Perfect

Don't think I have completely forgotten about you. I haven't! I have just been working. Trying to make that money to pay the bills. You know how it is. But I wanted to share our wedding video with you guys since some of you have been around since we first started planning our wedding. Even though I was there...I kind of went by in a blur, so the video has been a nice way to remember all those little details!

The whole video is 25 minutes long, so you probably don't want to watch the whole thing. But I do have some favorite moments, which I have listed below. Also, don't mind the excessive awkwardness. While I am typically fairly awkward on a daily basis, I feel like the pre-ceremony nerves and the post-ceremony alcohol (I gave up drinking the month of, so a little went a long way) really amplified things.


The Wedding of Lindsey & Billy from Meurer Image Photography on Vimeo.

1:09 Me thinking: "Wait, don't grab your boobs, people are filming this."
3:26 B's dad showing him how to tie a tie....even thought B knows exactly what he is doing.
4:40 Our freaking adorable ring bearer who totally crushed it.
5:13 B totally not crying, because he is a man and he would never cry.
5:28 Me desperately trying not to cry...or throw up (y'all, I was freaking nervous - just ask my dad).
5:54 The sail boat going by as we prayed. My eyes were closed so I totally missed that, but it is perfectly San Diego.
9:15 B and I flubbing our ring exchange, which was then followed by our pastor saying "let me pray for you two". We need it.
9:57 The foot pop.
12:02 Our first dance, and B cutting the tension by being silly, as usual.
Lots of dancing.....
18:18 The cake cutting.
More dancing.....
23:31 Me and my best girl friends dancing and singing at the top of our lungs to Katy Perry's Roar....and B's dad just also dancing and singing at the top of his lungs.
24:52 At the end of the last dance, me saying to B, "We made it."

We made it!!

Also, just in case you are wondering, the music used in this video were all songs we used throughout the wedding day:
1. At Last by Etta James - our last dance song
2. Perfect by John McLaughlin - the song we walked back down the aisle to
3. Canon in D - the song I walked down the aisle to
4. You are the Best Thing by Ray LaMontagne - the song we played for the wedding party entrance to the reception
5. Hold You in my Arms by Ray LaMontagne - our first dance song
....then some random dancing music....

Favorite Moments from 2013

B asked me the other day what my favorite moments were of the past. Of course the wedding and honeymoon were up high on the list, but I had to think a little to come up with all 5. After some reflection, I think I came up with a pretty good list.

Starting at 5....

5. Seeing our new apartment in Charlotte for the first time. We had to sign our lease sight-unseen so we really had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. After a very long day driving across half the country, we pulled into our new "home", and to say we were relieved would be an understatement. It took us a while to really make Charlotte our home, but it has been very good to us this year.

4. Either Baylor winning the Big 12 Championship or Baylor beating OU. Basically, my 4th favorite moment was Baylor's amazing season! I couldn't be prouder!

3. Sitting at a winery in Fredricksberg, TX with some of my best friends in the world for my Bachelorette. There is nothing better than time with good friends who you don't see very often. I had the best time at my bachelorette party and at our last stop we just sat around a table together drinking wine, eating cheese, and chatting. Perfection.

2. Laying on a beach in Aruba with no where else to go and nothing else to do. Our honeymoon was one of the best vacations I have ever been on. And it was exactly what we needed. A nice relaxing week on a beach, reading a good book and drinking cheap beer.

 

1. Standing hand-in-hand with my soon-to-be husband at the wedding alter. I was a nervous wreck before walking down the aisle, but once I got down there and was facing the beautiful San Diego Bay and standind next to B, I was at total peace and completely happy.

 

Happy New Year! What were your favorite moments from 2013?

 

One Happy Island

Aruba likes to say that they are "one happy island", and after spending one glorious week there, both B and I can attest to that. The people are incredibly friendly, and it is impossible to be in a foul mood when the weather is constantly a pleasant 80 degrees and sunny.

 

 B planned our entire honeymoon. I actually wanted little to do with any of it since I was in the midst of planning our wedding. All I knew is that we were going to Aruba and the days we would be there. I literally knew nothing else.

The resort that B picked was voted the #1 more romantic hotel on the island. The Bucuti Beach Resort is a small, boutique resort located in the low rise part of the island (the low-rise resorts are on one part of the island, and the high-rise resorts are on another). One of the major selling points is that is adults only, which we greatly appreciated. Being so much smaller than other resorts, the Bucuti paid a lot attention to detail. When we arrived, we received a glass of champagne and a cool, mint-scented towel. They also provided us with a bottle of champagne in our room since we were on our honeymoon.

The best thing about the honeymoon is that we had no plans what-so-ever. We didn't feel the need to do any sight-seeing or excursions - we just sat on the beach, read our books, and drank. The water was gorgeous and always the perfect temperature - cooler than the air around you, but warm enough that it never felt cold.

One of the days we did break from routine and headed out to the other side of the island.  Instead of perfect sand beaches, like the western side, the eastern side of the island is sand dunes and steep cliffs - definitely not inhabitable. But it is incredibly beautiful.

That same day we also drove down to the southern part of the island, to a small beach called Baby Beach. Name that way because of it's shallow waters and the protection it gets from a sand bar a few yards out from the shoreline.

Overall, the food in Aruba is great. There were a lot of restaurants recommended to us, and for the most part, no one steered us wrong. My best friend recommended that we try the Flying Fishbone one night, which was probably the best recommendation. You literally sit on the beach, toes in the sand. Some tables were actually in the water. It was amazing to be sitting, eating dinner, and peer over into the water and watch fish swim and crabs crawl around.

I would highly recommend Aruba (and definitely the Bucuti) if you are looking for a beach vacation. B and I are already trying to plan a trip back!

Honeymoon Checklist

In a couple weeks B and I will be headed off on our honeymoon. As I have stated multiple times, we have been looking forward to the honeymoon more than the wedding. Any opportunity to lay on beach, drink, and relax sounds like a blast to me.

B planned the whole honeymoon himself. I tried to have as little input as possible. To be honest, during the wedding planning process, I did not want to be bothered with making any extra decisions, so if it wasn't that important to me, I made B make the decision. He ended up picking Aruba as our destination. Neither of us has been before and we have heard great things. It is also only a 4 hour direct flight from Charlotte, which means we won't lose a lot of time traveling.

I am getting so excited, that despite still being a couple weeks away, I am already planning my packing list and making plans of all the things I want to do while we are there.

1. Swimsuit 2. Book 3. Sandals 4. Cover Up 5. Sunscreen 6. Sunglasses

If you have ever been to Aruba, I would love to hear about any restaurants, shops, or activities you recommend! Or, if you have recently been on your honeymoon, is there something you wish you and your husband did or wish you had packed?

Celebrity-versary

You know how when you first begin a relationship, you celebrate every little anniversary - 2 weeks, 1 months, 3 months, 6 months, etc. That first anniversary is a big deal! Then from there you probably acknowledge the milestones between year 1 and year 2. For B and I, after year 3, we really stopped celebrating anniversaries. Hell, our 5th dating anniversary was last month and we both forgot!!

Marriage anniversaries are a little different. I hope B and I acknowledge and celebrate every year. Even if it's just a quiet meal at home.  But just like that first year of a relationship, we have already started celebrating the mini-milestones. However, instead of counting by weeks or months, we are counting by celebrity marriages!

We have already been fortunate enough to celebrate our Britney Spears and Carmen Electra anniversary. Our Mario Lopez-Ali Landry is next week. The big one will be the Kim Kardashian anniversary. I think for that one, B is going to rent out the Charlotte Knights ball park and propose to me all over again on the jumbo-tron*.

If we can make it to our Kenny Chesney - Renee Zellweger anniversary, well, then we will really know we've made it.

Here are all the celebrity-versaries we have to look forward this year!

2 days - Britney Spears and Jason Alexander
9 days - Carmen Electra and Dennis Rodman
18 days - Mario Lopez and Ali Landry
26 days - Axel Rose and Erin Everly
72 days - Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries
107 days - Lisa Marie Presley and Nicholas Cage
122 days - Pam Anderson and Kidd Rock
163 days - Drew Berrymore and Tom Green
205 days - Elizabeth Taylor and Conrad Hilton
218 days - Jennifer Lopez and Chris Judd
225 days - Kenny Chesney and Renee Zellweger

Do you do anything fun to celebrate your anniversary?

*I hope you got that this was an obscure reference to Kim and Kanye's engagement. 

Being a Bride...

....is about as close to being a celebrity as I will be.

If you have gotten married, you might know what I am talking about. About half way through the wedding day, while getting ready, I was thinking "This is what J Lo must feel like!!" Here are all the ways I think bring a bride is like being a celebrity.

1. You are constantly getting photographed.

How many cameras can you spot?

2. You have an entourage, i.e. the wedding party. 

3. For the past 4 weeks you have been on all sorts of diets and cleanses to fit into a dress.

I drank 1-2 of these every day the week before the wedding.

4. You have a team of people who have been hired to make you look beautiful.

5. You've spent months (and a lot of money) finding the perfect dress and getting it fitted, only to wear it once.

The dress getting zipped up the day after.

6. After your big event, you go to In-and-Out...or eat everything you have been depriving yourself of.

Donut holes, coffee with cream, and a chocolate muffin. Yum!

7. You can tell people to get you coffee or lunch, and they won't tell you to eff off.

8. People are obsessed with what you are wearing, from your dress to your jewelry.

Getting my bling checked out.

Not going to lie, it was kinda fun to be pampered and doted on all day. And, as much as I hate being the center of attention, all that attention wasn't terrible. But I would hate to actually be a celebrity. That is about as close as I ever want to be to being a celebrity.

Did you feel like a celebrity on your wedding day?

Best Day Ever

It's been said before, but I will say it again: Your wedding day is one of the fastest day of your life. Mine got off to a slow start. I didn't sleep well the night before so I was up at 6:00am. I walked over to a nearby Starbucks, ran over and dropped stuff off at my moms house, and then just hung out in the hotel room waiting for the day to begin. But once it did, it was over in an instant.

I can't wait to get more pictures back from our photographer...which I expect will take a while. Fortunately, my uncle took a lot of pictures from both the rehearsal dinner and wedding that we have been able to go through and relive our big day.

I will share some more details of the day, and the week leading up to it. But for now, I will just share some of my favorites shots from Thursday and Friday.

The view from our rehearsal dinner venue, the University Club, looking over San Diego Bay.

Mom, B, me, and my Godparents - the sponsors of our wedding at the Admiral Kidd Club (a Navy Base)

The view from the wedding ceremony looking across San Diego Bay towards Downtown.

I don't remember why B was laughing.

At the end of the kiss, B decided to do a foot pop, which got a laugh from the crowd. I had no idea why people were laughing at us.

Me and the groomsmen.

The cake cutting. B wiped frosting on my face, so I was getting him back. I also like the pictures of his parents and my grandparents cake cutting on our right.

 I could go through wedding pictures all day! 

Decision Tree

Do you have lessons or material from high school or college that you still remember to this day even though it is so trivial at the time or even now? One of those things for me, was learning how to do a decision tree in grad school. 

 

It was part of our Statistics class my first semester, and while the class was kind of boring, the tests were fun because you had all week to work through a particular scenario. There were 4-5 different scenarios handed out in class, and you could group up and work together. One of those tests involved making a decision tree in Excel, which is essentially like a big tree diagram that use a ton of "if" statements. "If X happens then Y", "If X doesn't happen, then Z". You get the idea. Well, it got to the point where I had used so may "if" functions in Excel that my computer just crashed. Like blue screen of death, crashed. Maybe I hit some weird sequence of keys that was a secret self destruct code for my computer. Or maybe it got so fed up with making all these decisions that it just shut down.

 

I tell you this story for 2 reasons. First, to weed out anyone who only thinks this post is going to be about statistics. But mainly to make the point that life is metaphorical a decision tree. There are so many decision we make on a day to day basis, but its hard to see the affect they have on your life. Or sometimes you just need a little perspective.

 

Tomorrow I get to marry the love of my life. But several different decisions 7 years ago could have changed all of that.

 

For instance, if I had decided to sit somewhere else in my marketing class would I have ever met Derrick, one of B's best friends?

 

Or, what if I had never introduced Derrick to my friend Mallory who ended up dating? If they had never gotten together, Mallory wouldn't have brought Derrick and his friend, B, to one of our sorority functions.

A picture from the night B and I met. No pictures of us together, but all of these girls will be at our wedding, except Christina (second from the right). She just has a baby two weeks ago, so I think she has a good excuse.

 After Mallory and Derrick broke up, I remained friends with Derrick and even decided to work the same shift in the computer lab as him. Almost every week, B, would come by and wait for Derrick to get off work and kill time by bugging me.

First picture of B and I together, December 2006. At the time, neither of us were interested in the other.

Those random conversations led a friendship that made him the first person I called when I had half a keg left over after a graduation party. Because of that, it lead to a Facebook conversation that eventually transitioned to AIM conversations, which eventually transitioned into phone converstaions. 

 

For a year after graduation we stayed in touch, despite him living in Charlotte and me in Houston. There was one weekend (Memorial Day weekend) where we were both going to be in Dallas, and I told myself that if he doesn't make the effort to see me I would stop talking to him. At 11:00pm on that Sunday he called and we hung out for the first time since college. 

August 2008 - A super awkward picture of B and I on our first date in Houston.

In August of that year, I made the decision that I wanted to visit him to see if "there was anything there". Instead he made the decision to come to Houston. After that visit we became "official".

 

2 years later, I made the decision to go to grad school in Dallas and he made the decision to transfer his job to Dallas. For the first time since college we were actually living in the same place.

Our first New Year's Eve in the same city!

I feel like any one of those decisions could have gone the other way. I could have decided to sit on the other side of the room and never have met Derrick to introduce to Mallory who would introduce me to B. Or I could have chosen to give the keg so some other guy, who wouldn't have been so kind to write me a thank you note on Facebook. Or I could have given up on B and found some other guy that was more conveniently located. Or we could have decided that neither one of us was worth the move.

 

So many random decisions, who knew they would all be so important?