27 dresses? Pfftttt... I'm soo gonna beat that.

I don't know when, but at some point in the past few years when it comes up in conversation- I have have found myself more than once making this statement... "I don't really like girls, I just prefer to hang out with guys." I have two brothers and a lot of my friends are boys and I pride myself with that for some reason... I guess I think that is cool? It wasn't until the last time I regurgitated that fact, that I realized that it's completely ironic. I dislike girls? Hmmm... I was a cheerleader in high school, in fact-I was the captain of the cheerleaders. These days I am an active member of a sorority, and I live with three girls. So, let's think about this... either I am a miserable person who is surrounded by people of a particular gender that I despise, or I am lying to myself and I really don't dislike girls as much as I've said. What is it?

Well, I know this much... girls like me. I have a lot of friends, and a lot of those friends are female. I also have a lot of female family members, and a lot of those people are married, and guess what? I've been in their weddings... 7 to be exact. I was in all seven weddings before I was 16 years old.

At my apartment, one of my room mates owns the movie "27 Dresses," I don't know who's it is but it's one of the usuals we pop in on a rainy day, so I pretty much have the key points memorized. Katherine Heigl plays Jane, a young woman who has served as a bridesmaid 27 times.... obviously there is much more to the story line than this(watching her sister be swept off her feet by a guy SHE has been obsessing over for years and having said sister steal her dream wedding, finding out her imaginary dream guy/wedding columnist writer dude is a complete jerk... and feeling like "she just found out her favorite love song was written about a sandwich..." all very relatable), but let's talk comparisons. The movie opens up with Jane in a bind, because she somehow agreed to be an attendant in two weddings on the same night... back and forth and back and forth until she is discovered and tacky wedding writer/dream guy finds her out and later realizes she has served in now 27 wedding parties!

Flash back to my life... Lauren Edwards, 21 years old, has already been in 7 weddings, and over the years a lot of my friends have mentioned that one day in the far off future they would like me to be in there wedding. Well, it's starting. In the past week I have been asked to be a bridesmaid twice, those weddings both falling within the same week(by the way I'm not bitter, I'm pretty excited about it :). The only thing I seem to be missing to completely parallel my life to this character is a themed wedding or two. I had really been holding out for some big hats or a geisha costume dress, but no luck yet. Anyhow, Jane/Kate Heigl... it's on. I'm assuming the average young woman with a lot of friends participates in about 5-10 weddings in her 20's... that's just my guess, I haven't taken and polls nor do I have any hard evidence. Either way I'm thinking I'm already well above average, because at 22 I'll have been a part of 9 weddings... that's 9 down 19 to go to surpass Jane. I'm just sayin.