a different kind of bracket

My NCAA tournament bracket has been falling apart since day one. And now that the Tarheels are out of the tournament, I've thrown my bracket in the trash. What's the point of having a bracket if the 'Heels don't win the whole deal?! Josh and I were hanging out with some friends this past weekend up at Windy Gap (more on that trip later.) We mentioned how we were really hoping to not have our baby at camp because a) I'm not really into the whole have-a-baby-in-the-middle-of-nature type of delivery and b) we don't have a name for our little girl yet. Our friend William came up with a great idea: a Baby Name Bracket!

We collected suggestions from folks around camp and narrowed it down to 32 names. Josh and I both got to select our favorite 16 names. He had control of the left side of the bracket and I had the right side.

We weren't quite sure how to handle the challenges....at first we tried Josh's famous applause-o-meter.

That didn't quite seem fair. So we decided to do the traditional handraising voting method. Much more efficient....and it also showed the other voters who they needed to swing to their side for voting. It was so funny to see our friends trying to convince each other why one name was better than another.

I highly suggest using this process for any soon-to-be-parents. We got some great name ideas from our friends---some sweet names I'd never heard or thought of! The final four names were so cool! (Riley, Reagan, Avery, Elouise)

We did "secret ballot" for the last round of voting.

The votes were tabulated......and the winner was:

Now, I'm not 100% sure that we'll use Reagan. But, we both like it!

reagan jones....what do you think?

3/30/11 update: in the quarter finals, the judges had a re-vote for emmerson and eloise (mostly because i liked eloise better!) eloise won by a slim margin and made it to the finals :)