The end of 2023 already?! Wowwee this year sure has flown by!! And I know everyone says that every single year, but this year I really mean it! 2023 started & ended before I even realized it.
And not only did it just fly by in terms of speed, but this year flew by in other ways too….
Maybe to the tune of…. 27 flights. AND 13 road trips!!! You read that right. We had 40 travel days in 2023. That’s almost 1 per week!
This year was BUSY. It was our first full year living in our new state of North Carolina. We adore Charlotte and have truly enjoyed getting to know the city, exploring across the state, forming our community here, and making friends.
But as you would expect for two 27 year olds, we are entering the season of life in which our friends are starting their own lives, too! And that meant that we had a LOT to celebrate this year 🙂
Living in NC with tons of long distance friendships meant that we did a lot of flying around the country this year to shower our friends with love and celebrate their happiness. We adored it, and we adored that they did it for us when it was our turn, too!
This also meant, however, that we were in the middle of a very jam-packed calendar while also planning our own wedding and pursuing our own career goals and personal goals at the same time. We felt tired and burnt out through some of the year, but I wouldn’t trade the memories for a minute.
This is what life is about, right? Doing what you need to do so that you can share the important moments with the people in your life that matter. Well…. 2023 was the year of exactly that. We worked hard (REALLY hard) and played even harder 😉
So without further ado, let’s go through the Top 11 Moments of 2023. Here are all of the ways we played this year (in chronological order)!
Our Wedding Highlight Reel
11. Disney World with our Family
We did a lot of traveling this year, but one of my very favorite adventures was going to Disney World with almost the entire Bianchini clan. My parents very generously saved up their timeshare for a few years so that they could splurge in 2023 and gift the entire family (including 8 kids!) with a trip to the Happiest Place on Earth.
The kids keep getting older, and every day that our entire family is together, our time is full of chaos and noise and yelling and crying and laughter and joy and memories and hugs and (omg I’m tearing up just writing this….. Geez, wait until I get to the later moments… I’m in big trouble there lol).
What I’m trying to say is that our family is chaos, but it is OUR chaos, and I love every single second that we get to spend together. Which meant that Disney was a huge blessing this year!
We did some pool days and some park days (the Hollywood Studios Nighttime event, Universal Studios, and then a park hopper day between Animal Kingdom and Epcot). In between, we spent a lot of time lizard hunting, eating ice cream, and counting to 8 about a hundred thousand times to make sure everyone was still there (we messed up once, whoops).
It is so special getting to make these memories with my parents, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, and my kiddos, and I am so grateful that we got to be together!
10. Kenai Fjords National Park Boat Day in Alaska
In June, I went to visit my brother in Alaska where he lives full-time. Brandon had moved in 2022 a few months before Matt and I did, but last year he wasn’t quite ready to have visitors. 2023 was not passing me by without an opportunity to visit him in Alaska.
I flew in for a few days of solo hang outs with B, then my mom flew in and all 3 of us hung out together, and then I left (for #9 on this list!!) and my mom and Brandon got to spend a few days together at the end.
Our Alaska trip was full of fun adventures including a solo trip to the Homer Spit while Brandon worked, hiking Exit Glacier, drift boating down the Kenai river, eating reindeer, watching the salmon run at the Russian, and celebrating the longest days of the year at the summer solstice festival.
Our final day together in Alaska, however, was by far my favorite. We signed up for an 8 hour boat tour of the Kenai Fjords National Park. Normally the weather on the water is rainy or windy or, generally mildly unpleasant (at least according to the boat captain). But I wouldn’t know because our weather was STUNNING! They actually said it was the absolute best weather day they had seen all year long.
We saw so many animals including sea lions, seals, puffins, wild otters, and, the main event, a humpback whale!! The sun was shining, the water was beautiful, the cliffs were stunning, the animals were playing, and we were in FREAKING ALASKA. What a great day.
9. Pregame at my Bachelorette
The next day, I hopped on a plane from Alaska and flew to Texas for my bachelorette party in Austin!!
I had been feeling a little bit nervous about my bachelorette because the group I was traveling with wasn’t just one friend group that all knew each other. Instead, I have collected a lifelong friend or 2 from every phase of life.
And while my friends all know about each other and some had even met, this was the first time they were going to be spending a significant amount of time with one another. I was so nervous because I just wanted everyone to love each other!!
I need not have worried. This was the BEST weekend ever, and all of my friends clicked instantly! We went on a food tour, played games, went to a swimming hole, two-stepped at a bar, and rafted down a big river.
Every second was spent laughing and telling stories, and by the end my friends were taking selfies with each other, booking plane tickets home together, and even saying they wanted to do this again next year!! WHAT!!! My dream come true! Everyone I love in one room and them all loving each other, too? I am a happy gal.
It’s hard to choose, but if I had to pick a favorite moment from the weekend, it would be the pregame before we went two-stepping on Saturday night. We put on a 90s power hour (bc throwback to college, duh), took tequila shots, and played games/told stories for hours. Everyone was laughing so hard and we were dancing and taking photos and…
Quite frankly, there wasn’t anything revolutionary about this moment except for that it was the moment it felt like everything clicked. It was during that pregame that everyone went from Alexandria’s friends to just… friends! And you could feel it in the air. I loved it, and I would relive that weekend forever <3
8. Taylor Swift Concert
When 2023 began I somehow thought that I wasn’t a Swiftie. That was dumb, because I should have realized I was a Swiftie when I spent the entire week in Connecticut with Elizabeth in 2021 listening to the Folklore album. But alas, I did not.
Taylor Swift tickets went on sale for her Eras tour in November of 2022, and I thought “hmmm…. I’m not a Swiftie. I’ll leave these tickets for the real Swifties to buy”. Oh how wrong I was.
I spent the next 6 months watching every video of the Eras Tour I could find on TikTok, making Taylor Swift the sole artist on my Spotify Wrapped, and regretting the fact that I hadn’t even TRIED to get tickets.
Turns out, I’m a Swiftie.
At some point during the year I started trying to convince Matt to fly to another country with me in 2024 so that we could catch the Eras tour on its international leg. And my man had an idea 😉
We were going to be driving from North Carolina to Michigan in July so that we could go to the cottage and finish up some wedding planning. On the day we were driving, we would be passing through Cincinnati. At the same time that Taylor Swift would be playing at Paycor Stadium! AND MATT BOUGHT ME TICKETS!!!!!!!
They were way way way way way too expensive (like…. way too expensive) and they were in the nosebleeds and we could only afford one so I went by myself. And it was still the best thing ever.
I sat next to 3 sisters who were so welcoming and danced and sang with me the whole time, and it was everything I dreamed of! The concert was indescribable and I’m so glad I got to go! What an incredible surprise.
7. Saying our Vows
Okay this list is in chronological order, but if it was in order of best moments, these next two would be eons above everything else, because we have arrived at our wedding day!!!! In August of 2023, Matt and I promised in front of all of our family and friends to respect each other, love each other, care for each other, support each other, trust each other, and protect each other for the rest of our lives.
Obviously the entire day was perfect, but this list is about moments, so I wanted to choose two that stood out as the best. Frankly, they are the two best moments of my entire life.
The first one was saying our vows to one another. Writing our own vows and saying them aloud to one another during our ceremony was very important to me, and I had been looking forward to this for a long time. Every time that wedding planning got overwhelming and stressful (AKA the entirety of 2023 up until this point), I laid in bed and looked forward to saying my vows to Matt.
It truly lived up! I got to spend 4 minutes telling Matt and everyone we love why I love him so much. I got to tell him why I’m choosing him to be my partner for life, the ways that I will prioritize him, and how I plan to love him well in this life and the next.
I cried through the entire 4 minute speech and then cried through his too. It was a beautiful moment and I will never forget it!
It made all of that crappy wedding planning worth it 😉 Here’s a full wedding ceremony video if you want to see our full vows! They start at 34:45.
6. Dancing to Love Story at Our Wedding
I think this is the first time in Foreign Fork history that two of my Top Moments have been on the very same day! But if there’s a day to break out of norms, it’s our wedding day.
One of the other best moments of 2023 (this one, I think, also is the best moment of my entire 27 years) was the very last dance that Matt and I had with the guests at our wedding. I had requested to end our evening dancing to Love Story by Taylor Swift.
During the beginning of the song everyone got in a circle with their arms around each other, swaying back and forth and singing the lyrics to us. Matt and I held each others’ hands and walked the perimeter of the circle, singing to each individual person.
As the song continued to build, we went back to the center of the circle and put our arms around each other.
When it got to the lyric “he knelt to the ground / and pulled out a ring”, Matt knelt to the ground and pretended to pull out a ring, which, I must admit, was a crowd pleaser.
As the chorus began following that line, the circle of our favorite people went crazy jumping up and down and screaming the lyrics alongside us.
The very best part was when we got to the lines “Marry Me Juliet / you’ll never have to be alone / I love you / and that’s all I really know” and I got to scream the “I LOVE YOU “at the very top of my lungs.
I really can’t describe just how much love I feel when I look back on this moment. Our entire bridal party, our family, and very special friends had stayed with us until the end of our night.
Everyone was smiling ear to ear or crying happy tears or screaming the lyrics alongside us. And we were LITERALLY encircled in their arms, in one giant hug from them at the end of our best day, screaming to each other about how much we love each other. Ah geez… the tears have arrived again 😉
5. Toasting at Dinner in Bali
I had been wanting to go to Southeast Asia for a long time, and Matt was open to basically all travel options (reason gajillion why I love him). In the end, we chose Bali, Indonesia for our honeymoon destination.
Bali was such a fun choice because it was a great blend of culture/adventure/learning and relaxation/pampering.
We started our honeymoon off in Ubud, where we saw a show, visited some waterfalls, taste tested luwak coffee (made from the poop of a jungle cat!), explored a rice terrace, did a purification ritual at the water temple, visited the monkey forest, saw the Ubud palace, shopped, spent some time at the pool, took a cooking class, and relaxed during a few spa days.
Unfortunately, a risk of visiting Bali is the dreaded Bali Belly, which is food poisoning that often comes from the water/food safety in Southeast Asia that western bellies aren’t used to. We knew it was a possibility to get Bali Belly on our honeymoon, and booked anyways.
Unfortunately, Bali Belly found us both, and it found Matt at the top of a volcano. After a 2:30 am wake up, a 2 hour drive, and 2 hour trek to the top of the mountain, Matt puked at the peak… Blegh. And then we didn’t even get the sunrise view! It was a cloudy day, and all of that misery was for naught…. We couldn’t even see the sunrise or the view of the mountains beside us!
Despite all of this, I actually adore this story from our honeymoon and Matt and I love sharing it. It sucked in the moment, but it’s such a funny detail to look back on.
The second half of our honeymoon was spent at a 5 star resort in Nusa Dua, the much more luxurious and high-end half of our vacation. We lounged by the pool, saw the Kecak Fire Dance, ate at an incredible buffet, and snorkeled in what will forever be the BEST snorkeling spot of my entire life.
In short, our honeymoon was a perfect blend of what Matt and I wanted. It truly checked all of the boxes we desired! And a few boxes we didn’t desire (aka food poisoning).
I could end this entry here, but I want to tell you about the “pinch me” moment of the trip.
Matt hadn’t left the room in 24 hours due to the stomach bug, but he was finally starting to feel better. We wanted to take a walk on the Campuhan Ridge Walk, a gorgeous pathway that lines the mountaintops of Ubud.
We walked the whole thing, and we were still feeling good, so we kept walking. We got to some houses, but we were still feeling good, so we kept walking. We got to a town, and we were still feeling good so we kept walking. Finally, we were so far into our walk that turning around and going back for dinner would take too long. We saw a hotel with a restaurant and decided to stop there for dinner.
They seated us at a table on the deck, which we soon realized had one of the best views of our entire trip. We were seated on a cliff’s edge overlooking the jungle and the huge drop to the valley below.
There were twinkling lights, and live music being played, and I was seated across the table from MY HUSBAND. MATT!!! In BALI! He kept looking at me like he loved me so much, and I wouldn’t let go of his hand and ugh…. If there was ever a perfect travel moment, it was this one.
4. Mile High Bridge Day
With the wedding planning over, it was time to enjoy our weekends again. And with all of our traveling to other states/countries, we hadn’t taken too many opportunities to explore our own home.
For my birthday, I asked if Matt would plan a trip to some North Carolina hike. He picked the Mile High Swinging Bridge on Grandfather Mountain, so we packed some lunches and headed out.
We did an audio tour, an easy hike with gorgeous views, and walked across the crazy bridge at the top of the mountain! We had so much fun!
We didn’t have to get on a plane or drive 12 hours for those great memories… It was right in our backyard. We got to spend some time exploring the state we had moved to and making some memories in the mountains. LOVE.
3. Scumbag Sundays
Okay fine, this isn’t a moment. But it IS my new favorite concept.
If you haven’t noticed in the last 6 years of these wrap ups, I have a hard time sitting still. And most of my top moments of every year are the times that I have been out in the world, exploring new places and trying new things. There’s nothing wrong with loving that.
But sometimes I find that I am a little uncomfortable with being comfortable. I dislike stagnance and I often feel a lot more anxiety when I’m just sitting on the couch. Being busy makes my mind busy, and a lot of times that has been good for me.
This year, however, was a little too busy. Our schedule was full to the brim of trips and visitors and our own huge goals and projects. We were chock full of unmissable events and trips to places we absolutely wanted to be.
Despite having so much fun whenever we were gone, I found myself, for the very first time in my life, actually….. craving my couch?? I never in a million years thought that I’d have my bags packed for a flight and say “hm… I’d rather stay right here at home instead”.
This feels out of character for me, but it also feels like a healthy progression as I’m getting older. I still have the travel and adventure bug, don’t you worry about me. But I started to yearn for some days where I could just sit on the couch and chill for the day.
Enter: Scumbag Sundays.
Prior to the wedding, Matt and I had spent every single Sunday locked in his office making hours and hours worth of wedding decisions. When the wedding ended, our Sundays were free!
Suddenly, Sundays went from decisions and (way too many) tears to jammies and football and smashbooking and reading. AND NAPS! We call them Scumbag Sundays because we stay in our sweats, order out food, and try to refrain from doing anything productive (eh, kinda).
I really look forward to these days, and I’ve found that I LOVE being a scumbag every once in a while.
2. Watching our Favorite People Get Married
Matt and I were invited to 9 weddings this year, and we had the opportunity to attend 7 of them. They were all so fun! I saw my college and high school friends more this year than I had in the last 5 years combined because of how many fun events we got to attend together!
I was a bridesmaid in one of the weddings (in Texas, HI ELIZABETH!!!!) and Matt was the best man in another (in Michigan, wassup Vince!).
I attended 2 other bachelorette parties (one in New Orleans, LA and one in the Ozarks of AR). We also attended 3 other weddings in Michigan and one in Chicago (I LOVE YOU FROODLEY DOODLEY!!).
Seeing my friends so happy marrying the person of their dreams was one of the best parts of the year.
Elizabeth asked if I would give a speech during her wedding festivities which was truly one of the biggest honors ever. It was so easy to give a speech about how much I love her and how much our friendship means to me!
Tess and Antonio had the sweetest vows and Matt and I loved hanging out with them at their rehearsal dinner + after party!
Everyone’s weddings just felt so much like a representation of them, and we loved dancing the nights away with each other.
1. Paying off Loans
Matt and I achieved a MASSIVE goal this year. When Matt graduated from Michigan State, he had quite a large student loan balance to pay off. Like…. $140,000 large.
He did a great job tackling them himself from the start, and by the time we got back together, he had made some great progress!!
But around April of 2022, I got fed up with the control these loans had on our life. One night, I stayed up so late scratching furiously on a notepad, figuring out how we could get them gone by 2023… Our goal was to get his 20 year loan gone in 4 years.
Luckily Matt was on board, and we both started taking on extra work so that we could dump every extra penny (that wasn’t going to investments) into our loan payoff.
It was HARD work, and I will give Matt big credit that he took on a huge portion of it while I tackled wedding planning. We worked late every night and pushed through when we were tired. Every month we were making multiple payments, chipping away at the balance payment by payment. I even made us a debt payoff poster so that we could have a visual for how far we’d come!
In December of 2023, Matt and I made the final payment on his student loans…. After all of that work, they were finally gone!!
We hosted a Debt Free party with his parents and my parents complete with confetti guns, a Debt Free cake, champagne, debt free signs, and the piece de resistance, an obnoxiously giant check.
We worked so hard for this and it felt great to recognize our hard work and to have that weight lifted off of our shoulders. It still doesn’t feel real! But maybe it will when our next paycheck hits in January and we actually get to keep it.
Plus Matt is very desperate for a 65” television, so we’ll celebrate by buying one of those, too 😉
Honorable Mentions
11 Moments just couldn’t capture all of the great moments! Honorable mentions go to (in no particular order):
- Making friends and building our community in Charlotte, and even having some of them travel to Michigan to attend our wedding! We feel so at home here, and love our friends so much.
- Hearing what everyone thought about the personalized notes at our wedding
- Going to Oistin’s fish market in Barbados and watching Rihanna perform the Super Bowl Halftime show in her home country
- Throwing “I Went to the Ul(mer)timate Wedding” t shirts from the stage at our wedding
- Homemade pasta night in Arkansas + telling Elizabeth why we love her at her bachelorette party
- Christmas Eve with my kiddos when we watched our wedding video and everyone cheered (and booed) at the right moments
- Seeing everyone stream in from the sides of the room and onto the dance floor when the Michigan State University fight song started playing over the speaker at the wedding
- Walking the freedom trail with Nick in Boston
- Hugging Karli and Alli at Tastemakers and then again at the end of my wedding
- Hearing Matt give the best man speech at Vince’s wedding
Well there you have it folks!! Our top 11 Moments of 2023. Can you believe that this year included our wedding?! And a honeymoon?! Plus more love than we can imagine <3
2024 is starting tomorrow, and I have a word I’m focusing on for the year: NO .
This year, I want to make space for the important things: the rest my body needs, the creativity that I was lacking this year, the growth of the business I love so much, and the friends and family that we cherish. In 2024, I want to prioritize ME, my important relationships, my new home state, and only the things I want to do.
I’m not good at No, so we’ll see how it goes 😉 But from what I can tell, next year is already shaping up to be pretty memorable. See you in 2024! <3
(See how it went in my Top 10 Moments of 2024 post!)
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