Bachelorette Weekend in NOLA

Another New Orleans vacation is in the books.  The beauty of having a small bridal party (and a small group of girlfriends :P) is that it makes taking a trip for your bachelorette party a lot easier and New Orleans — my second home — was the obvious destination choice.

I have a ton of pictures — that still somehow only capture a small percentage of what we did — so I’ll try to keep the intro short and sweet.  What can I say?  We ate, we drank, we listened to live jazz, we hung out on Bourbon, we sweated (a lot!), we shopped, we toured the Garden District, we laughed, we danced and then we ate and drank some more 🙂

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Airport Mimosas!

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Obv I made a hashtag… that I mostly used…

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We had breakfast at this hipster donut shop that totally belongs in Denver.  This pistachio brown butter donut was amazing!

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Me and my MOH!  Please note the fun bachelorette sashes Jenn made for all of us.

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Red Dress Run was a blast!  Also my white dress and red veil got us tons of attention.  Everyone loved it!

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When your drink actually comes with a pair of sunglasses you know it’s going to be a good night.

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Yes, it was necessary to order all three desserts.

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It’s probably best that this is the only photo I took of our Saturday night out on Bourbon.  And it just so happened that I took it from a balcony 🙂

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This house was 28,000 square feet!!!!

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Someone was ready for a Pimm’s Cup on the porch at The Columns.

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Obligatory trip to Café du Monde for the NOLA newbies.  Guess I should’ve warned Jenn that it was not going to be clean 🙂

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And snowballs at Pandora’s to end the trip, naturally.

24 days until the wedding!!!!!

A Weekend at the Cabin

Most of the time my writing falls into one of two camps.  Either I write about something right away because I’m still riding a high and can’t wait to get the words out or it takes me a few days to write anything at all because I feel changed by the experience and I need to let it sink in before I can find the words.  The latter is how I feel about our trip to the cabin this past weekend.

There was a clock in the kitchen that was out of batteries and just stood at 5:35 and I felt like it was such a perfect metaphor for the weekend.  It really did feel like time was standing still.  And I mean that in the best way possible.  I know spending two and half days in a quaint cabin in the mountains might not sound that life-changing, but for me, it really is.  The peace, relaxed vibe and views are unparalleled.  It’s a total body and mind reset and I savor every second.

I know this trip will forever stick out in our memory — not just because the weather was perfect, or because Joey got redemption for the Uno slaughtering from last year, or because I allowed myself to get totally sucked into “A Moveable Feast” or because we ate ice cream in a rain storm and leisurely sipped coffee in the sun on the porch — but because we wrote our wedding vows to each other.  It was an amazing experience that does and will mean so much to me for the rest of forever.  For the record, after we wrote them, Joey tried to read them over to me — he got as far as “Lauren…” when I started crying so yeah, I’m going to be a huge mess come September 6th.

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Can you spot the baby bunny?

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Joey ate the above pictured PB&H sandwich, followed by a dessert of chili cheese fries and a 3-scoop ice cream cone.  Where is he putting it, people?!

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Yes, these are truly the kinds of outfits I wear when I have no one to impress.

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Unpictured: the bajillion handfuls of trail mix I ate, all the hummingbirds that zoom around up there, a lovely Saturday afternoon nap and my inability to readjust to real life now that we’re home and back at work.