Hello, friends!
As I mentioned, Saturday was my bachelorette party, which was a trip out to Virginia wine country with 16 of my girlfriends!
It was so fun to have such a big group of my favorites all together. :) My high school BFF and matron of honor in our wedding, Jenny, hosted the shindig and did a fabulous job organizing everything! She rocks.
AND: Jenny is pregnant!! I was so excited to see her mini baby bump in person. :) She’s due in March!
She had this adorable “The future Mrs” shirt made for me; tiara was courtesy of Gretchen. :)
The ladies and I all met up at a friend’s place and piled on to a bus to head out toward wine country and begin the fun! I had friends from all walks of life present — childhood, high school, college, DC area/work friends, and grad school! It was a great mix and wonderful to see everyone. :) If you’ve been reading the blog for a couple years now you probably recognize most of them from various trips and outings!
Hunter, my friend from college in the photo on the left above, wins for farthest traveled for the party — she flew in from San Francisco! She says it was worth it. ;)
We visited two wineries — first stop, The Winery at La Grange!
The scenery was gorgeous and our tasting was set up in a tent with some fabulous views.
Our next stop on the tour was Pearmund Cellars!
Being silly with my high school girlfriends — we’re all making an “M” for Mustangs, our high school mascot! ;)
I would HIGHLY recommend this winery to you guys — the first winery was beautiful but the service was a million times better at Pearmund. They greeted us graciously and whisked us off to a private tasting in the fermenting room.
Here I am with our tasting guide — he was very knowledgeable and friendly. We were all big fans. :)
The coolest thing about this winery was that we got to taste unfiltered still aging wine directly from the steel vat taps! It was so good — slightly fizzy and cloudy with a sweet juice like taste.
AND I got to help press the grapes. :)
So fun!
There was a bit of a snafu when we tried to leave the winery and discovered the bus had broken down — FAIL! We ended up having to wait like an hour and a half for a replacement bus, which was super lame, but the winery was really nice and stayed open so we could use their bathrooms and also gave us some veggie trays to snack on. :) Sadly we couldn’t drink any of the wine we’d purchased, though, as the winery was technically closed! Oh well. At least the scenery was nice. :) We all made the best of it and had fun hanging out!
The bus finally arrived and brought us back so we could join Matt and some of our guy friends, who were waiting to host a fun BBQ birthday bash after party for me! I didn’t get any photos because it was dark out (although we do have some rather hilarious photo booth pictures — long story short, we bought a LivingSocial deal for a photo booth to use at the wedding and then discovered they were busy on our date and we couldn’t get a refund… hence the photo booth making an appearance at my birthday bash instead! It went to good use), but we had a blast. Thank you to Matt and our guy friends for hosting! :)
What a fabulous weekend. I felt very loved and can’t wait to celebrate with everyone again in less than 3 weeks (!!) at our wedding!
What an awesome bachelorette party! This is exactly the kind of thing I want to do for mine!
What an awesome bachelorette party….and even better Maid of Honor for organizing it! Thanks for doing that for the “future Mrs.!” :-)
(congrats on your pregnancy, Jenny!)
Great photos -Great friends…..can’t get better than that!
:-)
Thanks Jill! We had a great time in spite of the bus breaking down!
I <3 that you had a photobooth at your birthday. Also I wish I could have made it down but I'm glad you drank some wine for me.
Don’t worry, we definitely did. ;)
Obviously I had an amazing time, bus issues and all! I hope you had SO much fun. Thanks for letting me join in on the celebration! SO excited for your wedding!
I’m glad you were able to be there! Thanks for the tiara ;) Did you get that back, btw?
Yep!
Looks like a ton of fun! Wine and friends can’t be beat. :)
I love wine tasting. We have several wonderful vineyards here in Georgia, love going there. Anne, 30 looks good on you.
What fun! That is a great idea for a bachelorette get together and very neat that so many of your friends from different times in your life were able to come.
I love that I’m double fisting wine in one of these pictures… we all had so much fun!!!
Looks like an awesome bachelorette party! Can never go wrong with wine. :-)
Ah so fun! I swear if I had to do mine all over again, I would definitely do a wine tour. So glad you had a great party!
Looks like a lovely event!
AH! I am so sad I missed it!!! Looks like a fabulous time! Hunter you look super hot, must be that Cali lifestyle, and Jenny way to go it looks like you pulled off a fantastic event yet again!!! :)
Looks so beautiful and fun! Jenny has done such an elegant and impressive job as your mistress of ceremonies, so to speak. What a class act!
Wish I could have been there, rather than being destroyed by the physical sciences section of my MCAT diagnostic (holy hell). But I can’t wait for the big day!!!!
Ewww MCAT. That sounds terrible!!
Love your recap! La Grange is lovely – I’ve been there before. :)
What a great bachelorette party! Wine touring is a ton of fun! :)
Love this idea for a bachelorette party! It’s great that so many of your friends were able to attend.
What an awesome trip! So glad you had fun!
What an awesome bachelorette party! Love your shirt! And I think you should post some of the photo booth pictures :)
Haha they aren’t really blog appropriate. :)
I love this post Anne! We’re going wine tasting in Nova for my bachlorette party in a few weeks – I can’t wait!!
Fun!! Where are you going? :)
We’re going to Casanel, Willowcroft and 8 Chains North. I haven’t been to any of them so I’m excited.
I haven’t been to those either – have fun!!
I used to give tastings at La Grange for fun on the weekends! Wine tasting in NOVA is one of my favorite things to do! My boyfriend and I probably go about every other weekend. You need to check out Winery at Bull Run if you haven’t yet! It’s my new favorite.
Ooo I haven’t been there – I’ll put it on the list! :)
Looks like you had a fabulous time, Anne! I went on my first wine tasting trip a couple months ago and LOVED it – definitely going to keep this sort of thing in mind for my bachelorette party (not even close to engaged/getting married though, haha!).
I also wanted to thank you for blogging in such a fun and relatable way – I always love seeing your delicious recipes and diverse exercise routines, and it’s inspiring to read posts from someone whose life demonstrates healthy balance in so many ways! I actually just started my own blog and would be positively thrilled if you have a moment to stop by and say hi. And this is very belated, but congratulations on your wedding as you head into final preparations!
Thank you, Iris, for reading! :) I’ll check out your blog for sure!
Looks like such a fun weekend!!! Love the pictures :)
You and your friends are too much! What fun! Well done to Jenny and all…