Adventuring in Sandusky

Two weekends ago, my bff Angela was visiting her family in the Cleveland area from Houston, TX.  I was really excited when I found out she was coming this way, but then I realized Kyle & I were going to be gone that weekend.  Luckily, she came in Thursday-Tuesday so I had a chance to visit with her after my quiz!

Considering the fact that Kyle & I didn't get back from Canada until 4:30am and I had very little sleep that night, I came home from my quiz and passed out for 3 hours.  If I had to get up for anything other than driving to see Angela, I don't think I would have gotten out of bed.  It was rough, but totally worth it!

We had decided to meet up in Sandusky, OH, because it was approximately half-way between her parents and our apartment.  Since she's getting married next September, we wanted to have some fun wedding dress shopping (like she did for me 1.25 years ago).  Sandusky has so many a limited supply of wedding dress stores.  Sandusky actually has a limited supply of anything.  Luckily, I knew a little bit about the area since four summers ago Kyle's younger sister, Jaleh, worked at Cedar Point and I had the opportunity to visit her a couple times.  Sandusky has a mall.  And fast food restaurants.  And Cedar Point.  I'm pretty sure if it didn't have Cedar Point, it would be a ghost town.

Our afternoon started off at a wedding dress store that wouldn't let us take pictures.  Seriously?  Very lame.  They said we could write down the item number so we can call them if we end up wanting it, but how is she supposed to compare dresses she saw there with dresses elsewhere?  All in all, it was a lot of fun, and it made me thankful to have moved past this stage.  For me, wedding dress shopping was annoying and frustrating.  I couldn't find exactly what I wanted, and I hated feeling so materialistic, so I settled on something that was simple and nice.  I then proceeded to donate it to The Brides' Project and feel a lot better about the whole process.  Anyway, back to Angela & Sandusky.

While at the wedding dress place, I found out that she's only having one bridesmaid and one groomsman.  Guess who's the bridesmaid!  Me!  Woot woot!  I'm so excited!  It is such an honor to be my bff's bridesmaid and I can't wait to see how everything unfolds next September 28!  The groomsman is Trent's bff, Nayyir (aka Q), which is cool because we all went to undergrad together and Q was on the ultimate frisbee team.  Later in the week they decided on the colors purple & green, and since it is an outdoor wedding I get to wear purple (which is awesome because Kyle really loves purple on me).  Every once in a while I take a study break to check out different dresses.  Not sure if we're going with short or long yet, but here's some I found today:

J.Crew Mirabelle

J.Crew Heidi

J.Crew Sinclair

J.Crew Lucienne

Of course, I don't think I'm going to be spending $200+ on the dress, but these are styles that I appreciate and the Mirabelle, Heidi, and Lucienne I would love to don at other events.

When we finished at the first wedding dress place, we headed to location #2.  It was sketch.  We got to the road, we were in a residential area, we turned right, nothing but houses, we realized we should have turned left, we turned around, passed the address, it was definitely a house with no signs of any sort saying that it was a business.  So.  Sketch.  We decided we'd just spend some time hanging out at the mall.

The Sandusky mall isn't very big and the stores we visited did not have a lot of dresses of any sort.  Kind of a disappointment, but really I just loved being able to spend time with Angela.  Flights to Houston are expensive right now (just like flights to Boston), so I haven't been able to see her since she moved after graduating last year, except for my wedding and the select time(s) she's come to Cleveland to visit her family.

We both got pretty hungry and headed to Red Lobster for an early dinner.  I don't remember ever going to a Red Lobster, but Angela loves their biscuits (and they are sooo good) and she had a giftcard.  I ordered some sort of salmon dish which was delicious and she ordered soup and a delicious dessert.  Of course, the best part of the dinner was the company & conversation.  It's nice being older now, and still being really close.  Angela & I went to undergrad together and ended up being charter members of the same sorority.  We also lived in the same building at the time and found out that we had similar values, which led to a pretty awesome friendship.  Our senior year (she graduated a year early), I moved into the sorority house in January and lived in the same quad as her.  She helped me get a job at the university's rec center and I helped be her model for a photography project.  We were pretty much a match made in heaven. ;)

After dinner we had to bid each other adieu.  The next morning, it felt as if days had passed since we'd last seen each other.  While I don't know when I'll see her next, I know that the worst-case-scenario will be September 28, 2013, when I get to help her get ready for her big day as she did for me and see her walk down the aisle with a great big smile on her face.