Our First Wedding Since Our Own!

This past weekend Jonathan and I made a trip up to Austin for a wedding of a friend of mine from college. She was actually one of my roommates during my senior year! It was so great to see everyone! I got to see so many people that I hadn't seen since our wedding or even longer! I met Karen through my sorority at UT. People are often surprised to hear that I was a sorority girl but it was a Catholic sorority so it's much different than what you normally think of as a sorority. Really just an organization for Catholic women. I loved being involved with Mu Epsilon Theta in college. It gave me a home while being on such a humongous campus! Karen's wedding ceremony was held at the University Catholic Center on the UT campus which is where I spent a lot of time hanging out with friends. It was so great to get to go back to campus and reminisce. It had been probably over a year or more since I'd been back. Way too long!! Everything was exactly how I'd left it!

We got there early so we walked around campus a little before the ceremony:


The tower! The heart of campus!

View from the main mall with the state capitol in the distance.

The UT campus is so pretty :-). Before we knew it, it was time for the wedding! Here's a picture of the chapel right before the ceremony started:

It was a beautiful ceremony! Karen is never one for making decisions so instead of picking one color for her wedding, she chose 5! Each bridesmaid and groomsmen wore a different color and carried a matching lantern instead of a bouquet. It was so pretty and really symbolic of how their marriage is a light to the world.

The reception was held at Maggiano's Little Italy and it was a fantastic venue! The food was great and there was tons of it! The service was amazing, the place was beautiful, and we had plenty of fun on the dance floor. All of our tables were named after different TV shows that Karen and Evan love to watch. I was a bit disappointed to not get to sit at the Boy Meets World table but our table was full of fun people. We were the Firefly table, and proud of it! Karen and Evan were announced for the first time as Mr. and Mrs. and took their first dance:

By the way, Evan can dance! He has taught ballroom dancing at UT! I felt a little intimidated but that didn't stop me from getting out on the dance floor!

I did manage to get a few pictures with the bride!

She's so beautiful!!!

 

Roommates!



All the Mu Epsilon Thetas! Mu love!

And one of us...

He's so handsome...

Karen's aunt made her dress! Can you believe that??? Especially when her aunt lives in Maine! I'm amazed she could pull that off, but Karen looked absolutely stunning! Her cousin also made her wedding cake. I want connections like hers!

It was so great to see so many friends and to catch up with each other. After the reception we all headed to a friends apartment to play cards. It was a hilarious card game called Cards Against Humanity. It's like Apples to Apples but more "adult", if you get what I mean haha. We played that for a few hours and then headed back to the hotel. As we were entering the hotel we notice Karen and Evan sitting there. They were there hanging out with their family! How lucky were we to get to see the bride and groom again?? They seemed to have a great time at their wedding and it went perfectly. We chatted for awhile until we realized that it was past 2am and Karen and Evan had to leave for their flight at 7am that morning. We said goodbye and wished for them to have a great time on their honeymoon.

Sunday morning we didn't have time to do much since we had to get back to Houston to celebrate Jonathan's birthday with our parents. However, we did manage to sneak in some time for mass, Mangia's pizza, and the arboretum! Mangia's is one of my favorite restaurants in Austin. They serve deep dish pizza they way you're supposed to make deep dish pizza: sauce on top, then cheese, and then toppings! I spent the first 10 years of my life in Chicago so I'm very partial to Chicago style pizza! It's so good! I do not think any other type of pizza qualifies as a pie... Anyways, this kind of pizza is so hard to find in Texas so I'm always stoked when we're in Austin and can go to Mangia's. Just look!



Yummmm!

We finished our trip with some Amy's Ice Cream and this beautiful view from the Arboretum:




It's nice to get to Austin and see the hills. Houston is seriously flat. Normally I don't mind, but it's refreshing to see rolling hills every now and then.

I had a blast at the wedding! I was totally reliving every minute of our wedding the whole time putting me on cloud nine haha. It didn't hurt that our friends were also telling us how amazing our wedding was too. Even Karen said so! Don't you worry, hers was up there. We settled on my wedding being the best of 2012 and hers of 2013. We both win anyways because we get to be married to our loves! Sorry to be so cheesy...weddings really bring it out in me.

Until next time,
-Chelsey