For years, Kari has been hoping that one of our friends would have a destination wedding. I mean, she loves weddings and she loves tropical/resort vacations... so an excuse to combine the two was obviously something she was interested in.

This year, it finally happened. Our friend Mindy invited us to her wedding at a place in Mexico called Mayakoba... we couldn't refuse.

We booked our tickets not really knowing much about about the place, but quickly learned that Mayakoba was this beautiful, tropical, lagoon area that housed 3 upscale resorts, a super nice golf course, and a bit of private housing. The entrance to Mayakoba takes you from a highway and through these tree covered, super narrow, winding, one-way(ish) roads - sometimes …

Geez man. I am really bad at this.

It's been like 2 weeks now, but I definitely need to blog this event.

So yeah, a couple weeks ago we went over to Chicago for Amy and B Vaughan's wedding. We started by meeting our hotel roomie (Tara) at the Lisle Hyatt. You know, that long, skinny Hyatt that i88 almost runs into just outside of Chicago. So we got ready, and then took shuttles (great idea for the party that was about to take place) over to the wedding.

Kari was, of course, super excited to see her friends... and I have to admit I was too. Kari at weddings is hilarious. She can hardly contain herself during the ceremony because she's so freakin excited for the reception.

So the wedding and reception were at this place in …

Man, my weeks are getting so busy that it takes til thursday to blog about the past weekend, ha. Or maybe it's because I actually work at Red 5 and can't blog at work like I used to. Either way, it's a good thing. But I do sorta feel bad for not journaling as well.

So anyway, as you may have gathered from photos or tweets, Kari and I visited Mt Vernon last Friday for Cornell Homecoming. And on top of homecoming, it was also my "5 year college reunion." Yeah, we have college reunions at Cornell and yeah that is funny... but - I love visiting that school. Especially when people I know are there. And that, there was.

All the familiar faces basically put me into happy friend mode. Nearly everyone that I recognized from college, …

I suppose I better write this before 2008...

Christmas this year was great. Kari and I were able to afford all the gifts we wanted to buy (for once), and we got totally spoiled by everyone else. We also saw tons of family, but not very many friends this holiday season. I'm a bit sad about the lack of friends this year, but hopefully that's what tonight (New Years) is for.

So starting with Wednesday, Dec 19, Kari and I did our Christmas. It was good. I got some fancy clothes, DVDs, my entire truck outfitted with Polk speakers, etc. And I of course had to give her one of those blasted little blue Tiffany boxes along with a fancy jacket, DVDs, etc, etc. One hilarious thing about our Christmas this year is that Kari and I bought …

Man. If you know anything about Cornell, the Gammas, the Thetas, and how anyone involved in any of those sets can party - you'll understand why my weekend was completely and normally insane.

This weekend was Jacobi and Ashley's wedding in Charles City, IA, which was super nice. Not to rag on Charles City, because it's bigger than my hometown, but I did not expect such a nice event to come out of such a small town. I guess, I had only thought about how crazy it would be, which it of course was.

So Friday, Kari and I dropped Ninja off in Cedar Rapids and proceeded to party at Bill's in Marion with Lindsey, Vic, and Will. It was a good time. We met some dudes (Rob and Ray from Wisconsin) and played pool.

Saturday, we drove up …

I really hate to rain on someone's wedding, which I won't do. But I'm totally about to blow up about traveling to Kevi's wedding. Omg.

So first of all, Thursday, Zach, Amy, Kari, and I were scheduled to fly out of Des Moines around 5pm and show up in Orlando at 10:30pm. So we arrived at the DSM airport around 3:45 to check in, when we met an NWA employee named Betty. Imagine Betty as the bus driving Chris Farley in Billy Madison - only thinner, older, and more female. She was totally stressed out, mumbling things under her breath, and yelling at people. There was one point when her glasses were falling off her face and she had 2 phones - 1 on each ear. I completely missed a golden photo opportunity. So anyway, Betty informed us …

That's how many separate things I had planned for this weekend. Seriously, it was nuts.

First I was supposed to shoot video at Cliff's matinee wedding in Dubuque. Then, I remembered that I had to go to Jordan's wedding in Indiana the same day. And since I've known Jordan much longer, I decided I should attend his ceremony.

Later, we found out that Victor was graduating college and having a graduation party then. And since he's now family, we decided to go to that instead. However, at the last minute his school was like, "whoops, we messed up your schedule and you are missing 2 classes that you do need." So now he doesn't graduate until October. This went down like 1 week before Jordan's wedding - after we had already …

So Zach and Amy are married, heh. The weekend was pretty packed, lots of driving, lots of stops, and lots of events.

Thursday we left town, dropped Ninja off in Cedar Rapids, dropped Cedric off in Iowa City to buy a Ducati (which was really nice), and finally continued onto my Parents house to have Riverbend Pizza and hang out.

Friday, Kari and I drove to Peoria to meetup with the guys to get Tuxes for the wedding. I had forgotten my sidekick charger so I stopped by a T-Mobile kiosk to buy a new one. They had a demo of the Sidekick III and let me play - it was soooo rad. I can't wait to get it. The OS seemed nicer and smoother. The chat clients were really nice, and the keyboard seemed much better (believe it or not). The …

OK, so this weekend was nice, busy, fun, expensive, awesome, etc.

Friday, Tara came into town to attend Lisa's wedding with us. We stopped over to Vicki's house to hang out with my cousins - who were in town for Vicki's hip hop recital, haha. I so wish I could have gone. Later, we had some people over, grilled out, hung out, etc. It was nice. Afterwards some of us went to Cedric's party and then met up with Rich and Sean downtown (who were in town for Paul Wall). Cedric's place is really quite awesome. I had my doubts about it matching his last place, but it is pretty cool - definitely nicer for sleeping and general living, ha.

Saturday we had to wake up and go get some Mac n Chicken with Rich. Then Tara, Kari, and I headed …

So, the wedding day ruled of course. But it started out sort of lame because apparently I wasn't allowed to see (or even talk to) Kari the entire day. However, it got cooler when a bunch of guys came over, hung out, played pool, had tons of pizza, tried the 2nd batch of homebrews (which turned out awesome, btw), played with the pocketbike, etc.

After playing for bit, everyone left, Kevi and I got ready and we headed for the church to get photos, etc. Soon after the photos, people started showing up. 5:30 came around and the organist was supposed to start playing as people were escorted to their seats. The people were escorted just fine, but the organist hadn't shown up yet - besides the million things going through my head just 30 …

I spent the day doing everything last minute (stressed, of course) - printing programs, printing table placements, buying groomsmen/usher gifts, getting my tux, etc. After all that insanity, we had rehearsal which went really well, then we all had dinner at Latin King. It was nice. After all of that we met a bunch of friends up at the Cab. It was so nice to see everyone, Josh, Tom, etc. I can't believe Tom came up from Texas.

ok so, i have been stressed beyond belief over the last 2 days, haha. it's seriously ridiculous. it is so so annoying to be this stressed, but it is also really really hilarious. like i am seriously worked up, omg.

besides that. my grandma and grandpa are here, i just had a good dinner, i cashed in $200 in change, i got 4ga plugs in my ears, i found out i didn't have my tickets for our honeymoon (hopefully those get here tomorrow), i have printed 200 menus, and i'm currently printing out 250 double sided programs (500 prints). i will be up all night. i still need to get our tuxes, get gifts for groomsmen/ushers, hang out, etc. things are INSANE. i hope tomorrow i can relax, but... yeah right. all this work is retarded. i just …

Whoops, I forgot that I have a web site to write on. A lot has happened lately - tons of wedding planning, Kari had a birthday, Aaron, got married, and I've been having fun.

We ate a lot of nice food for Kari's birthday, I got her a K2 Skyla snowboard, and a Tiffany bracelet. I'm excited to snowboard with her. Maybe she will be better at that than inline skating, haha.

We also went to Aaron's wedding in Canton. It was a ton of fun, we goofed around alot, you know. plus they had the sweetest little towny bar next to our hotel called Josie B's. We had a blast there - Ben rules (he even gave us a penguin sign). Other than that, it was pretty weird being in a wedding 2 weeks before ours. It definitely got a lot of things going …

Man, San Antonio was pretty nuts... not nuts like off the chain, but nuts like lots happened. Kari and I drove down Friday morning (my birthday) to get to our hotel and Bre'anna's wedding rehearsal. It was obviously incredibly boring, but definitely necessary. Weddings are such a production. Especially in this mega-church. If it werent for the decorations on stage, you wouldn't know this place was a church - more like an auditorium of some sort. This was a huge huge complex. I think the place held 4,000 people. After the rehearsal was the rehearsal dinner where we ate, people gave toasts, and people cried. It was pretty funny, Chris's family had like 7 people toast, our side had 1, haha, we rule. After diner, Kari and I went out …

I made a little web site about our wedding so I don't have to answer the same questions 1,000,000 times. Check it out: www.broox.com/wedding

This weekend was seriously insane. Kari and I got to go to our 2 favorite places in 1 weekend, Cornell and Chicago - Rule.

So, friday night we showed up at Cornell and hung out with lots of friends before they graduate. Wingert even showed up, so needless to say we had to break Mt Vernon. Besides that it was nice to see everyone. Elizabeth's brothers came, Dr Bob and the family were there, and tons of others. For some reason I decided I should buy drinks for everyone. Seriously. One funny thing is the Froehlich family was drunk and playing quarters. You could hear people chanting, "DOC-TOR-BOB! DOC-TOR-BOB!" haha. Other than that, jeff and I were generally destructive. I fell pretty hard tripping in this street. It was …

So this weekend was my cousin, Scarlet's wedding. She's the first of our generation to get married in the family.

So Friday, Kari and I drove to my parents house to hang out and stay the night. It's nice to get back home sometimes. Then, saturday my grandparents took Kari and I out to eat for her birthday. We went to Belgium Village where we ate reubens bigger than our plates, it was crazy. After lunch, we checked into the hotel. I mostly hung out with my little cousins... Soaping, running around, and being goofy. Lots of fun was had.

So the wedding was in this pretty cool church. It was kinda weird to see Scarlet get married. I've never even met the guy she's marrying, haha. But it was nice to see everyone. I got to see …

This weekend, Kari and I went to a pretty out of control wedding - it was freaking incredible. They reserved a couple rooms for us all to stay in at the Palmer Hilton of Chicago.

The wedding was for Steph's sister (Maryanne) and her man, Chris. I knew it was going to be quite a good wedding since their parents (Dr Bob and Sheryl) are awesome. Plus we got word that Oprah's make-up artist was doing the bride's maids' make-up, wtf.

So anyway, the ceremony/reception was on the 9th floor of the University Club of Chicago. It was really nice. It overlooked millenium park and part of the lake. I'm not really all that into wedding ceremonies but this one was great - it was under a half hour and really nicely decorated.

After that …

So while shooting video at Jason's wedding, I got a shot of katie barker dancing with the flower girl. Together they are lethal.

So after driving 40 MPH for 45 minutes on the interstate and then through 1 foot deep water, I'm back from Colorado.

It was a really good time which leads to quite a bit to talk about, but I'll try to sum it up...

On Friday I met up with Jason and a bunch of other guys for his bachelor party. We started out with a BBQ (where I ate the best marinated/grilled tenderloin that I think I will ever eat in my life). Then we piled into the 20 person Excursion and did a bar crawl around Denver. Tons of fun.

Saturday afternoon, Kari got a new celtic cross tattoo, then we ate at PF Chang's with Victor. I'm so happy one is opening here. I heart lettuce wraps. Then Kari and I went out at the 16th Street Ped Mall and hit up club Beyond. …