Throwback Thursday

This coming Saturday I have the wonderful opportunity to be in a dear friend's wedding.  I am so excited to get to be a part of her special day.  In honor of the wedding, I decided to do a Throwback Thursday post from the bachelorette party.

A Little Background

Mary and I met about 2 years ago through my dad.  Mary is a child life specialist at the hospital where my dad works.  When he met Mary for her first interview, he knew we would hit it off!  My dad and I are big runners and he has since gotten a few of his co-workers to join in on the fun.  In November 2012, several of them ran the Huntington Half Marathon (I had a badly sprained ankle and couldn't participate).  The night before the race, everyone came over to our house to carb load for the next day; Mary and I met and the rest is history.  She is so sweet and we always have a blast together.  I think my dad regrets introducing us after we went on a road trip to Nashville to run a half marathon and we giggled the whole time!

The Bachelorette Party

Mary is originally from Georgia so we had the party in Atlanta.  This was the first time all six of the bridesmaids were meeting but you'd never have been able to tell; we immediately fell in to sync and everything was so easy.  It's a great group of girls!

I had to work Friday night so I flew down Saturday morning.  Once I got to the house where we were staying, two of the other bridesmaids -- Nora and Emily -- and I decided to do some last minute shopping for the weekend.  It was ... interesting.  I'll just leave it at that.  Later on, we all got ready and headed into Atlanta to go to Benihana for dinner.  It turns out that weekend was Dragon Con so downtown was a mess.  It was so much fun people watching everyone in their costumes as we navigated our way to dinner.

Mary and her "i <3 u" rice from the chef

The bride and (most of ) her maids

The lights on the building kept changing colors

We were fascinated, we thought the glass was a pool, but it was really windows to see into the mall below.

The bridal party after dinner

After dinner, we headed to some bars and clubs: we wanted to DANCE!!

With the lovely bride to be

The next day, we drove to Callaway Gardens for a hot air balloon festival.  It was so much fun!  We stayed at a cute villa, went up in a hot air balloon, tackled a ropes course and gave Mary her presents!  The resort was beautiful and it has so much to offer.  I hope to go back and get the full experience.

Waiting in line to go up in a hot air balloon!

View from the hot air balloon

This picture is too gorgeous not to share, I think Michelle took it.

We were very excited about corn dogs and funnel cakes!

Waiting for the show

There were at least a dozen balloons that lit up at night 

Ready for the ropes course! 

It was so beautiful! Next time I want to take the zip line course over the lake.

I knew people wouldn't believe me so here's proof I did the course!

We were so sweaty and tired, but WE DID IT!!

We swung through Dunkin' on the car ride home.  It's a good thing there's not one anywhere near us in Huntington.

After a great weekend, it was time to head home!

My mom and I designed these t-shirts for all of us to wear and our sweet friends at Ink Slingers made them for us

We had numbers on the backs of the shirt representing how long we've known Mary.  I don't know why the lighting is making the back of the shirt look red.