Christmas Cheers and Reindeer Ears

The Crazy Christmas Bachelorette Party was everything we hoped it would be: festive, silly, fun and filled with plenty of Santas and reindeer!

The five hostesses with the Mostesses met up at the Sheraton in downtown Austin to get to work. We each had our areas of expertise to get ready, and the clock was ticking!


Morgan, Sadie, Me, Ashley, Meredith


Sadie, Entertainment Chair for the evening, had collected photos and video clips from all the guests that she made into an amazing video. We played it for everyone at the party and let's just say it was a hit. My sides were hurting from laughing so hard! Sadie really put in some sweat and tears into this project, which I know the Bride (and everyone!) loved.



Yours truly took on decorations. Here I model some tinsel and admire my string o' panties, which only fell about three times. Success!



Bridesmaid and friend of the bride Morgan was in charge of costumes. A self-proclaimed craft queen, Morgan really ran with the costumes. Her theme? Christmas tacky. Check out those bows on the shirt our bride wore (most of) that night! And that veil? Complete with poinsettas and Christmas garland, it stood out wherever we were, as well as got tangled up in Royale's hair... many times. Morgan also brought reindeer ears for the all the guests, which guarenteed we could always find each other, no matter how crowded the bar (or elevator) was.



Ashley was in chrage of beveraves. Christmas cocktails and pink champagne all around! Also please note my excellent use of Christmas lights in the bar area (decoration shout out, what what!).



Meredith made sure everyone got there that night with her adorable invites. We hung one on the door of the hotel room, procliaming to everyone on our floor that yes, we are having a bachelorette party in here and we dare you to call and complain about us being too loud!

The evening was a total success. When dressed as festive as this bunch was, would you expect anything less?!

Party Games

What's a good Bachelorette Party without some party games?!

Besides taking care of the decor, I also took charge of the games for my BFF's B-ette weekend in Austin. We've all been at showers and parties where we've been forced to play some pretty cheesy games -- think building wedding dresses out of toilet paper or making words out of the bride and groom's first names. I promised the other hostesses that my games would be cheese-free!

It seems pretty standard that, in my circle of friends at least, Bachelorette Parties also include a lingerie shower. So with the help of Martha and some creativity, I got things ready for the Name That Undie game. Have ya'll played this one before? It's one of my favorites. For each gift that the bride opens, the guests come up with a name for the ensemble, and a tag is tied to the piece with its name on it. Come honeymoon time, the bride gives her groom a choice of what she should wear each night, based on its name. He doesn't get to see anything until after he choses!

I found some cute stickers by Ms. Stewart at Michaels. They are supposed to be for photo captions, but they ended up working perfectly for the game. They had who, what, where and when lines on them, which we'll use for the gift's giver, undie description and newly christened name.



I mounted each sticker on some cute scrapbook paper, added a sticker and ribbon, and the tags were ready to tie onto the gifts!

Game Numero Two was an old standby classic - How Well Does the Bride Know Her Groom? I emailed the groom-to-be a list of questions for him to answer, and then the bride has to try and guess his responses. For each wrong guess, she has a sip of champagne, and for each correct guess, we all take a sip. I've also seen this game played with gum and candy, making the bride take another bite for each wrong guess. I tried to think a little out of the box with this one, asking questions like "what time is your wedding?" (groom's reply: 6ish) and name all the Bridesmaids (which, I'm glad to say, he got right!). I also added some multiple choice questions such as, Which would you rather:

a) the bride get a tattoo of her dad's face on her back, or
b) the bride wear permanent socks, 24-7
(he picked B, in case you're curious!).

And for the third and final game, I made jingle bell necklaces for all the guests to wear (reminder: our party is Christmas themed) with a little card on each one. Each card has a task written on it that that person has to make the bride do that night. Some of them are:

Take you picture on a sports car
Ask a guy to marry you
Write your phone number on a bathroom stall
Dance with ten different guys

Once each girl gets the bride to complete her task, she gives the bride her necklace. The goal is for the B2B to have all the necklaces (and a whole lot of jingle!) by the end of the night.

Note: Cats are great crafty partners. They especially like to help with projects that involve strings and/or bells.





What are some Bachelorette games you've played that aren't too cheesy? I'm always looking for a new idea!

What craft project requires glitter and panties?

A Bachelorette Party, of course!

As I mentioned yesterday, this weekend some friends and I are throwing a Bachelorette party for our BFF and Bride to Be, Royale. We're meeting up with a bunch of ladies in Austin, where we have a hotel room and some great activities planned for Saturday night. We divided up the planning responsibilities among the five hostesses, and I took on decorations and party games.

Since the B-ette party ended up being in the middle of December, we decided to give it a silly Christmas theme, complete with holiday sweaters, Christmas cocktails, reindeer antlers and gifs under the tree. I decided to go old school with my crafts for the decor, using - you guessed it - glitter and Elmer's glue. Remember when all your crafts consisted of glitter and glue? Well, its a little messier than I remembered, and Mark's living room floor may have a hint of sparkle for the next several weeks, but I made (slightly shaky) personalized stockings for all the guests, with the bride's name glittered in gold. Some of these took me about four tries of wiping off the glue and starting over again, but alas, here they are!



Next up, I decided to hit up the Christmas aisle in Walmart for some inexpensive holiday decor. Eight dollars later, I had three strands of twinkle lights and thirty feet of tinsel. Eight dollars! That's my kind of price! I felt like I was still missing some stuff though, so I decided to hit up Victoria Secret and snag some of their 5 for $25 panties, and then found some ribbon and clothespins to create a string of panties to hang by the "mantle" (read: hotel room wall) along with the stockings. Extra bonus- the bride gets to take that decor home for the honeymoon!

I'm finishing up some posters and a couple other decoratey (totally a real word) ideas to bring along with me. I'm running out of time, so I might have some last minute crafting to do once I get to Austin this weekend. You're allowed to carry a hole punch onto a plane, right?

What's short and cute and blue all over?

The bridesmaid dresses! And.. they’re here!





I was having such a blah day. I am off work this week and decided to go walk around the mall to perhaps find a new sweater to wear to Oklahoma this weekend for Thanksgiving. I was armed with a whole stack of coupons and hit up the pre-Black Friday sales with high hopes. I did mange to find all kinds of cute stuff, as well as some great deals on a few Christmas gifts that I went ahead and knocked off my list. I was carrying a whole slew of bags with me and stopped to treat myself to lunch at Corner Bakery in the mall food court. I never eat at the mall when I am by myself, but I was feeling especially independent and snagged a single table over by the ice rink and sat back to enjoy my salad.

A cuople hours later, I’m in my apartment, putting away my purchases and stashing some gifts in the back of the closet when it suddenly occurs to me.. where is my Banana Republic bag? I run down to the car, nothing. Look back in all my other bags, nothing. Run back over to the mall, hit up Corner Bakery and EVERY store I went to, nothing. I lost a brand new sweater and dress that I had just bought, without so much as even trying them on first! I went back home and sulked/fumed/couldn’t get over how ridiculous I am for losing something a mere twenty minutes after I purchased it. Nothing could cheer me up.

Until! I was moping around when my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number so I let it go to voicemail, then checked the message as soon as it appeared on my cell screen. Maybe some honest chap had in fact turned in my lost Banana bag! (I’d left my number with mall security, just in case.) Well it wasn’t my lost loot, but instead the shop where I had ordered my bridesmaid dresses this summer - they were here! She said they could hold them for me as long as needed, but she wanted to let me know they were here and looked beautiful.

I jumped in the car and high-tailed it over to Plano, where I picked up all of the dresses. They. Looked. Fabulous. They might not be the cute LBD from Banana that some random girl out there it sporting courtesy of me (grr), but they are twelve adorable dresses that my bridal party are going to rock come July! Leave it to the wedding to turn my drag day into fab!

Asking My Crew

One of the first things I started working on when we got engaged was our bridal party. I was super excited about inviting all our friends to be a part of the wedding and start sharing all the plans and details with them. Mark quickly came up with his list of guys and waited until he saw them in person to ask them if they would be his groomsmen. Me on the other hand, I knew I wanted to do something a little different than just asking my dozen girls when I saw them or calling them up to pop the bridesmaid question.

I started googling around for creative ways to ask your bridesmaids. Surprisingly, I couldn't really find much of anything terribly creative or unique, other than sending personalized fortune cookies or some sort of other little charm or token. I wasn't too keen on the fortune cookie idea (although I did debate it for a while) and everything else out there was a little more than I wanted to spend on this task (especially when you multiply it times 12), so I decided to enlist the most creative person I know to help me design something to send out.

Enter Maid of Honor/Sister/Graphic Designer Kelly. She worked with my (somewhat amateur) sketches of ideas that I had for postcard designs and created an adorable card using Illustrator. I knew I wanted them to match the wedding theme (although let's be honest, at this point we had zero theme!), so we went for a rustic, chic design, with a little bit of Texas flare. So Kelly designed some cute little boots with Mark and my initials on them and we incorporated a slogan that I found somewhere online when I was searching around for ideas: Something old, something new, something borrowed, something You.



We printed the cards out using my parent's rinky-dink printer on some heavy linen paper, and then trimmed them to jumbo postcard size with our handy-dandy paper cutter. I wrote each girl a personal note on the cards, telling them how much I loved them and how great it would be to have them as one of my bridesmaids. We then made envelopes for each one out of scrapbook paper and some cute flower stickers, and added an address card with the same little cowboy boots on the front of each envelope.



I sent them off in the mail and waited for the phone calls from the girls as they got them. Everyone loved them and was thrilled to join our crazy wedding party! I am truly blessed to have such fabulous friends who are ready and willing to stand up for me on my big day, as well as listen to me talk about the wedding for one year straight :)

My Best Girls

I like to think of myself as a somewhat professional bridesmaid.



No, I don’t have 27 dresses stashed away, but I’ve been in four weddings so far, will be in two more before my own, and I do have a dedicated corner in the back of my closet just for bridesmaid dresses. I know that being a bridesmaid can be tough work. Planning theme showers and bachelorette weekends within groups of other girls usually involves some drama. Attending numerous parties and purchasing the various wardrobes required for b-maids is often financially straining. Getting up-do’s, traveling out of town, paying for hotel rooms, purchasing silver shoes, gold shoes, brown shoes, white shoes, getting lingerie for the bride, pots and pans for the couple, a round of drinks at a party - weddings have pretty much been a line item in my personal budget for the past five years, long before I ever got engaged!

Bridesmaid Hall of Fame, Starring Yours Truly:




On the flip side, I know how fantastic it is to be so closely involved in the weddings of your closest friends and family members. It’s so exciting to shop for wedding dresses with your best friends. I love being included in every shower, party or event honoring the couple leading up to their marriage. Some of my best weekends ever were at my girlfriends’ bachelorette parties in New York City, Dallas, Vegas, Austin and holed up in a cozy lakehouse. And don’t even get me started on how much fun the rehearsal dinners are, with their Ode to Couple slideshows and hours of open mic time! Plus, no matter how costly the dresses, shoes and accessories add up to be, there’s nothing better than being with your BFF on the morning of her wedding, sipping champagne while everyone gets their hair and makeup done together, anxiously awaiting the time to put on the dresses and head to the church.

Ever since I started to know that Mark was The One, I’ve been mentally constructing my own wedding party list. There have been days in the past couple years where I pulled out the post-it notes at work and started listing out the names of all my best girls, trying to figure out who I would include. The problem? I have waaay too many friends. Best friends. LLYAS friends (that’s Love Ya Like A Sister, for all those who didn’t speak in AIM code all through high school). I usually just pushed the list back into my mind thinking “I’ll figure that out when the time comes.” Well, fast forward to May and the time was here.

My initial thought was to narrow it down to six ‘maids. That would include my two sisters, two friends from high school, and two girls from college. Seemed simple enough and certainly nice and fair, right? But it wasn’t. I don’t have two BEST friends from high school or college, I have tons. And how could I take my circle of BFF’s and cut out 3-4 of them, when we all love each other and share in our lives together equally? I agonized about this for the first several weeks of our engagement, truly not knowing that to do. I considered doing only high school friends or only college friends, but that would eliminate a big chunk of my very best friends, and I couldn’t imagine my wedding without them there by my side, as I had been for some many of their big days.

So I did the only thing that made sense. I included them all! All twelve of them. My two beautiful sisters, my five high school girls who have stuck by me for the past 12+ years (through countless loser boyfriends and bad hairdo’s), and my five college besties, who’ve been by my side through frat parties, football games and countless late night Taco C runs. Sure, I get some odd looks when people ask how many bridesmaids I’m having, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. And really, is it ever a problem to have too many best friends?

Monday!!

This morning when my alarm went off, I jumped out of bed. I am so. pyshed. that it is Monday! Why? Because this weekend is over!!

This weekend was my school's 50th Anniversary/New Building Dedication/Alumni Reunion. I worked for three days straight. I was really, really nervous about most if it, mainly the Alumni Reunion, because I was 100% solely in charge of it. If it ended up sucking, it all would have been back on me. But everything was fantastic. Even better than expected. It all went so smoothly and was really a lot of fun for everyone. I am just so relieved that it's all over now!

Along with a weekend of work I also ate complete crap for the past three days. Take a look:

Friday - First ever GSES Homecoming Football Game, complete with The Hamburger Man grilling up burgers for everyone.
Saturday - New building Dedication, Alumni Art Show and Carnival, with all you can eat FREE pizza (hello, three slices) hot dogs, chips, ice cream and snow cones
Saturday Night - My reunion party! I was silently crying two weeks ago when only 47 people had RSVP'ed. We ended up with over 200 there! And.. BBQ brisket, potato salad, rolls and pie. Yum.
Sunday Morning - Alumni Breakfast.. you know, sausage, bacon, croissants, cinnamon rolls, yum, yum, yum

Saturday afternoon you would think I would have crashed, but I forged on and went to meet Laura and her sister and mom to try on her bridesmaid dresses (adorable!) and then we all grabbed lunch at Corner Bakery and chatted for a while. Then it was off to meet my dad to go to an open house up at Ursuline, and then.... dinner at Uncle Julio's. By this point, I was beyond full, yet went ahead and filled up even more on chips, salsa and tacos.

I'm starting over in October. Something's gotta give here!

Wedding dress shopping.. next week!

Raise Your Glasses

In two short weeks, one of my very best friends will be getting married. In case you’ve been following along, I still have not received the 30 Day Shred in the mail. WTF Amazon?! I only have 15 days left now, so there goes that plan. But anyways, I’ve known Stephanie since we were five years old so, do the math, that’s 20 years that we’ve been friends. That not only amazes me, but also makes me feel very old.

Last night I was at the gym for a spinning class and it suddenly occurs to me that I have to give a toast at the wedding. In front of 198 people (latest guest list tally). OMG. What am I going to say? Luckily it will be a co-toast with Mary Beth, but still. As I pedaled along, I started to think back on moments I could mention in my speech. Moments that would be both touching and funny. I want laughter and tears during my toast. I remembered the day I met Stephanie, when she knocked on my front door the morning my family moved to Dallas from Tulsa. I remember roller skating around the neighborhood with her, spending hours playing dolls, Barbies, school, house, office, and countless other pretend games. I remember how every year for Christmas, we’d always get several of the same things, something we knew Santa had worked out for us. In Middle School we made up dances in our living rooms and filmed hours of goofy movies on my parents’ video camera. My mom would drop us off at the mall, where we’d spend the twenty bucks we made babysitting on Sun Ripened Raspberry body lotion at Bath and Body Works. We went through my brother’s Jesuit yearbook to pick out all the boys we had crushes on when we started high school and studied together for exams before Christmas Break. In college, we went to school several states away but still stayed in touch. I remember on my 22nd birthday she left me a voicemail saying that I only had one year left to find a husband if I wanted to fulfill our childhood dream of getting married at 23. Then just after we graduated from college, I called her up to talk and she told me she had met a boy that she was going to marry. And now here she is, getting ready to walk down a real aisle and really marry this boy - not for pretend like when we were kids and I always ended up playing the role of priest.

I grew up with Stephanie and I am beyond excited for her big day in a few weeks. I can’t believe the moment we’ve dreamed of since we were in kindergarten is really here for her. I hope my toast does it justice. Waiter, bring on the champagne. Better keep it coming before I have to get up in front of the microphone!

Fell Off Already

Note: I just went to the snack drawer. The 30 Day Shred still hasn't arrived and I'm down to 29 days until the wedding. My plans are slowly falling apart. I did try on the bridesmaid dress last night and it's so pretty that it inspired me a little. I hung it on my closet door to stare at me every day as a reminder when I go for the ice cream in the freezer or opt to take a nap instead of go to the gym.

Bah.

Update:

Not ten minutes after I posted this, our printer delivered Sprinkles cupcakes to our office. I just inhaled a strawberry one with cream cheese frosting, so add another 800 calories to my total intake this morning. I am officially skipping lunch.

T-Minus

My next stint as a bridesmaid - excuse me, maid of honor - is exactly one month from tomorrow. the bride has been my best friend since i was five and her wedding is going to be high school reunion 2K8. I'll see people I haven't seen in years and would really like to WOW them with my stunning good looks (kidding..). i have a beautiful dress to wear and a hair appointment with THE up-do girl booked. all that's left to do is lose 5 pounds and tone my arms and shoulders. hmm. better get on that.

a few days ago i ordered the 30 Day Shred and it should arrive tomorrow. I've been reading a lot about it online and apparently it kicks your butt and you start to see results pretty quickly. If I can stick with it and stop eating the Cheeze Its, animal crackers and M&M's at work every day, I think I might be in decent shape. Hold me accountable friends. Call me around 2:00 every afternoon when I start to head towards the snack drawer and tell me to BACK AWAY.

I'll let you know how things are going after Day 5 or so on the Shred. Stay tuned.

Wedding Weekend

Stephanie and Mark tied the knot this weekend!

Disposable Cameras

Friends,

Do you even remember life before the digital camera? Remember when everyone would get a disposable camera and you would have to write your name with a sharpie on it so that you wouldn't get it mixed up with everyone else's? Last weekend I went to a Bachelorette Party for my good friend Stephanie. We went up to her parents' lake house near Gun Barrel City and spent three days working on our tans. I forgot to pack my digital camera, so I grabbed a disposable to document the weekend, like any good bridesmaid would. I had forgotten how much fun they are.

You can't take as many pictures as you want. You only get 24 chances and you can't review them to make sure the lighting was good and that no one got cropped out. You have to hold the little button to charge the flash for a few seconds before you snap your shot. You have to wind the film after each picture. The quote of the weekend was me yelling out "wait I have to wind my camera" every time I tried to take a pic. Everyone was forced to hold their poses for a little longer. Oh and there is no zoom. Well, actually there is. You walk a few steps closer.

There is also no instant gratification with disposable cameras. You have to take them to CVS, wait a few days, and then go pick up the prints. Who remembers life when it was like this? I am excited to get it developed though. There's that anticipation of all the pictures I get to see in a mere four days. I haven't felt that since I got my homecoming pictures developed back in 2000.

The B-ette party was a hit. We had an anatomically correct cake and a "surprise" lingerie shower. We played pin the pen15 on a poster with Mark's head taped to it (who all caught my reference to the Pen 15 club, circa 6th grade?). We spent hours laying on the dock with our swimsuits untied, all trying to avoid the strap lines for our dresses. We floated in the water on noodles that we unfortunately discovered were full of cockroaches (NOT cool!). We sat in the hot tub at night and talked about child birth entirely too often. We danced around to Whiteney Houston and sang all the songs from Moulin Rouge about seventeen times. We all got a little more excited for the wedding next month.

Another Weekend, Another Wedding

Mark's co-worker tied the knot last Saturday. This was actually the first wedding that we've been to together where we sat next to each other during the ceremony. For once, one of us wasnt' in the wedding. It was weird. I felt like I should have been up there, holding some flowers or something.

A Toast to Meredith

Well, the wedding is over. After months of anticipating the nuptials of Meredith and Wes, they have officially tied the knot and are currently vacationing in California for their honeymoon. As I watched my best friend walk down the aisle with her dad, I couldn't help but think about meeting Meredith the very first week of college during our freshmen year. She lived exactly five floors below me in the dorm and we'd run up and down the fire stairs at the end of our halls to see each other and work on our "base tans." We both came to UT with visions of a college life that looked like an episode of Felicity and quickly befriended each other once we realized that San Jacinto was nothing like TV and we wouldn't have any cute RA's to fall in love with us. Since then we've dressed in costumes together to go to frat parties and thrown up on each other after drinking too much of the punch. She always let me borrow her clothes and fed me coutnless snacks from the crate of goodies stashed in her closet. She's shared more Happy Meals with me than anyone else I know and she truly understands the ability of a hamburger and fries to cure a hangover. She is my best friend and I'm so happy for the new life she is starting with Wes.

The weekend was great. Lots of friends and fun, and plenty of dancing. The DJ even played Don't Stop Believing and Living on a Prayer, back to back. That makes for a fun reception. The Bride's parents even treated everyone in the wedding party to a night stay at Hotel Zaza, so we were all rockstars for the night. Pat Green was staying on our hall and gave us a quick hello when we passed him in the hall!

Oh and did I mention I had a really cute date too? :)

It's What We Do

As I've mentioned before, all I ever do is attend weddings and wedding showers. I'm at that age I guess. The age when EVERYONE ties the knot. In September, four out of five weekends involved some wedding fun. In a matter of years, I'll be at that age when everyone is having babies, and that is weird. I do feel like I'm finally old enough to see my friends get married, but when the start getting pregnant bellies, that I cannot imagine!

Two weeks ago my BFF Meredith had a Stock the Bar shower. This means we all buy her and her hubby-to-be a lot of alcohol to "stock their bar." It is not, as one clueless guest thought, a way to provide the bride and groom with drinks to serve at their reception! This STB shower had a theme: Black, White and Gold. All guests were told to wear these colors and all the drinks and decor matched. It was a lot of fun and ranks up high on the list with fun wedding showers (and I've been to my share of them!)

With only so many black options for the guys, these two showed up as Twinkies.

I discovered that my dress made it look like I was hanging out sans clothes...

Example # 2...

"The Circle of Truth"