Alison says...GO SEE THIS MOVIE!

Here at BellaFrench, I do not endorse many things over my own narcissism. As you will find that many of the blogs are about me and mine and how awesome or unawesome, but most of the time awesome, my life is. I am strongly against the blog turning into an adverblogitorial, that is a word I just made up but means that I don't want my blog to turn into a vehicle that touts products, movies, clothing, etc in return for advertising dollars. HAHAHAHA, like that would ever happen. I have completely climbed off on a tangent and am now heading back to the main point.

Last Tuesday night Aaron and I went on a date because lately we are two ships passing in the night. We went to our favorite Vietnamese restaurant and then to our favorite indie theater and randomly decided to see "The Waitress" with everyone's favorite, the beautiful Keri Russell from Felicity fame. Little did I know just how great that movie would be. I'm about to make up another word and call it a dralomedy (drama, love, comedy). The movie's plot is about a woman who is in an oppressive marriage and is planning to leave her dick of a husband (sorry, mom) until she finds out that she is pregnant, thus thwarting her plan. She is famous in her small town for coming up with a different recipe for pie everyday and after she finds out she is a pregnant a lot of the pies have names like "Pregnant, miserable, self-pitying, loser pie." Pretty hilarious if you ask me. The theme of the movie is women empowerment and making sure you get what you deserve out of life, not what someone else thinks you deserve, mix in a love affair and you get the dralomedy. It was done in such a way that it was hilarious and incredibly moving at the same time. Aaron loved it and I have a feeling that I'm going to be getting "The Waitress" dvd for my birthday or Christmas or something. (Hint, hint)

Check your local theater listings and go see the movie!!!!!

xoxo,
Alison

MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE!

Dear Blog,

Once again waiting for the inspiration to hit before the big blog. Well today it hit and almost bowled me over and I was like, okay, okay, I'll blog dammit. Soooo...I think all of BellaFrench readers know that 7-7-07 was not only a momentous occasion because that day only occurs every 1,825,001,756,496 days, but even more so because my mate got married!!! Holla!!! It was really a great weekend, I had so much fun and loved getting dressed up in my bright blue dress and watching my little matey walk down the aisle. She looked so beautiful and radiant just as every bride should and I was oh so proud to be her mate-ron of honor. (get it?? mate-ron of honor...oh whatever). On Friday night, obvy, we had the rehearsal and then the rehearsal dinner. I thought the rehearsal went relatively smoothly considering Faris and Cay-Cay each had 22 bridesmaids and groomsmen, respectively. Faris' church wedding directors were shockingly nice and I say shockingly because I've been scarred by Mrytle and Flyrtle. If you don't know, that's a whoooole 'nother blog. At the rehearsal dinner we had to say a toast and I think I did the half stand like 15 times because everytime I was getting ready to say something one of Cay's friends would stand up but finally I got to stand up and say something and shockingly (or not) I got choked up in the middle of the toast, but Rita said I managed to spurt a few touching words and made both her and Mate get a little teary. That's what it's all about folks, making people cry. Speaking of crying, did anyone notice the matron of honor bawling up at the front of the church? And when I say matron of honor, I mean me. (Can you tell I like having an important role?) I didn't have any tissues because I thought to myself, "I've got this, no need for tissues." That's what I get for assuming, that I've "got" anything. I will always need tissues because I cry at commercials, much less my best friends wedding. Geez Louise. Since, I've been married all of 6 weeks I will bestow some mate-ly advice upon the married couple.

Wait, who am I kidding. I have no advice so just look at this pretty picture of us instead.

P.S. No, Dad, I will not change my signature hand on the hip, head tilted to the side. I'm working it, it works for me. I'm keeping it.

xoxo,
al

Shurts' semi seasonal slip n' slide spectacular

Dear Blog,

So, obvy, our slip n' slide spectacular isn't going to be semi seasonal but I couldn't mess up my roll with using all "s", so thus, it is semi seasonal. On this blog I haven't really mentioned too much about my and Ron's new house. We moved all of our shizzle in about a month before we got married and tried to get everything all nice and neat before the wedding so we wouldn't have a nightmare to come back to after the honeymoon. We love our house, living in a house is so much better than apartment dwelling. Anywhoodle, so we've wanted to have a big bash to inaugurate our new house and so in planning to do so, Aaron came up with the brazilliant idea of making a slip n' slide so everyone could relive their youth. I told Aaron that I never really liked slip n' slides when I was kid because of several reasons,
a) i didn't like being outside
b) i didn't like throwing myself on the ground
c) i didn't like the friction of skin and rubber
d) i didn't like flaunting my supermodel body in front of all of the other elementary school children, kids are mean and I knew they would be jealous.
But, I told Aaron that now that I'm grown maybe I would like doing the above. So, on with the show. We invited a slew of people. I don't know what exactly a 'slew' is, but that is a word my grandmother used and I like to say it. A lot of people showed up brought alcohol and their bathing suits. Aaron grilled burgers and dogs and we all had a great time!!





Oh, Aaron spent a LOT of time making the slip n slide, so please be sure to comment on the fierceness of the apparatus.

Double oh, I didn't get over my fear of the above mentioned fears and didn't slip or slide. But, this morning when no one was here I gave it a whirl after much coaxing from my husband. It turned out to be aight.

xoxo,
Alison

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!