I Went to Six Weddings in Eight Months

For some reason, wedding season last year went from October to June and I went to almost one a month. Add in the wedding showers and engagement parties and thats...a lot of events. The best part about it was definitely the people. I met people from all over the United States and several foreign countries as well.

It was really cool to see the Slovakian traditions at Eva's wedding, especially the trick pitcher she and Billy had to figure out how to drink from. I also loved Suellen's wedding where I met and danced with people from Brazil, Spain and Germany. I loved meeting an entire chapter of Pikes (Pi Kappa Alpha - my Dad's fraternity) at Rebecca and John's wedding, and John had the best groom's cake, made in the shape of the Astrodome! I have never before sent a bride and groom down the aisle to the sound of cap guns shooting like we did at Meghan and Donnie's wedding, and I guess I should have worn a dress to that one because my daughters wanted to dance with everyone else's mom instead of me! Lora's maid of honor had the best speech I think I've ever heard, I laughed really hard and still remember the advice she gave Lora and Bret, "If you are ever angry with each other, take off your clothes and see if you still feel like fighting while you're naked", or something to that effect. My favorite part of Lauren and Cordero's wedding is split between seeing Cordero cry when Lauren walked down the aisle, and seeing Alexis and Lola (the flower girls) very carefully and hilariously placing the flower petals everywhere but the path.

I went alone to the two out of state weddings, and Eric accompanied me to the other four, and our poor daughters only got to go to two. Eric wore the same clothes to three of the weddings. If you look closely at the photo booth pictures you can see which shirt was different. Obviously I needed a new outfit for each one, because fashion. Vivienne had been sick the week before Lauren's wedding and threw up at the rehearsal dinner and the reception. That was so awesome, she wrote sarcastically. I've already written about the foot infection I got trying to look cute for Suellen's wedding so I won't detail that here. I will say the most surreal part had to be when I found myself with a curling iron, curling Eva's hair. Eva has spent her whole life trying to tame or straighten her gloriously beautiful natural curls. So I didn't see that one coming. Each wedding was touching and each bride was stunning, and I did cry a lot.

Now I have a ton of photo booth pictures:

And I made a lot of new friends:

I was a bridesmaid in two of the weddings:

And somehow Kristen convinced me to sing with her at one of them:

I went to one wedding on the East coast:

And one on the West coast:

Two of the weddings were for my best friends' younger siblings:

One was for my cousin (okay she's actually my half first cousin once removed but we just skip all that and call each other cousins because that's simpler than explaining that my dad and her grandpa are half brothers):

The rest were close friends:

In all it was a very exhausting eight months, and I witnessed an awful lot of love happening, which was beautiful, and I have almost perfected crying without smudging my mascara. So congratulations to all the happy couples, half of whom have already celebrated their year anniversary before I got around to blogging about their weddings. Here they are in order of their nuptials:

Eva and Billy Newcomb

Lora and Bret Grigsby

Meghan and Donnie Lunsford

Suellen and Nick Weller

Lauren and Cordero Martin

Rebecca and John Zerwas

And many congratulations for all the honeymoon babies! There are five so far!