love thursday: bethany hearts chad

Since my beloved Bethany, college roommate and friend extraordinaire, got engaged in December, I’d been anticipating her wedding weekend in Nashville. I bought a dress, booked a plane ticket and hotel room, found her some pretty lingerie and a custom cake server, and packed a suitcase with warm-weather clothes (and, ahem, four books). We woke up waaay before dawn on Thursday to catch a 5:15 flight out of Boston. And the next three days were pure friendship and fun and giggles.

(Bridesmaids. Yes, I know we’re cool. Don’t be jealous.)

Of course, the ceremony was beautiful; they’re so much in love; I’m thrilled for them; etc. But what makes these wedding weekends so much fun is being there for your friends – decorating, chauffeuring, helping make decisions and fix makeup and set up tables and straighten veils and reassuring the bride’s sister that, no, the cake is not going to fall. (It didn’t. Though it did lean.)

(I don’t know what Abi is saying. But I love these faces.)

I loved all of it. All of it. Walking down the aisle to “Africa” (which is, for some unknown reason, Chad’s theme song) and taking goofy pictures before and after the ceremony and making sure the garter stayed where it was supposed to and calling the groom from the bride’s cell phone after she left it at the church. (Fortunately, they were only a few miles down the road, so they circled back for it, still with birdseed in their hair and lipstick on their car windows.)

The other best part of these weekends is being there with your friends. Namely, five of us squishing into a hotel room and quoting Friends all weekend; relaxing with the girlies as we all sat side by side getting spa pedicures on Friday; catching up with friends I hadn’t seen in six months or a year or three years; grabbing frozen yogurt with a newly-returned-to-Nashville friend and her husband, who grew up in a town 50 miles from mine. It felt so good, all weekend, to be with old friends, and to relax into being known.

(Amanda and her daughter Virginia came up from Abilene, to hug the bride. Abi, Kelsey and I, on the right, were all bridesmaids.)

(Stealing kisses from the bride, who has called my husband her “roommate-in-law” for years.)

Happy Love Thursday. May you spend at least part of this day with people who love you.

Advertisement