now accepting fiancé applications.

today has, quite honestly, felt like a dream.

(i had a dream last night that hannah texted me about game of thrones but my iphone text bubble was an actual bubble and not square and then spongebob popped out of it. like, out of my phone. but that's a different story.)

but today was like a dream of "WHAT IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING TO MY LIFE?!?!??!!!#!#@$?!?!"

most of the people that i associate with, like me, are in this awkward stage where it feels like everyone is getting married. everyone's getting engaged. everyone's having children.

and if you're like me, you sit around watching netflix all day and you're like, if i'm feeling particularly dangerous, i'll eat ice cream. OUT OF THE CARTON.

this time last year, i was expecting to be one of those people that you hate. you know, the person that gets engaged and then gets married and then has kids and stuff.

that's no longer a thing. and you know what? that's okay. 

so now i'm one of those adventurous people that eats cupcakes for breakfast, gets on facebook, and says, everyone is getting engaged and married! what am i doing with my life?!

i didn't realise quite what that feeling was, the "everyone's getting married feeling" until today.

today, emma, one of my two twin best friends, went wedding dress shopping.

she asked me to be a bridesmaid.

SO YEAH. EVERYONE'S GETTING FUGGIN' MARRIED AND I'M TOTALLY FEET FIRST IN IT.

i found out that emma got engaged on a coach bus taking me from o'hare to michigan city after a nine hour flight from london. i screamed. on the bus. (this was after i screamed about traffic being on the wrong side of the road and then cried because of an american flag. i swear the people on this bus were terrified of me.)

then you go through this whole phase like, ONE OF MY TWO BESTS FRIENDS IS GETTING MARRIED! AHHHH!

then emma was like, YOU'RE A BRIDESMAID and i had two thoughts.

1. SAKDRGHSDKJHGKSDJG !
2. OH. SHIT.

the summer before i left for my freshman year at alma, i was a bridesmaid in my cousin's wedding. it was a very teeny, tiny small wedding and with the way that my cousin is, she wasn't much into making sure that everything was perfect, she just wanted it to be meaningful. there was no fussing about centre pieces. our bridesmaids dresses didn't have to match.

and i didn't have to do a thing except try on a dress, buy white shoes, and show up to the rehearsal dinner.

so you can say that i got off the hook with the wedding planning.

my cousin's wedding!

as of right now, i'm still totally unsure of what my bridesmaid's duties are for emma's wedding, but on tuesday i went over to their house and i sat on the floor with hannah for two hours looking at bouquets.

two hours. of bouquets.

it was awesome.

while hannah and i were lounging on her living room floor drinking starbucks and emma was at her fiancé's house looking at venues, hannah and i began to think about how we wanted our own weddings to be.

it's only when other people are getting married that i actually care about my own wedding.

i've never really been the type of person to plan my wedding. only recently have i really decided where i want it, and that's at alma college's chapel. (my mother is totally against this idea, by the way.) i want to have a huge train like my mother had on her dress, i want my father to sing, and the dinner is going to be entirely vegetarian friendly.

if you like meat and you're coming to my wedding, SUCK IT UP, CARNIVORE. my wedding, my food.

but seriously, that was literally the only thing i'd ever thought about.

back when marriage was looking like a very decent possibility in the next two years, i gave it a great deal more thought, and i decided that i wanted to have a honeybee themed wedding.

if you're picturing a bunch of wasps swarming my wedding, you've totally got the wrong idea.

i love beehives. and flowers. mostly sunflowers. i want beehives and pearls. soft yellow and soft white.

hannah, who will be one of my bridesmaids along with emma, is an interior design major and she sipped her starbucks contemplatively and said, "oh my god, i totally know a way we can do that without making it look tacky."

so hannah's gonna do that. because i'm lost.

now that emma is getting married and i'm jumping in feet first without a life vest into this wedding business, i'm thinking a lot more about my own wedding, even though i am wonderfully (and painfully) single. when i left hannah and emma's house after looking at flowers for two hours, i wanted to get married so badly i almost cried.

i am now accepting fiancé applications. please only apply if you like the lion king.

today, hannah and emma and her mother and i went to a bridal boutique and hannah and i squealed while emma tried on wedding dresses. and i realised exactly how hard it is to find the perfect dress.

emma looked good in everything she tried on. every. single. thing. and eventually the lady helping us would just say, "what don't you like."

"that bow." "the belt." "the ruffles."

at one point emma had a dress on and i just blatantly said, "that flower on the waist has got to go."

you gotta be opinionated, man.

after an hour and a half of trying on dresses, we sped through the wendy's drive through to feed the bride-to-be and her twin maid of honour, and then we went to a different bridal shop that had a huge rack of bridesmaids dresses for hannah and i to try on.

THAT was fun.

i love dress shopping. always have. i went through my closet the other day and realised, between summer dresses and prom dresses, i have twenty. and yet, i still manage to find the time and money to buy more off the clearance rack at target. i bought two dresses in england. and one the day i got back at forever 21 that i really didn't need. but ya know. dresses.

hannah and i pawed through the racks and picked three or four that we liked and we went into a big dressing room together. since we're best friends and we swim together, standing around in our underwear wasn't a big deal at all, and it was a good thing we picked a room together, because all of these dresses had clasps and belts and all kinds of things that couldn't be done by ourselves.

the first dress i tried on had a bow, a belt, a zipper, and an eye clasp. i was totally at hannah's mercy.

normally when i think of weddings and bridesmaids dresses, i think of long dresses and strapless dresses, but these were all shorter (which i liked) and most of the ones that i tried on were incredibly high necked. which i didn't realise i liked until i put them on.

four dresses and an hour later of modelling for emma, her mother, and holly the bridal lady, i had a dress.

emma didn't mind the three of us (there is a third bridesmaid whom i have not met) having different dresses, as long as they were from the same collection and complemented each other.

the one that i absolutely adored and the two that hannah narrowed it down to complemented each other perfectly.

there was one slight problem with trying on all of these dresses; my really intense and terrible sunburn from yesterday.

the legs were fine. but my shoulders were pretty bad. when i came out in the first dress, emma looked me smack in the eye and said, "you can NOT have that at my wedding, gurrrl."

i really don't intend on falling asleep in my backyard the day before emma's wedding.

emma tried on a wedding dress that she really liked and hannah and i stood next to her in our dresses and we all squealed and cried and hannah and i held hands.

on tuesday, sitting on the floor looking at bouquets, we decided that we'll just marry each other and then plan our wedding together.

i told this to my father, and he replied, "well, you either need to wait a while or move out of state."

silly indiana, not letting same sex marriage be a thing yet.

the entire time that we were trying on bridesmaids dresses and emma was trying on wedding dresses, one thought just kept hitting me over and over again.

is this real life? one of my best friends is getting married.

marriage is a really big commitment. i know that emma is totally ready to make it and that she'll be happy forever. but sometimes when i think about what a huge commitment marriage is, i get really scared.

like, my parents have been married for almost twenty-five years. that's a really long time. my grandparents are at fifty-five. like, that's a lotta years with one person, guys. 

i think the biggest commitment i have in my life is to spaghetti. spaghetti will never leave me.

sometimes it seems like everyone around you is getting married and having babies and you're just like, THE ARISTOCATS IS ON NETFLIX! 

one of my best friends is getting married. and today that really, really hit me.

this is going to be a hell of a fun ride. and emma, congratulations, love.