• cheeks fell asleep at the strip club during his bachelor party.
• dean took us the "scenic" route around the entire atlanta beltway for 2 hours to get from the airport to the hotel in dekalb -- a 20 minute drive for the general public. he also took us the scenic route (albeit a little less scenic) on the way back. and dropped us off at the wrong terminal.
• spirer, the only 24 year-old i know with them, walked around showing everyone his new braces. he also puffed out his chest and asked every bridesmaid if she wanted to see his "guns."
• we took a secret trip to willy's burritos for real food during the friday night shabbat dinner.
• one of the guys was mistaken for a waiter at ruth's chris steak house.
• i went on a shopping outing with a group of cool-enough-to-be-invited-but-not-cool-enough-to-be-in-the-actual-wedding people.
• deion and lax, the best men, went for manicures and pedicures. deion might be well-versed at mani's and pedi's, but asian nail salons are a new adventure for our hero lax. during his pedicure, when the lady told him to soak his feet in the water, lax must have misheard that for "be-sure-to-drench-both-me-and-half-the-salon."

and while i think the vast majority of us had an all around great time, perhaps the drama of the weekend can best be expressed through the as-only-debbie-does-episodes.

friday night, after a few/a lot of (who's counting?) drinks, i leaned over to turn off the light when i had an encounter with the nightstand. upon the collision of its corner and my head, i thought, "boy, am i glad i'm drunk. otherwise, that would have really really hurt." i leaned back to watch tv when i noticed that my pillow was soaked in blood. turns out that the in celebrity death match between the nightstand and me, woody-the-nightstand won.

at the mall, i was introduced to "lip venom," a new lip-gloss laced with chinese herbs that are intended to irritate ones lips and send blood rushing to them, thereby producing a fuller, sexier and naturally-rosey-lip look. turns out that purposefully inflaming your lips isn't so healthy for you, but it looks really hot.

saturday night, after a few/a lot of (who's counting?) drinks, i wound up drinking 4 red bulls in lieu of alcohol between 10pm and 11:30pm. turns out that 4 am isn't so fun when no one else is awake.

preparing for the wedding, someone thought it would be really funny to see happens if one puts the two most un-girly-girls together to do their hair. turns out that lisa wound up with illustrious bouncy curls; i fried off a bunch of my hair.

sunday night, after a few ... okay, after a whole lot of drinks (no one was counting -- not even me), i wound up gracing the dance floor with the hora and then gracing the toilet with my face. but i didn't just have an oops-i-drank-too-much-and-threw-up evening; i had a full-out, passed-out, incoherent episode -- far surpassing any college or high school drinking extravaganza. i fell asleep in a bathtub full of water. i dry-heaved for hours. i couldn't answer simple questions like "what's your name?" "where were you born?" "what's the quadratic equation?" and "why do you want a dual law/mba degree?" (which i might point out is an unfair question: i can't answer that when i'm sober either).

turns out that overdrinking and missing a lot of your friends' wedding reception really isn't fun.

being twenty-something is as much about living as it is about learning.

it is as much about maturing as it is about regressing.

it is as much about screwing up as it is about growing up.

and i think we all discover that really good friends are the ones who cry at our weddings, rescue us from danger and laugh with us ... even when it's not funny.

(weekend pictures c/o smaya at: http://www.snapfish.com/share/p=9051125972148594/l=59199137/cobrandOid=1000131/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB)