An Instagram Wedding

My friend Cortney got hitched a few weekends ago, and after a glass or four of champagne at the cocktail hour, I decided I was going to Instagram her wedding. Obviously, my favorite app ever.

Don't worry Al, yours is on the way.

I meant to take more "detail" pictures, because Cortney had SO MANY of them (you did a beautiful job, my dear), but, she also had an open bar. Just sayin'.

The Annas. Love my ex-coworkers!

Megan and I.

What are the odds of wearing a dress that you bought in 2009 to a wedding...and seeing someone else...that you know...wearing the same dress? :)

Lovely ladies!

Missed you so, my dear.

The groom's cake...can you tell what it is? (hint...I've spoken of my love for this company more than once on this blog)

That salad up there? To DIE for.

Guess who caught the bouquet (this was TOTALLY by chance, too ;) ). Again, just sayin'...SAM.

A little washed out, but you can tell just how beautiful Cortney looked regardless.

My favorite. What a beautiful couple.

Cortney, thanks for including me in your special day. You were beautiful and your hard work paid off big time!

PS: The dancing videos are still safely on my camera and will not be shared on this blog or any other public arena.

spring break 2012

Sam and I had big plans for spring break originally (Austin, Nashville, Chicago were all ideas thrown around), but since we're both poor students, our crazy destinations were KC and St. Louis.

The gorgeous weather we've been having in the Midwest have made this week especially feel like a vacay, which is maybe why I'm having a hard time getting motivated to do all of the homework and fill out all of the job applications I should be working on. Instead, I've been watching a lot of movies, spending a lot of time outside, and generally avoiding the reality check I'm going to be hit with on Monday. Yikes.


We started off the week with one of my best friend's wedding reception at the National Airline History Museum in downtown KC. She got married out of town in November, and had her in town reception here this past weekend.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I have pretty friends.

Friends for a long, long time.

What a handsome man.

The next day, Sam and I headed back to St. Louis to hang out for a couple of days.

On Monday, we went to the zoo because it was GORGEOUS outside. Unfortunately, we didn't look up the time or anything, and we got there at 3:30...FYI, the zoo closes at 5:00 on weekdays. We speed-walked through the exhibits, which was fine, because we've gone a bunch of times, and it was fun just to be out in the nice weather.

I don't know that I've ever noticed anteaters at the zoo before, but they are SO WEIRD.

The elephants are one of my favorite exhibits.

Sam's enjoying the exhibit!

Camels are also weird creatures.

Do they spit? Sam and I couldn't remember, and there were a couple of people debating this around us too.

Has anyone noticed how incredibly windy it has been lately? Although I'll admit, the breeze was nice while we were walking around.

The bears!

Apparently these penguins lives somewhere where the air is hot and the water is freezing, which is why they can acclimate so well to the temperature here. I'm not sure I buy it but it makes me feel a little better about penguins living in St. Louis.

 One day I got to have lunch with another one of my besties, J. You probably recognize her from earlier posts! I have missed her a lot. She's crazy busy because she's in nursing school as well...although our goal is to work at the same hospital so we can see each other all the time :).

 Since I've been home I've just been chilling with this little man. He's been following me around like a shadow. I guess he doesn't really understand where I went for 5 days. Sorry, babe. Bella doesn't really care that I was gone. Typical.

Today I've been staring at my homework pile and decidedly ignoring it. I've also been mourning Mizzou's loss in the NCAA basketball tournament (I picked them to win in BOTH of my brackets. Ugh). I've also been rejoicing in Duke's loss for the past few minutes, even though I picked them to go to the Elite 8.

I know I've been a total slacker in the blogging world lately. Really all I do is go to school, come home, apply for jobs (I'm up to 20 or so, so far), do homework, and lament about the fact that I should be doing more than I already am. I can't wait for this process to be over. If only I could have a glass ball to peek into the future so I'd know in 3 months or so everything would be figured out!

I do have some exciting events coming home (some more wedding events!) so hopefully I'll keep up on my blog posts so people will know I haven't fallen off the face of the earth :).

healthy living, and all that it entails.

From mid-March to mid-July, I have 8 different bridal events to attend, ranging from showers to bachelorette parties to weddings to receptions. Eight. I am so excited for all of them, because there's nothing I like more than a good wedding.

One thing I'm not excited about? All of the dresses and pictures that are involved in said bridal events.


My best friend A is getting married in June is Florida, and since I'm one of her bridesmaids (and not to mention there are beaches in Florida), I have been trying really hard to change my "school" eating habits into some healthy eating habits. Some days it works, some days it doesn't. No Spend November helped a little in this aspect, because I have virtually stopped eating fast food. I don't miss it in the slightest, which makes me wish I had put myself in a spending freeze a long time ago. Starting January 1st, I cut out any kind of soda that has calories in it. This kills me because I love Coke and I hate Diet Coke. I do, however, like Diet Dr. Pepper so that's going to help wean me off of the soda all together because I'm of the opinion that diet soda causes cancer and rots you from the inside out {okay maybe it doesn't, but just let me think that}. There are two major vices GONE.

Remember when I said during the month of no spending that having someone hold you accountable makes all the difference in the world? My friend Chelsea was one of the people instrumental in that lesson and turns out she's pretty instrumental in this one, too. We use an app for the iPhone called "My Fitness Pal" where you can log all of your food and exercise and it gives you all sorts of great nutritional info. It also has a bar code scanner that I swear will change your life. If you eat, say, a granola bar, you just scan the bar code and it uploads all of the info right away. And, if you don't log in for a few days, it tells your friend that you need some encouragement. How great is that? Knowing that she can see if I worked out or if I met my calorie goal makes me try harder to meet both goals.

My friend L is also attending A's wedding in Florida, and she's working hard to get in shape not only for the wedding but also just to better herself. I'm always really motivated when I see her twitter or blog about how she worked out, and think to myself, "Listen, you don't want to be the only one on a beach embarrassed about being there, so you better get up and get on that treadmill!" Her husband challenged her to run 500 miles in the 2012, which sounds like a lot, but if you break it down it's less than 1.5 miles each day. I asked her if I could adopt that as one of my goals too, and she was very sweet as to say yes.

So why are you reading all about my sad attempts to get in shape? Because I want you to hold me accountable, too! If you see me in class or on the street or heaven forbid in a Coldstone Creamery (ice cream is another vice), remind me about this blog post. Ask me if I have worked out today.

While I would love to look like this...

Who else loves Miranda Kerr? I also think her husband, Orlando Bloom, is an attractive fellow.

I would totally settle for this:

Which is admittedly 4 years ago, yet totally achievable if I really set my mind to it!

So for now: 3.5 miles down, 496.5 to go.

Lindsey's bachelorette weekend!

So as you may know, the last week has been pretty rough, but I'm sick of being sad, so I'm going to talk about HAPPY things for the next week (and beyond).

First up, a few weeks ago, my friend Abby and I headed to St. Louis to celebrate our friend Lindsey's upcoming nuptials with a fun bachelorette weekend. WEEKEND, you heard that right. It was just what I needed to get out of my school rut and have some fun with the girls.

I can show you better than I can tell you what all we did, so here we go...

Abby and I headed to St. Louis and went straight to Sam's apartment to get ready for the evening and took the ever typical bathroom pic before heading out.

Some of the ladies, and you can see some of the decorations there in the foreground ;).

Friends since the 4th grade :).

Abby with the beautiful bride-to-be.

Love you, my dear!

Modeling some of her gifts from Friday night :).

Lindsey's dancing on the stage at Jive and Wail in the background, but in the foreground is one of the other brides...I think she was about 13.

Stealin the show!

This photo is courtesy of The Four Seasons in St. Louis... we did some major pampering.

Ridin in style, duh.

The end!

weekend of bridal fun :)

Something happened to me last Saturday that NEVER happens. NEVER.

I mixed up the dates of something.

As all of you know, I am type A to the nth degree. In fact, I not only write things in a planner, I have a calendar hanging on my closet door that I put all of my important events on, AND I keep them on my iCal, which is on my phone, my iPad, AND my computer. So while you may all be under the delusion that I'm just totally awesome and can remember everything, not true. I have a lot of help.

Anyway, despite my best efforts to remain organized, I still messed up. So, Al & Linds, I AM SO SORRY even though I've apologized to both of you a million, trillion times.

See, my BFF Allie is getting married next June. She came in town to try on wedding dresses last weekend, but I wrote down that she was coming on October 1st. So even though she sent me a text at 9:30 in the morning and asked if we were still on, my school fried brain somehow thought she was confirming for NEXT weekend. I swear. I'm losing it. 

So while I was celebrating my ooother BFF Lindsey's upcoming nuptials at her bridal shower, Allie was waiting for me on the other side of KC at a winery with another one of her bridesmaids. Cue the texts and phone calls asking me, in much nicer words than I would have used, where the hell I was. Long story short, I ran out of Lindsey's bridal shower in tears to frantically meet up w/ Allie, which is just ridiculous, and in the process blew off my other wonderful friend Abby (who may not read this, but Ab, I'm sorry again, again.).

So, Allie. I'm sorry I was late, but totally happy that the rest of the day went smoothly and it all worked out for the best! You're seriously a wonderful friend, and I can't believe you weren't mad. Lindsey, I am sorry that I was a crazy person. I had SO much fun at your shower, and can't wait to see you again. And Abby, I'm making that shopping trip up to you this week!

And to those of you that weren't there, but I'm sure can imagine me having a panic attack when I realized that I'm a human that makes mistakes and actually forgets things sometime, yet still apologizing with words going about a million miles a minute, I'm sorry you read all of that above.


And what's a long blog post without some pictures? Duh! Here are some I took at Lindsey's shower. I have some from dress shopping with Allie, but those shall remain hidden until June 7th.

The bride-to-be hard at work in the kitchen!

Lindsey's grandma and aunt helping out.

Some lovely ladies

Lindsey and her mom :)

And with her grandma :)

miss you already!

One of my favorite gifts she received, haha.

ribbon bouquet! love these girls.

I have beautiful friends, it's true.

PS: Lindsey, tell your mom I will get these to her ASAP.

Wedding Weekend

I feel like my last post was such a bummer, so I'm going to follow it up with the awesomeness that was my friends Jess and Kevin's wedding this past weekend. I unfortunately don't have any pictures of the groom, and very few of the bride (I'm so sorry guys!) but I cannot be held responsible because I didn't start taking pictures until late in the evening and by that time I was lucky to get any. Let me point out that they had an open bar, and the father of the bride picked out some very. good. wine.

Bonding with friends!

Singing to Celine.

Laughing until we cry.

Tearing up the dance floor...

Reuniting after far. too. long.

 All in all, a successful weekend.