Duffey/Fackler Wedding

Dear Blog,

This past weekend was my friend Addy's wedding in the delightful city of Birmingham, AL. Before I start talking about the beautiful wedding, I will share how Adelaide and I know each other. About 5 1/2 years ago, Lord Jesus I'm getting old, Adelaide and I decided to make a little trip across the ocean to France for our 3 month foreign study. We didn't know each other before the trip but some of our mutual friends told us that we needed to hang out because we would like each other. That is saying a lot because I don't like a lot of people but our mutual friends were right!! I love me some Adelaide. She is one of the most genuine, down to earth, lovely on the inside and out persons I know. Somehow I messed up the grammar sentence, but I don't care. Well, TGFA, (thank goodness for Adelaide) because the rest of the people on our trip were just straight up goober heads. On the real. I can say that now because if people on the trip read this blog, which I highly doubt, then I don't care. Y'all are goobers. So, we bonded and have remained lifelong friends or at least 5 1/2 year long friends since France. Which brings us to her wedding. She married a fellow Furman-ite, Leo, and so there were a lot of Furman peeps at the wedding and it felt like a mini homecoming, with a whole lot of "hey how are you? what are you doing these days?"...awkward pause...."well, you look great! take care" But there were a lot of peeps I enjoyed seeing (most of them were the b-maids and their sig. others and then Bryce is always funny oh and B and his new girlfriend) Oh, I met a FABULOUS man whom Leo knows through his stint as a career man for Sigma Chi, I don't remember his name but he lives in Wyoming and he is a spitting image of Tim Gunn from Project Runway. If you're out there Tim Gunn double, I love you. Call me, I mean it. We'll talk about wide leg trousers vs. skinny jeans! And how I can make couture out of trash from a New Jersey dump, Carry on!


On to the wedding! Adelaide, duh, looked gorgeous and her flowers were probably the prettiest things I have ever seen in my life! Her veil, I believe, was a family heirloom and it was so beautiful! I cried a little tear or two as my little Addy walked down the aisle :) Alright, so back to her beautiful flowers, I don't know s*!t about flowers so don't ask me what was in her arrangements, but just trust me, they were top notch. Everything was beautiful and congrats to the happy couple!!

Highlights of the trip:
1. Aaron and I showing up an hour early to the wedding day brunch because we didn't realize Birmingham was in a different time zone. Yes, we ate retard sandwiches for breakfast that morning.
2. Spending Saturday afternoon at the Birmingham YMCA public pool.
3. Watching Dr. McFadden playing the bagpipes down the aisle for the groomsmen processional.

xoxo,
Al

"...take this moment to make you my family..."

Dear Blog,
So, I've taken a while to blog about the wedding because I had to feel inspired. I can't blog for the sake of blogging or because other people want me to. Tonight, I feel like blogging about the wedding. At the risk of sounding enormously cheesy, our wedding day was the happiest day of my life. There. I said it and got it out of the way. The entire engagement period I called myself the anti-bride because a lot of the details didn't matter to me. I wanted my close friends and family to share the special day and of course I wanted it to be pretty but dang. It's just one day. I know some women are reading this and thinking I'm being incredibly noncholant, but what I say in reply is that I'd much rather have a dream marriage than a dream wedding. So, taking this attitude, planning the wedding was easy. We found our reception site like the second week we were engaged and booked it. It was completely awesome by the way! We had it the Design Center Atrium in a restored part of Charlotte called The South End. It's an older building where a lot of design firms are located and there is a main area, which is of course the atrium. Our theme of the wedding was "We want our wedding to be traditional but completely different from every other wedding." I don't know if we accomplished that but we tried. We went with the first photographer we talked to, the first florist we met with, and the first deejay we found. Our only mistake. In the words of Paul Diehl from dport7 fame; What was the deejay? A douchebag. He was just waaaaay too involved in everything, I wanted him to shut the hell up and I would have told him so but I was having too good of a time to be stank.
There were really only three details that I cared a lot about. Good photography, check. Tasty cake; check. Beautiful wedding dress; check and check. I am in love with my wedding dress. It's sitting on our bed in the guest bedroom as I type. It will remain there until Aaron forces me to move it or we have guests stay here. Whichever comes first. Sigh.


Our ceremony was the bomb.com. On the real. Believe it or not we actually have friends that are ministers! And they are still our friends! One is a pastor at Myers Park UMC, the church I belong to, so that worked out swimmingly. And the other we met randomly through IDK my BFF Leigh and her husband Kyle and just immediately clicked. So, they tag teamed our wedding. And let me tell you, that makes all the difference in the world because our ceremony was personalized. They know us. They catered our ceremony around us. Beautiful.

I'm trying to think of other details that my readers would find interesting....I can't think of any now. I cried the whole time I was walking down the aisle but as soon as I got up to Aaron and my dad gave me away, I gave him a big smile and asked him if he thought I looked pretty.

I'll end on that note. And with this last pictra.

xoxo,
Alison

Nancy Drew

It's Saturday morning and I'm watching the usual Top 20 countdown on VH1. It's something I look forward to every Saturday even though all of the songs are the same each week. Oh well. I'm a creature of habit. So, a lot went down this week and it was tres dramatic. The night of my rehearsal dinner my mom lost her tennis bracelet that my dad gave her like yeeeeeeeeeears ago. She realized she didn't have it the day of my wedding and didn't want to make a big deal out of it because we had a lot of other stuff going on that day but I knew it really bothered her, and my dad. So, we retraced our footsteps and revisited all of the places that we were in between the last time she saw it and the big wedding day. We couldn't find it and just came to the realization that it was gone. Aaron and I went on our honeymoon and came back to Charlotte and life progressed normally. Well, Monday night I'm perusing the jewelry listings on Craig's List because sometimes they will have some David Yurman stuff posted and I love finding a deal. Well, something caught my eye. A tennis bracelet for sale for, so i check out the bracelet and I'm like 99% sure it's my moms!!! So I email the woman and ask her if she still has it because I loooooove it and I have to see it. Sure 'nough, she emails me back the next morning and says she does and we need to meet up and I can look at it. Well, I'm like what the hizzle am I going to do if this bracelet is my moms? So, I consult my legal counsel. Uncle Brian. He talks to his lawyer friends and basically says if I think the bracelet is my moms and she's trying to sell it and doesn't fess up after I confront her then I'm takin' the bitch to small claims court. HAHAHAH. Can you imagine me on Judge Judy? Hilarious but a little nerve racking at the same time. So, we meet at Starbucks near our house. I bring my version of Big Black with me, Aaron, and we bravely face the perp. So as soon as I see her she just looks like a normal middle aged woman and I'm like wow, this is the nicest looking perp I've ever seen. I look at the bracelet and I"m like, yeah, this is my moms but to be sure I pull out a pair of earrings I had that came from the bracelet. And my earrings were bigger than the diamonds in the bracelet. Shoot. Not the bracelet. I was kind of sad that I didn't get to pull a Matlock on her behind but at least I knew for sure that the bracelet wasn't moms. So...in the end the braclet is still gone. :( Oh well. Maybe it will still turn up. I had some excitement for a couple of days!

xoxo,
Nance

Alright, alright

Most of blog world figured out that I didn't really adopt a child. I just thought it would be mildly entertaining to get a reaction. I apologize if I dashed anyone's hopes of coming to visit our newly adopted child, but Aaron and I are not anywhere near ready for little Alisons and Aarons. Besides, we have the best dog in the world and she's enough to handle.

Anywhoodle, I have a VERRRRRY interesting story to share with Bella French readers but I can't just yet. It'll probably have to wait until we get it all figured out...maybe next week. But get excited, this is some Nancy Drew kind of shizzle.

xoxo,
Alison

p.s. The next post will contain some wedding pictures, yay!

Exciting news

Well, Aaron and I have had a crazy week. Getting back from the honeymoon, immediately going back to work, unpacking from the 'moon, unpacking our boatload of presents (thanks y'all!) and getting our baby that we adopted. Yep, you read correctly, We've adopted a child. We thought it was best to keep it under wraps until after the wedding because we didn't want people telling us we were all crazy for adopting a kid. Her name is Gabby. I might be busy for a while what with my new baby and all but I'll try to post as often as I can. Oh and I have no idea how to raise a child, so leave comments. Just call me Angelina.
XOXO,
AL

O-fficial

I changed my name. I'm no longer Alison French Williams. I'm now Alison Williams Shurts. Sooooo weird. I'm trying to get used to saying it, so far still sounding foreign to the tongue and ear. One of my friends said after they got married they waited an entire year to officially change their name but they still told people their new name. I think that is whack attack. Up until today I was introducing myself as Alison Williams because legally that was my name and I always abide by the law. I was a little reluctant to change my name and thought about doing the whole hyphenated thing but then I just thought that would be mean to our kids to have a super long last name. Those little scantrons only hold so many letters. Sigh.


Later.
AWS.

First time's a charm!

I don't know if that is actually a saying, but if it's not, it is now. I'm very excited about my new blog and I hope all of my blog fans will enjoy this endeavor with me. So. Let's get down to it. Tonight I feel like blogging about my wedding, but in an effort not to bore my fans on my very first entry I'm going to break it down into some bits and pieces.

I was totally not stressed about the wedding at all. Planning my and Aaron's wedding was just another walk in the park. You probably think I'm joking but I'm really not. Aaron helped out soooooo much, I can't even stress that fact. He had so many awesome ideas that came to fruition and looked great and were fairly easy to execute. My mom's only wish was that this be MY wedding and that Aaron and I were happy. She was not a mom-zilla at all and we didn't fight one time about anything. You're the best Mom...you go girl! BUT. The Friday before the wedding was hmmm..probably one of the worst days of my life. Let's take a look back at the events. Aaron and about 10 of his guy friends went out for his bach bach party the Thursday night before the wedding. I went out with some of my girlfriends for a very lowkey night on the town, cause this girl isn't in to wearing a veil and carrying around a pee-pee. We ended the night early and I went to the airport to pick up my brother. I get home around 12:30 a.m. My key to the house only works on one lock...and the dead bolt can't be locked for me to get into the house. You know where we're going with this. The dead bolt was locked and all of Aaron's friends took his phone away, and I couldn't get a hold of him, or any of his friends...I think I called like 5 of them and no one answered. I just kept calling and calling and when I didn't get an answer the madder I got...I had a feeling I knew where they were, and that made me even more mad. So, now it's like 1:00 and I'm knocking on IDK my BFF Leigh's door with my pup Bella asking for shelter for the night. Leigh's a good Christian girl and so she let a sister in. I think I got to sleep around 4 after all of my rage settled. I had to get up early because my bridesmaid luncheon was the next morning and because of events that were out of my control, we were 45 minutes late to the luncheon that someone so graciously prepared for us. People that know me, know that I'm OCD about time and I hate hate hate being late. So when I say be somewhere at a certain time, be there or be square.
Anywhoodle. I was completely stressed the rest of the day, spontaneously bursting into tears, and apparently "acting spacy". I almost passed out at the rehearsal and you know...bad bad bad. But...I had my good friends and my husband to be able to get me through the rough night. I think you have to have moments like these to make funny stories. Otherwise our wedding planning would be too easy.

Pic below is of my bff's and new bff Gilleon at the rehearsal dinner.



xoxo,
Alison