If I visit you in Arizona in August and Alaska in January you know I will always be your friend.

Somehow this has been luxuriating in my "to be written" folder for the better part of a semester. I will blame it on the very trip I am going to detail, claiming (mostly falsely) that by taking a trip to Alaska at the beginning of the semester I got so behind that I was unable to write. In truth, starting my semester with an awesome Alaskan wedding did set a precedent for what has been a very fun semester. (And evidently when I am having fun I don't write about it.)
Last year, at about this time-as the cold weather and grey skies were starting to get to me, I started planning a trip to see one of my best friends from college who is getting her master's degree in Arizona. (I will call her Sadie, because as the first of my college friends to get married she has become "Sadie, Sadie married lady.") At this point she was single, not even a ring on her finger, but she was talking about this boy an awful lot. Then I found out the boy was moving to Arizona to get his masters (and I started to get worried that I would be a third wheel) and then I found out that they were going to live together (and I worried that I had lost my place to stay) and then he proposed and I was afraid that I wouldn't get to go on my vacation.
As you can see this was really about me...
In all honesty I was a little nervous, I understand the way adding a partner can change things and I wanted to be able to reminisce and enjoy with out unwanted male interference. I shouldn't have worried, he was kind enough not to move down until a week after my vacation. It was a wonderful little vacation, what the English would term a "mini-break." It was lovely to be able to lay in the sun, drink girly drinks, gossip and brainstorm about Sadie's wedding. (There was a small incident where I stepped on a rattle snake but it didn't bite me so I am still alive.) Somehow I survived without a burn or a bite, rhapsodizing about the glories of Tuscan in August.
Then in October I got an invitation in the mail, and convinced my parents to send me to Alaska (where both Sadie and her now husband are from) for Christmas. I had an amazing time:
First: It is great to see friends again.
I had seen Sadie this summer but other friends I had known from Berkeley went up and converged on Alaska. We all stayed in Sadie's parents house for what felt like a week of slumber parties, except with wedding cake and champagne sampling, not to mention decoration and program prepping duties. (I don't know how her father survived as the only man in a house of between six and eight females (and I was sleeping in the den so he was without what my father would term a "man-cave.")  He was an amazing sport though, even playing card games with us and diligently practicing for his speech and dance with the bride.
Second: I kinda liked the weather.

Yes it was cold (I don't think it ever got above -10 (yes that is a negative) but you prepare for it, and the city of Anchorage knows how to handle snow. Plus when you are going out you prepare for it mentally and physically, no one expects anything other than tights and boots and snow in your hair.  Plus (as you can see) it makes for some awesome photos.
Finally I love a wedding.
For all my doubts and questions about getting and being married (at least for myself) I love a wedding. They are probably my favorite way to spend a Saturday. There is booze and dressing up and food and cake and the best kind of dancing, where you do actual steps and the music switches through the last three decades and somehow you spend six hours in five inch heels and don't even notice. Although my enthusiasm may have been because of the ratio of single men to single women, because my female friends gravitate toward serious long term relationships and the bride and groom's male friends don't I was one of the few single women left to dance with the men- it is a hard job but someone has to do it. (Plus a wedding is even better if the bride asks me to let my type A-ness eek out, so I can yell at the DJ for not getting people on the floor, and grumble to guests who dare disturb her flowers.)
Plus I get to wish a very dear friend all the best in the world as she starts her life with a wonderful man.

So yes I will go to Tuscan in August and Alaska in January... Just don't ask me to catch the damn bouquet!