My Little's Beautiful Wedding

May is a great month for weddings. Exactly one year ago today, I was at Bradley and Kiersten's wedding (one of my "top 5 favorite weddings of all time"), and just a few weeks ago my beautiful “little"Anne got married.

For those of you not familiar with sorority lingo, a “big” and “little” are paired together (through a magical mix of preference and fate) during the little’s freshman year and big’s sophomore year, and they remain big/little throughout college (slash life). This highly anticipated pairing is revealed at an event (aptly called “Big/Little”).  For Anne’s Big/Little, all the freshmen collected gifts/clues that led them to a pair of cute pajamas. They then went downstairs to find the girl wearing the same pajamas, thus revealing their big. After this grand reveal, we all went roller-skating and showered the littles with more gifts.  Partyyyy! ;-) 

I knew I wanted Anne to be my little the day she became a Tri Delt.  All the new pledges spent the night at the Delta and somehow it came out that she had attended Kids Across America, the inner-city sister camp of Kanakuk, which I attended/worked at for the majority of my youth. We broke out into a few KAA cheers, and I instantly knew we were meant to be. On several occasions, we googled “national best big/little contest,” because we were certain we would win.  (Unfortunately we never found one to enter).

Anne is an amazingly intelligent and talented nurse and she met Alex (her now hubby) when she was interning in Washington D.C. Alex is amazingly intelligent and talented as well and has been living all over the world the past couple years, getting his masters at Oxford and working in South Africa. As such, this was my first time to actually meet him in person. Fortunately, they invited all their guests to their festive Oklahoma-themed rehearsal dinner so we all got to meet each other, eat delicious southern fare, and dance the night away the night before the big day. 

It felt equal parts weird/wonderful to dust off my old cowboy boots for this lovely affair. :-)

The wedding itself was also a beautiful affair held at the Mayo Hotel.  Alex is Jewish so the ceremony and reception incorporated several fun Jewish traditions like him breaking a glass with his foot, the horah dance where everyone holds hands and runs around in circles, and the lifting of the bride/groom in chairs.

There was also other more universal traditions: Delta-ing the bride and singing the Tri Delt wedding song (which I still don't really know all the words to), fun dancing, and double-fisting drinks when it was last call. ;-) 

To make this joyous occasion even better, since it was my first time back in Oklahoma in quite some time, I got to spend some quality time with my sweet brother and have long over-due reunions with several of my dearest friends (including but not limited to: C Gunn, Randis, Sarah, Chelsea, Vanessa, Uran, Patrick, Beckham, Blake, and my very own "big", Cory!). It was SO amazing to be back in my beloved home state. 

Basically, it was an absolutely wonderful weekend with wonderful people. The only sad part was saying goodbye to Anne because she and Alex moved to South Africa a few days later. (Don't worry, they'll be back in August 2013... whew). I'm so glad I got to be there to celebrate with my darling little and new little-in-law. ;-) 

xoxo, 

Annie.