Lex Appeal Is Back: The Relaunch Episode

Okay besties… after ghosting my own podcast (oops), I’m back and so much has changed. Think heartbreaks, plot twists, dream trips, new love, wedding planning, and a house that basically fell into my lap. This relaunch of Lex Appeal is me catching you up on life in my 30s, with all the tea, a little chaos, and lots of laughs. Grab a spritz, we’ve got some catching up to do.

Follow me on IG: @aleximcraewhite

Follow me on TikTok: @alexismcraewhite

Transcript

 Hey y'all. It's Lex, and you're listening to Lex Appeal, the podcast that gives you the same feeling as that magical moment when you spot your Aperol spritz making its way to your table. Here we talk about the messy, hilarious, and real parts of life after your twenties. I'm in my thirties planning a wedding.

Running a company and realizing every day that the plot twist never stop coming. So grab a drink and let's dive in, man. Did you see that? Girl? Stop it, man. I saw it first.

Two years ago, I ghosted my own podcast. I had just been cheated on, was crying in bed on my birthday and had sworn off men forever. Today I'm engaged to the love of my life, planning a wedding in the Caribbean and living in my dream house. So let's talk about how the hell that happened. But before we get into the whirlwind, that's been my life for the past two years, can I just say how much I've missed you?

This podcast isn't just me ranting into a mic. It's really about us hanging out, catching up, laughing and spilling the tea. You guys have always been my people, and it just feels so good to be back in your ears. Whether you've been here since day one, or if this is your first time, welcome. Grab a drink, get comfy.

Let's catch up. So I guess let's start. In the spring of 2023 where I had ghosted you guys, I had just launched season two of Lexa appeal and had put out a couple episodes and was really excited about that, and then all of a sudden my world kind of flipped upside down when I found out that the guy that I had been seeing for a few months had been cheating on me.

Since day one. It was a, it was a pretty devastating blow. This guy, he lived in the beach town where my parents have a place and he was a bartender at one of my favorite restaurants down there. And so that's how we met and things just seemed perfect. We actually hung out after he got off work that very first night.

And to be totally honest with everybody had had probably a couple too many drinks. And so I shared with him a lot of the things that I had gone through in my past long-term relationship that had ended about a year before and shared things with him that, um, my ex wasn't willing to compromise on or things that he had put me through and, and the struggles that I had gone through with that.

And looking back, I realized that. That information that I shared with him so quickly, he was able to use to really kind of manipulate me and kind of have me wrapped around his finger. But of course, I was blind to that because as somebody who's just very, very trusting and an open book, I mean, you guys are gonna realize that as the season progresses.

I am not really scared to talk to anybody about anything. And so it was just one of those things where he was able to make me feel. Like he was the right one. He seemed too good to be true, and even though my mother has told me countless times in my life that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.

I completely ignored that and just went headfirst into this relationship. Everything that he told me and shared with me were things that I wanted. So desperately to hear from my past relationship, and there were things he was promising that my ex would've never compromised on, and things that my ex and I thought about, and he just seemed so aligned with everything that I wanted for my, my future when it came to our relationship and career and where I lived and all the details.

We really went into that and everything seemed right. We had had what I had convinced myself to be this really great week together and we'd spent so much time, we were pretty much inseparable except when he was at work and I look back and things were, things were off looking back. But in that moment, I had convinced myself that they were great.

When I got back to Chattanooga, I woke up the next morning and I just had this gut feeling that I needed to check my DM request, which I rarely do. So if you've ever sent me a DM and I haven't responded, it's probably there and I'm sorry I haven't checked it, but, so in the hidden request folder there, it was a message saying, Hey, I think you need to talk to my friend.

I think you guys might be dating the same person. This is her contact information. To be perfectly honest, I knew about this girl. I was told that she was an ex. I knew that she was about to move out. All of these things I look back on and I just like absolutely want to face palm myself because they were all red flags.

But again, as a trusting person, I believed it. I was like, okay, they've broken up, they're done. She's moving back to New York. You know, this is, this is fine. You know, no big deal. Like, and I think. Having lived in New York City, people live together even after they've broken up until their lease ends. And so I think because of that, I just kind of wrote it out of the outta my mind and I just ignored it, even though it should have been a massive red flag.

So I reached out to her and was like, Hey, I was told like you may have some information that I need to hear. And when I tell you this girl. Came with receipts. It was like a freaking novel, y'all. These receipts had text messages, pictures of dates they were on, and messages of, what do you want for dinner, baby, I love you so much.

Like, can't wait to see you. I've missed you all day, blah, blah, blah. All this stuff like reality shattering type. Messages. She and I ended up going back and forth for literally the entire day, like exchanging stories, dates, times, Hey, he was with me here. He was telling me he was doing this. Oh, well, he was with me at that time.

It was just wild, truly, truly wild. So I found all of this out three days before my birthday. My world was flipped upside down right before I turned 32. And while it was three days before my birthday turns out, it was also four days before I would end up meeting August. So I spent my 32nd birthday in bed crying, and the next morning my friend Brandon called me and said, get your ass outta bed.

We're going to the bar. Tennessee's playing. Baseball was on like, let's go watch the game. Let's go have us a day. I'm not gonna let you mope around, like, get up, get dressed. We're going. So we were at the bar having fun drinking. I was trying to be present in the moment, not think about my heart being shattered, just trying to have fun celebrating my birthday.

So Brandon tells me, Hey, I invited August. He's gonna come meet us and you'll hear our whole story of how we met and all the details behind it. But we had met once before and I was just like, dude, I really don't wanna hang out like with anybody else. Like thought this was gonna be a just you and me hanging out kind of day.

And he was like, no, it'll be fine. We'll have a good time. And we did. We had a lot of fun. Um, but I was obviously beyond uninterested. I wasn't. In a place for that. There was no part of my brain that was like, yeah, like I could be interested in this guide. Like looking back, I thought he was cute and we had a lot of fun together, but I was literally in my F men.

I'm done going into my villain era. Fully done with men. But you know what they say, tell God your plans and he will probably laugh in your face. That was ended up being very much the case me in August, so three weeks after we met August and I. Kind of started hanging out. It was very casual. We both were in that we're done dating type situation.

We can be friends with benefits type thing. And we had been hanging out, I think a total of nine days. All of a sudden, my sweet baby girl, tipsy, uh, my miniature dachshund got really sick and ended up passing away. Um, it's still really hard for me to talk about. It was such devastation that it made everything that I had found out about a month before with my ex.

It just, it made none of it, like none of it mattered anymore. It just seemed totally unimportant. Tipsy was so much more than a dog, like. She was my child. She was my baby, and she had seen me through the best and the worst years of my life and had been there for me, and she had been my rock, and all of a sudden she was gone.

But August was there for me. He went through every emotion, every up and down that I was feeling. He was right there. He held me. When I cried, he came to the vet. Before she passed and, and met him. And again, you'll hear all of the details of our story and, and Tipsy plays a huge part in it. Um, but, but that was it.

It was a real world rocker. I miss her so much. So moving forward, August and I obviously continued to see each other and. We fell in love and um, we decided that we were gonna keep our relationship off of social media. I had actually decided that after my long-term relationship ended and said, you know, the next guy that I share with the world of Instagram or TikTok or whatever.

Would be somebody I'm engaged to. Now, obviously my close friends on Instagram knew about him and, and people in our quote, real life knew. But it was really fun to to keep that relationship private, and it allowed us to grow and become closer in a way that I think we wouldn't have had we gone public to the social media world any sooner.

In 2023, I had the biggest year ever with my company. For those who don't know, I own a wine and spirits tasting company called In Good Taste. We offer samples of the latest and greatest products in liquor stores throughout the Chattanooga area. I started the company in 2019 and have been doing it ever since, but I'll, I'll go into detail a little bit more on that in another episode.

But I had the biggest year I had ever had with my company, but I also realized at the end of the year that I had been kind of burned out and that I wanted to allow myself to not necessarily take a step back, but to remind myself that work. Wasn't everything and being with August really allowed that to happen.

It reminded me of what was really important in life. We brought in 2024 with my mom and dad in Beaver Creek, Colorado, which was so much fun. We love to travel with my parents. We honestly do it pretty often. They're our favorite travel buddies. And then about a week and a half after that. August had a meeting, one meeting in South Korea and we decided to make a whole trip out of it.

I had never been to Asia and so we went to South Korea, the Philippines, and Hong Kong, and it was just, it was incredible. I was so thankful for the opportunity to experience those countries. Now to tell you just a little bit of how much I have talked and talked and talked about relaunching L Appeal, I actually had a photo shoot in February of 2024, specifically for new Lex appeal pictures in hopes that it would get me up off my ass and light a fire under my butt and get me going to relaunch this.

I even got Lexa appeal trademark. That's how sure I was, I wanted to do this, but I just couldn't get past the fear. I, I was stuck and I'm sure I'll do a whole episode on that. But I do want you guys to know how serious I have been and how much I have missed you guys. Now, switching gears a little bit. The last weekend of April, my brother and sister-in-law found out they were pregnant and told me in August about it, and that was just the craziest best surprise ever.

Um, or so I thought I was so excited for them. And now I have the most precious little nephew. He, his name is Ward, and I'm just so obsessed with him and blessed to be his cray cray, but. The biggest and best surprise that I have ever experienced in my entire life came two weeks later on what I thought was my birthday trip to Paris, and turns out August and I got freaking engaged.

Like I wish I could have gone back to myself who had just found out I had been cheated on and been like, Hey, guess what? A year from now you're gonna be getting engaged to the actual love of your life. And I think I would've been like, you have no idea what you're talking about, but. It, it did, it happened, and I can't wait for that episode that we're gonna do to where you guys get all the details.

And even though he shared, I think most everything with me, I wouldn't be surprised if all of a sudden August. Comes outta nowhere with some details that I haven't heard yet about the surprise and everything that went into it to to plan that and to pull that off. So part of the surprise was that he flew my mom and dad to Paris to be there to witness the proposal.

So I got to actually spend my 33rd birthday in Amsterdam with my mom, my dad, and my new fiance. And you know, you hear. All the time that you'll be shocked how much your life can change in a year. But the 2023 to 2024 shift truly showed that to me. We, we get back to America, wedding planning began, and I had dreams at one point in my life of being a wedding planner, so this was like my time to shine.

I was so excited. I can't wait to share all the, the tea that. There has been, so we're on plan like H at this point. Like things have just fallen apart and coming back together and fallen apart and coming back together. Like it has been nonstop drama and I can't wait to share that with y'all because. How I haven't pulled on my hair out yet is honestly a miracle.

So come June, 2024, I traveled to Omaha and watched Tennessee in the College World Series and they won the national championship. And that was just, I mean, the year just kept having highlight after highlight after highlight. And we traveled a lot more during the summer. I think we ended up traveling a total of 63,000 miles in the year of 2024.

Like that's just actually insane. But Fall came around. Football season started. If you're new here, you'll find out very, very quickly that I am a die hard Tennessee fan. I know I mentioned going to Omaha to watch Tennessee in the College World Series, but that's just like a tidbit. Football season has started, and when I tell you in the fall, I live, eat, breathe, sleep.

Tennessee football, it's the truth. So we went through football season. Um, we unexpectedly bought a house and we really, like, we knew we needed more space, but it was one of those things where we were like, maybe at some point, and then I just happened to be scrolling on Zillow, you know, as one does on a Saturday.

And I was like, Hey babe, like look at this house. This is. Kind of perfect. Like this looks like a house that you and I would design together. And so we actually went and looked at it the next day and put an offer in immediately. We both walked in and August didn't make it past the main floor before. He said, this is it.

This is our home. And I was like, well baby, let's see the rest of the house first. And he was like, no, I'm telling you this is it. But obviously after seeing the rest of the house. We, we knew it was it and we immediately put in an offer and we moved in literally the week of Thanksgiving. And so it was very hectic, but um.

We live in this amazing house and I'm just so thankful It is truly a dream. So obviously with moving in right before Thanksgiving, we spent the holidays trying to pull things out of boxes and you know, we, we made do with with things being everywhere in the house being a wreck. Um, I think it'll be one of our favorite memories though when we look back of just, we had.

No furniture. We literally blew up air mattresses and put them in the living room and put a TV on a card table. Us and the kids all just piled up on these air mattresses and watched Christmas movies and just, it was really magical. Just a tidbit about August. He actually has three kids, so I am a future bonus mom, which I am so excited about and just feel really blessed to have them in my life.

I have never wanted biological children, so they just feel this place in my heart that I didn't even know that was there and that was needed to be filled. And they're just the three most amazing kids I've ever met in my life, and I just. I'm so thankful for them. So more on that later. So now we're in 2025 and we started the year off by deciding to push our wedding out a year.

We called our planner and said what would happen if we moved this to 2026? And she honestly had, was a little bit shocked that we hadn't already called her and asked to do this before, just because our schedules. Are so crazy all the time. And so that's how we kind of started off. We decided that in January and then, you know, as the, as the year has progressed, it has just been kinda one thing after another.

We, um, have traveled quite a bit. We got a dog, which is going to be another story in itself because I. Could not have ever really seen myself getting another dog. August. Knew that I was not ready. It was just one of those situations where whether I thought I was ready or not. Like she was ready for us. So we rescued a baby girl and her name is Winnie and she's just the sweetest, most precious, craziest little weenie dog.

And she goes everywhere with us. She is actually my registered service dog. I will explain what that means and a little bit of that process with her. And so she goes everywhere with us. Summer was amazing. We got to travel, spend a lot of time with the kids, and now we're here. It's September, it's football season, and I'm relaunching Lexa Appeal.

At no point as much as I missed you guys and missed doing the podcast, I realized that there was not a point in the last two years that it would've been the right time for. I wasn't well prepared, but I've learned a lot since then. I've hired a manager and she's amazing, and I'm excited to be working with her.

I have figured out. Where I needed improvement and how to pivot so that L Appeal can be successful and that I can continue to bring you guys episodes every week. I realized I was just trying to do too much all at once. I wanted to make it work so badly because I truly love having a podcast and a way to connect with you guys.

But I think I was really struggling because I was still finding myself and just didn't have the mental capacity to take it on when I launched season two. And because I know my personality and how goofy and fun I am, and I, I just felt like everything about Lexi Peel in the first season was so serious and I wasn't able to translate my personality through to you guys.

So all of that to say, I'm trying this again. I'm learning from my mistakes and I am rolling out. A new Lexi appeal. I've got so much fun stuff coming for you guys and I really wanna bring you and y'all's stories into this new chapter. So be on the lookout for questions on my Instagram stories, lots of wedding talk, formally introducing you guys to August, sharing our proposal story.

Life in my thirties becoming a bonus mom, and I'm gonna have some really amazing guests. So I'm, I'm just so excited and I just can't thank you guys enough for your support. And that's a wrap for this week's episode of Lex Appeal. I'm Lex and it's time to close the tab, but I'll be back next week with more honesty, oversharing, and a little chaos.

Be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And follow me on Instagram at Alexis McCrae White and at Alexa Peel podcast. New episodes drop every Tuesday. See you next week.