Kati's Final Fling Before The Ring!

Yup, the time finally arrived for me to throw my little sister a bachelorette party! We rented a house in Aptos (near Capitola) and me, Kati and twelve of her closest friends headed down for the weekend.

The house was absolutely amazing - our views were spectacular! Here's Kati and Elizabeth on the afternoon we arrived:

Kati And Elizabeth At The Beach House

We had the difficult task of waking up to and falling asleep to this view:

The Master Bedroom View

The two little windows at the bottom rolled open, so we slept with them cracked - I could seriously get used to listening to the waves roll in!

Friday night was our mellow night in. Well, that's what it was supposed to be. It turned out to be dance party in the kitchen night, which was far more fun than watching chick flicks! Of course, even a dance party in the kitchen can mellow out, which is why my friends keep me around:

Life Of The Party

On Saturday night, we headed into Capitola to have dinner and hang out at Margaritaville. Brigitte made some fantastic shirts that said "Kati's Final Fling Before The Ring" on them and our taxi driver actually commented that we looked like a gang.

Kati's Entourage

Kristine did our makeup (she's amazing!) and this is probably one of my favorite pictures from the weekend:

Kati and I

The night was an absolute blast. Dinner started with the bar manager coming over, singing and pounding a shot in front of Kati that she then drank. I'd say that's a pretty good start! We followed up with lots of drinks, lots of dancing and a few "dare cards". These are a fun little game where you draw a card and have to do what the card says. A couple examples of ours:

• Pluck a man's chest hair and then apologize
• Find a man with a hidden piercing
• Kiss a bald man's head

This is really the first time I've gone out since getting engaged and I had my "ah ha" moment. Brigitte and I went over to the bar to order a round of drinks. As we stood there waiting for the bartender, the two guys next to us started up a conversation. A few minutes in, one of the guys looked down, saw my left hand and said "is that an engagement ring?" I told him it was and he very promptly told me to send my single friends over. Ouch. The reality of it is that I'm sort of over the bar scene... I noticed myself wanting to hang out with the girls and just dance - not to be around the rest of the crowd. I guess that's all part of growing up!

In a weird twist of fate, it happened to be my cousin Jared's 21st birthday... AND my other cousin Jacob had proposed to his girlfriend a couple days earlier. Both live in the greater Los Gatos/Santa Cruz area, so they headed down to Capitola for the bachelorette/birthday/engagement shot:

Dom, Me, Kati, Jared, Jacob and Gina!

It was so cool to have four out of five J.A.K.E. club members there (we missed you Emmy!) and it was awesome to celebrate two other momentous times in our cousin's lives!

This morning we woke up, cleaned up and headed on home. I'm sad the weekend is over, but I'm utterly exhausted! I think I might go to bed at 8pm tonight! It feels so nice to be home and to see Mike and Shadow again!

For more pictures, head on over to my Facebook page and check out the Kati's Bachelorette Weekend album!