The Year of... Weddings?!?

Waaaay back in April of 2012, I posted about how our lives were progressing into their next "cycle". While we were still having a handful of weddings to attend each summer, the number of people who we knew that were pregnant was far surpassing the number of people we knew who were getting married. And that trend continued full-force into 2013, which I dubbed "The Year of the Baby", thanks to not just our own pregnancy but the pregnancies of (at the time) six close friends (and Will and Princess Kate, of course). And after I made that post I learned of one other close friend due with a baby at the end of 2013, and two friends with babies making their arrivals in early 2014. So imagine our surprise when, quite without warning, 2014 turned into "The Year of Weddings". It started innocently enough: a close college friend got engaged in late 2012 and planned a February 2014 wedding. A high school friend set her date for April 2014, just over a year after she got engaged. My brother and Macy got engaged right before William was born and booked their venue for August 2014. And then in the summer of 2013, the proposals started spreading like wildfire. There were two additional college friends who picked dates in August (thankfully, neither are the same weekend as my brother's) and a third college friend who set her date in May. My cousin got engaged and jumped at a rare opening at the venue she wanted in June 2014. A close high school friend got engaged in September, and planned a quick turnaround with an early January 2014 wedding (which, sadly, we had to miss at the last minute due to weather. I'm still incredibly bummed). And then one of my nearest and dearest friends got engaged over the holidays, and is (tentatively) getting married the day after my brother.

Now, don't get me wrong, I couldn't be more thrilled with all of this. I loooove weddings. The only reason I'm even ever-so-slightly bummed is that these friends are pretty much the last of our friends to get married, and they are all cramming themselves into the same year instead of giving me weddings to look forward over the next couple of years. Plus, nine weddings in one year gets EXPENSIVE. And I'm not just talking about gifts. Our weddings are spread out throughout the Midwest, with events in Minneapolis, Chicago, Madison (WI), and Omaha, just to name a few. We're going to log some serious miles on our car in the next nine months. And I couldn't be more excited.