Sarah is my Bestie. She loves to bake. And cookies are her staple.

Throughout her young life (yes, she is young compared to me), she was either baking with her mother in the kitchen, or creating delicious goodies in her own kitchen as a newlywed. Until one day, something confounded her: her cookies were coming out runny!

Perhaps it was the oven. Yeah, blame it on the crappy apartment oven. Or maybe the recipe? No, she tried different recipes to make sure – all of them came out a gooey mess even though she had made them before. Wha … ???? Is it the actual ingredients I’m using? Aaaahhhh, it must be the vanilla extract! Why? Because it was made in Mexico!

Way to go, Bestie. Blame it on the Mexicans. I handed her the race card and said, “Then get some other kind of vanilla extract – one NOT from Mexico or any other country!” And she did. And her cookies STILL came out runny.

She finally figured it out: she had been using salted butter … which my sister-in-law thinks is weird because she only uses salted butter when she bakes (and her cookies come out great). And I only use UNsalted butter when I bake. But regardless, once she switched butters, everything was back to normal.

That story has absolutely nothing to do with her bridal portraits except that her little cookie conundrum is one of my fondest memories of her. Trying to track down the criminal ingredient was hilarious. ‘Cuz that’s what we do together. And when we’re bored and our men are out of town, we do photo shoots.

Flowers are by the lovely Hailey Jayne. I literally gave the poor girl 24 hours, and she whipped up TWO bouquets for us!

My Bestie, proudly wearing a necklace with her husband’s last name initial.

I heart this one!!!

Bestie just told me that she had finally found some apothecary jars to go in her new kitchen. So I thought it would be cute to get some ring shots on top of some old jars.

Hair clip by Nuvintage.

Bestie wanted this shot. I had to do a yoga pose just to get it.

And ending with our favorite, totally ripping off ANTM’s swimming pool shoot of Caridee & Amanda:

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