New Year's Eve Wedding

My BFF from college got married on New Year's Eve in Atlanta. Luckily my aunt works for an airline and I was able to get a buddy pass to fly in and out the same day. For the past year we have been planning on spending New Year's Eve in Atlanta so that we could attend the wedding, but over Christmas we realized that there was really no way to make it work. We don't have a sitter there anymore since my parents have moved. We considered flying my mom or Jeff's in town, but then we would have had to get two rooms (on New Year's Eve) and it was getting so expensive that it didn't make sense. Plus, even if we stayed out past midnight we would still have had to wake up with Lucas at 7am and then drive back to Raleigh. Yuck - it just sounded way too exhausting. So I caught a 7am flight to Atlanta and landed back in Raleigh at 11:46pm. I rang in the New Year on I-40 heading home, but I was so happy to see my boys and snuggle up in our warm house that it was fine.

The wedding was amazing. I could tell that Mandy had put tons of time into every little detail. I met the other girls at 11am for hair and make-up, we had lunch, and then headed to the church for pictures. The wedding was at 6:30, reception started at 7:15, dinner was at 8:30 and I was headed to the airport by 9:00. I got to spend a lot of time with Lauren, which was just as nice as being in the wedding. Mandy, Lauren and I all played softball in college, were roomies for a year or two and also traveled Europe together in 1998 (where I started dating Jeff). Every year for the few years after college we would have a girls weekend in NYC, Boston, or wherever Mandy was living at the time. I miss those times. Now Mandy and Lauren are both back in Atlanta, so that will make planning our next trip a little easier.

Here are some pics of my trip...

It was foggy flying into ATL. Here is a pic looking back over the wing of the plane. Everything was covered by the clouds except for the top of the buildings... very cool.

A bonus was that I had time to stop and see JoAnn's work, meet her friends, and thank her for the buddy pass!