Weekending: More bridal things

I bet you thought that you were done seeing wedding-related things around here, right? WRONG! HA!

As it so happens, my little sister is getting married this fall...as well as one of my cousins, one of Matt's cousins, and two friends of ours. So yeah, lots of wedding things in the future.

So this past weekend, Ellen had her bridal shower (hosted by our mom and other little sister, Anna) and her bachelorette party (hosted by yours truly). Anna asked me to bring my DSLR to the shower, so I have lots of lovely images from that. The bachelorette pics are all via cell phone of course, but that's okay because — like my own bachelorette — some things just don't need to be shared ;) (Yes, I know that those pictures are still missing. Reuploading them is on my to-do list, I swear.)



Anna's decorations were on point if you ask me. It's crazy, because she's an engineering major and therefore should be logical and STEM-y, not crafty and artistic. But she's both! Not that I'm jealous or anything. (Except I definitely am.)



Mom, Ellen and Anna. Pretty ladies :)



Abby even came up from South Carolina for the weekend! And that lil munchkin in front is our youngest sister, Audrey. She's very camera shy, which is why she did her best to jump in front of the camera every time I held it up. She's a lot like me.

After the shower, Abby and I and some of Ellen's friends headed over to Cleveland to decorate the hotel room for the party. (Funnily enough, the bachelorette party I threw for Abby was in Cleveland too, though fortunately we made it plenty different.) We stayed at the Metropolitan at the 9 this time, which is relatively new and absolutely beautiful. I can't recommend it enough, if you're ever in downtown Cleveland!



The big surprise I had for this party was inspired by this pin: paper masks of Ellen's fiancé, Justin. It cracked me up the second I saw it, so obviously it became A Thing. We surprised Ellen when she walked into the room and she definitely wasn't creeped out at all. We took an elevator ceiling selfie and even convinced Mom to wear it at dinner, where she and Ellen's mother-in-law-to-be and Anna (who isn't 21 yet) met up with us. Actually, Ellen's MILTB wore it too, but I don't know her well enough to put an embarrassing pic of her on the internet. Dinner was at Stonetown, which was delicious, southern comfort food at its finest.



Our first stop of the night was the hotel's rooftop bar, which was lovely but not really the crowd we were looking for. We did manage to get one pic of the whole group — the three sisters and Ellen's friends Katie, Alex and Michelle. And I literally just this second, as I'm typing, noticed all the photobombers behind us. Wow.



I took Abby's scavenger hunt idea from my party and revamped it with some new tasks for Ellen's. One of them was to do the Chris Pratt velociraptor pose with three guys. We practiced with the Justin masks, natch.

The next morning, we headed to The Original Pancake House for brunch. Guys, it's real talk time. If you're ever anywhere near Cleveland, get breakfast/brunch here. It's amazing. Great diner-style food, a million flavors of pancakes, six-egg omelets with a side of three pancakes...this place is magical. The eggs Benedict? To die for. The owner also usually stops by the tables to chat, which I think is just charming.

And then it was back to real life. Abby caught her plane home, Ellen had to go to a birthday party for her fiancé's niece, and I had a bunch of research to do for a freelance story I'm working on. Can we just put all that on pause and take over Cleveland again?