Our Baylor Wedding

Just for fun, I'm submitting details about our very-Baylor wedding to Baylor Proud...it's easiest to provide a blog post about it, so here goes!  (It's also fun to look back through pictures and reminisce a year later!)

 Brad Doherty (BBA '08, Financial Planning & Entrepreneurship) and I met when I was a CL at North Russell and he was an office assistant there. We started dating in 2007, and we were married November 12, 2011. Since I'm from Austin and he's from Dallas, Waco was a great central location for our wedding. Plus, we LOVE Baylor so it was very special for us to be married on campus. As the groom, Brad wanted input on "just" two things related to wedding planning - the location (campus chapel) and the colors (green and gold!) We were married in Miller Chapel and had our reception at the Waco Convention Center. It was an absolutely amazing day and so fun to share our Baylor traditions with friends and family.

Some of the Baylor themes:
- Since we had a fall date, we had to make sure the football game was 'away' that weekend!
-Green and gold colors (of course)
-We led a 'sic 'em' just after being pronounced husband and wife
-Our recessional was 'That Good Ol' Baylor Line'
-9 Baylor alumni in our wedding party (3 had been in my Welcome Week group!)
-Just after the ceremony we took a picture with all Baylor alumni/current students in front of Judge Baylor
 -Even the 'getaway car' (my brother's van) happened to be green and gold!
 -Cocktail hour became Dr. Pepper Hour (we had floats!)
-Baylor seal on the groom's cake
-The DJ (a Baylor grad) played the fight song during the reception
-Baylor garter
-During our exit at the end of the night, guests waved green and gold pom-poms - collected from a real live Baylor football game :)

A year later, we are 'flinging our green and gold afar' in upstate New York. Baylor will always hold a special place in our hearts, and Baylor is where it all began :) Sic 'em.


 
 

Oh, and can't forget those engagement pictures!!

All photos: Megan Smith Photography of Austin, TX

Wedding Coordinator: Lois Ferguson

Ceremony Pianist: Laura Cummings of Fort Worth, TX

Catering: Festive Occasions

Cakes: Simply Delicious

Florist: The Sherwood Florist of Robinson, TX

DJ: Craig Smith of LeForce Entertainment

Photo Booth: A Swanky Photo Booth by Ashley Munn Photography

Ceremony Venue: Miller Chapel at Baylor University

Reception Venue: Brazos Ballroom of the Waco Convention Center 

Rehearsal Dinner: Atrium of the Clarion Hotel - catered by Blaneks Catering

Gettin' Chilly

Here I am again, I really would like to update more often than every month-ish but I'm still working on that :)

So let's see, where did we leave off...Wicked was great.  And Proctors Theater (in Schenectady) is beautiful!

Brad even stayed awake for the whole thing!  I saw Wicked in 2005 on our HS graduation trip, so this brought back fun memories.

The next week was Thanksgiving...at work we had off Thursday and Friday, and I got an "extra holiday" since Friday would have been my 9/80 day off anyway, so I applied it to Wednesday!  Nice break.  It was made even better by my mom and Sean driving up to visit us!  They came in Tuesday night and stayed through Friday morning.  On Wednesday we drove around; they saw Siena, where Brad takes his undergraduate accounting classes, and we drove by my work.  We also went to the Harley dealerships in the area so Sean could collect his shot glasses (he has over 200 in his collection now!)

Thursday was pretty much devoted to the Thanksgiving meal...my mom and I pulled it all together (in this small apartment kitchen!).  We have just a bistro table in the dining room, and another bistro-size patio table outside, so we pulled them together and draped a tablecloth across.  Done :)  The meal was delicious, then we went to see Skyfall and came back to have pie.  Successful Thanksgiving!

I was sad to see them go Friday morning, but we'll be headed for Texas in two weeks (!) so it won't be long before we're reunited (as well as with the rest of our family!)

The fun times continued on Saturday...I found out Friday night that some of my residents (& co) from Baylor were in NYC that weekend!  Thought it over Friday night and eventually decided to book Megabus tickets to head down Saturday morning!  The Megabus is a great thing, the seats are like a charter bus and it has an upper and lower deck.  Apparently if you book out far enough the rates start at $1 per trip, but since I was booking the night before it was more than that :) It's a 3 hour trip from Albany to NYC, with just two stops along the way.  I was nervous since Brad wasn't coming with me (he had a lot of hw/tests to get read for) but it turned out to be pretty easy.  The bus stop was several blocks from the girls' hotel.  I got some Starbucks (conveniently right on the corner where the bus stopped) and then walked down to meet them! 

We started off by going to Central Park and just taking in the scenery.  Saw some Christmas decor already being set up along the way!

And Radio City Music Hall :)

 Love these ladies!

After Central Park we did some 5th Avenue shopping/browsing.  I'm reading Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson for our Leadership Book Club at work, and on the bus ride down I had just read about the creating of Apple stores and this one in particular:

 Pretty impressive.

 Little blue boxes adorning the tree in Tiffany's

Hot chocolate from the Godiva store!  It was yummmy (also, it was $6....a little steep).

We grabbed a quick lunch in Rockefeller Center, then it was time for me to go :( I had left my purse in their hotel room (since it was big and bulky and had the Steve Jobs book in it) so I went up to get it and say my goodbyes.  The Megabus left promptly at 3:50...I think it was 3:20 at the time I was walking out of the hotel, and the stop (different from where it dropped me off) was 16 blocks away.  I was going to try to have the bellhop get me a cab, but he was bringing in someone's bags...I hesitated for a little bit, then just started walking crazy-fast.  There were plenty of cabs along the way, but I wasn't very well-versed in hailing a cab and kept thinking "well, not much longer, I'll just walk it out".  At times I was running...especially when 3:50 was quickly approaching and I still had several blocks to go.  It was kind of nightmare-ish...I have nightmares every once in awhile about being late for a plane and having to run, and here I was on my own, with the possibility of being "stuck in New York" if I didn't make the bus!  (it wouldn't have been so bad, there was another Megabus in about 2 hrs, but it would have been a pain.)  

When I got to the stop, there were many of the buses all lined up.  It was 3:50 on the dot.  There were several lines of people waiting at signs with different destinations on them, and I didn't see a bus with "Albany" on it so I started asking them.  One of the lines said "Albany" but it was the later one...they were able to tell me that my 3:50 was at the front of the line.  I raced back up, and saw the bus driver giving "last call".  I thrust my confirmation number at him and made it on the bus!  It was a veeery close call but I was so relieved to make it.  And it was so worth it to go to NYC for a few hours and see my friends!

Tomorrow, I'm going back to NYC :)  this time with the husband.  We booked a bus trip through my work awhile back (the same sort of bus trip like we took for the seafood fest in NH).  We'll go to the Rockettes Christmas Spectacular right when we get there, then have about 6 hours to play in NYC before we catch the bus back (and I'm going to make sure it's not a stressful experience this time!)  Still trying to figure out how we'll spend that time (so many options) but I think we'll at least go see Wall Street, for Brad's sake.

Other things...the holiday season is in full swing!  Last Saturday I went to a ladies' brunch at the church where we had a Christmas cookie swap and listened to a special Christmas message from a lady who is friends with some in our church.  I made some family favorites: molasses cookies, yum.  Came home with 4 dozen of a variety!  Right after that I went to another "brunch" (at 1 pm) with a girl I had met at the Cheesecake Factory meetup.  She works at GE, and another of her GE coworkers joined us.  She had a very cute apartment and we had a good time.  I definitely got enough to eat that day!

That day, we got the most snow I've seen so far.  It's definitely getting colder but so far the snow has been light flurries.  This was the only day I've really seen it stick.  Was pretty nervous to drive in it to my events, but the streets were very clear.

 

Yesterday, we had a holiday cookie contest at my work.  Of course I wanted to participate :)  I made buckeyes, which are a Christmas tradition for us ever since my mom married Sean.  Sadly, I didn't win...another girl there also made buckeyes, and she got second place, dangit.  I came home with a "participation gift" of a cute snowman glass canister, so I can't really complain.  It was fun to get involved.

Anyway, time to plan for tomorrow's NYC trip!  I'll leave you with two things...one, our squirrel friend sleepily sunning on the porch:

And two, our "anniversary pic"...I'm gonna try to make the chalkboard thing a tradition :)

One Year of Awesome

Lots of little updates!

We survived Hurricane Sandy.  The Albany area actually didn't experience much of the storm at all...it was extra-breezy one day, and there was a little bit of rain.  We never lost power...business as usual.  Prayers go out to those on the east coast who had it much, much worse than we did.

I'm on a mission to make friends.  I've made some work friends, and we have some church friends, but I miss hanging out with the girls back home.  I went to meetup.com and found a "fabulous girlfriends" group that was eating at the Cheesecake Factory two weekends ago, so I went, and it was fun!  Met a lot of ladies around my age, and had a couple "hey, we should hang out" messages after.  Sweet.  I've enjoyed the Albany area so far, I really like my job, and (of course) I love hanging out with my husband.  I think establishing some girlfriends up here is the missing piece!  I had a post about this on Instagram and someone commented that I should read MWF Seeking BFF, about a woman who went on a similar quest.  I'm about halfway through it now...she vowed to go on a new "friend-date" every week for a year...definitely too ambitious for me, but I'm taking baby steps!

I gave a presentation to our government regulating agency.  I was pretty nervous, but it was just an update about some work I've done and they seemed to receive it well.  Got good feedback from my managers afterward, too.  I definitely have my moments of insecurity on the job sometimes, so this was a good moment :)

We bought a washer/dryer set.  We have a laundry closet in the apartment, but we've been using the building's coin-operated laundry room...I griped enough about "I don't want to trek outside to do laundry when it's snowing", so Brad agreed to get a washer and dryer before the serious snow came.  So we went over the weekend, and found a set on sale at Lowe's.  Done.  It arrives on Friday...I'm pretty excited to not have to battle over the one good laundry room in our area (every building's laundry room has just a single washer and dryer...the building next door becomes like a rainforest and makes everything feel damp, the building across the parking lot takes two dyer loads).  Maybe this whole subject isn't very blog-worthy, but I'm happy.

It snowed just a little bit last week.  Around 8:00 (some night last week) Brad texted to say it was snowing there (at his grad school in Schenectady) so I went outside, and sure enough, light little flakes.  They didn't stick, and it was done pretty quickly, but...SNOW!  I'm going to treat it with childlike excitement as long as possible.

We've been married for a whole year.  That's the biggest update!  We celebrated our one-year anniversary yesterday.  Since I don't get to see Brad until he gets home from grad school around 10:00, it wasn't a very excitement-packed celebration, but we had cake!  Knowing we'd be moving to New York this year, we didn't even try to save our top tier after the wedding last year.  But I got a "top-tier-ish" spice cake from a local bakery, as a substitute.  Probably tasted better than if we had tried to freeze the top tier and take it on a four-day trip across the country.

 Aww

 These glasses set the stage for his proposal, then they became our toasting glasses at the wedding!

 Probably one of the few times we'll ever bring out our cake serving set again, so it had to be momentous

 We do a lot better when we have Lois guiding us on this feeding-each-other thing

(See?)

So many great memories from that night...so happy to be married to my best friend.  Looking forward to all the years to come!

On Thursday we'll have a date night that consists of more than eating cake and going to sleep...we're going to see Wicked at a local theater!  (not heading down to NYC, but I hear it's Broadway quality).  Sadly this Friday isn't one of my Fridays-off...and Brad has a test at 10 am...but hey, sometimes it's fun to stay up too late "on a school night".

Birthday Fun

My 26th birthday came and went, and it was a lovely day!  (even extended into birthday week, woohoo)

I did have to work since it fell on a Tuesday, but that's alright...I like work.  My awesome coworker Jenna made me peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, so that certainly brightened the day!  Brad was at school that evening, so we delayed our celebrations until the weekend (he also had exams every day that week, soo...it was a celebration for both of us).  He did get me the complete 8-disc collection of the Harry Potter movies, waiting for me when I got home.  Now he has to watch them all with me though...

I got a lot of lovely cards from family members, which is special when we're so far away from everyone.  I'm really looking forward to our TX visit in December.

That Saturday, we went to Indian Ladder Farms.  I had been bugging Brad about going to a farm for awhile...not something I usually feel strongly about, but up here apple cider donuts are a "thing" and I hoped to find somewhere with a corn maze/hayride, as well as find lots of pretty fall foliage to take pictures of.  You know, all the general fall-ish stuff.  And there are a lot of farms up here, so it became my birthday wish.

Indian Ladder didn't have a corn maze, or a hayride going on at the time, but they had fresh delicious apple cider donuts.  Yum!  Also, they had a petting zoo.  Bonus.  I got to pet and feed the goats, including the little baby goat with its tiny little bleat (my favorite!)

Indian Ladder also had a "nature trail" up a hillside through some trees, and we walked it so I could take some leaf pictures (and to work off the cider donuts).  We got a little lost...there were several opportunities for taking one path or the other...but eventually we made it out.  Then we ate at the little cafe they have in the store.  A lovely lunch, and I had some yummy apple cider, but our waitress seemed to forget about us when it was time for the check (and Brad was trying to get to a study group).  There were only five tables in the cafe, so I think it took some effort on her part to avoid looking our way, but all the same, we had a good time at the farm.

 The legendary apple cider donut (we took home a dozen)

 This goat was really into the trash being picked up in a nearby pavilion

 Babyyyyy (favorite)

 Bonding

 Bonding (I could only pet it after Brad did successfully) 

 The feeding experience was kind of weird.  And slimy.

 Babyyyyy

 Crazy goat

 Crazy eyes

 If I were a goat, I would like to be up high too

 Pretty hillside

 Their horizontal pupils fascinated me

 Forlorn

 Starting on the nature trail

Heading out of the nature trail

After Brad's study group that night, we went to Century House restaurant here in Latham.  They were participating in Restaurant week (three-course meal for $20.12) and we had a gift card (thanks, Frederick family!) so we tried it out.  The meal was yummy; I had a spring roll, butternut squash and ricotta stuffed shells, and pumpkin cheesecake.  Brad had a burger (he preferred to go with that instead of the two options for the restaurant week entrees).  Again, we were forgotten when it was time for the check, and it took 2.5 hours from when we sat down (early - 5:30) till we left, but the company was great :)  and still, a nice birthday dinner!

On Sunday the birthday fun continued - I checked the mailbox and found cookies from Marybeth!  They were delicious and it's hard to top getting baked goods in the mail (certainly better than the political ads I've been getting every. day. from a certain assembly candidate.  I'm not going to vote for him, just as a punishment for sending me something every single day.)  Anyway, Marybeth's cookies did not last long in our household :) but they were a perfect way to wrap up birthday week.

This weekend has been rather uneventful (seems like every time I have a three day weekend, which is every other week, we don't really do anything epic with it!).  Brad had schoolwork, we watched the Baylor game yesterday (another sad game) and we've been getting ready for FRANKENSTORM.  Apparently in this area with trees and power lines a loss of power is possible/likely, so that's what we mostly wanted to get ready for.  I got some bottled water and flashlights (Walmart was already selling out of these things when I went on Saturday), and I asked Brad what non-microwave, non-oven, non-refridgerator meals he would want to eat if we lose power for 3-5 days.  He responded with this:

so this is our master disaster-preparedness plan.  PB sandwiches and Sun Chips.  Bring it on, Hurricane Sandy (and prayers go out to those who will face the brunt of this nasty thing).

I'll leave you with a few more bonus fall foliage pictures - the tree right outside our door!  This greets me every morning when I leave for the day (although, at that time...it's dark.  I leave before sunrise.  Sigh.)