.

"Had to organise her own baby shower"

Maybe chose to organise her own baby shower? They're not really well established in Europe so I can imagine the friend didn't know she was expected to organise it! I wouldn't.

Whilst I get that a lot of people would find it difficult to get up and introduce themselves to strangers (who in this case were speaking Italian!), an easy way of engaging would have been for you to go and grab the wine bottle or teapot and go around filling glasses and cups, passing plates of food around etc etc. In this way being helpful, not feeling like a tool sat all alone (for 2 hours!) and seeing as a result that the conversation would have followed naturally. Before you knew it, you would have been in the middle of everything.
Yes, you may find it difficult to make the first move, more people experience this than you know but don't expect others to solve it for you; be part of the solution or remove yourself and then ultimately cut your own nose off to spite your face! Try it next time you're in such a situation and see how easy it is after that initial push.