I slept in til 745 the morning of the wedding, probably because we weren't getting married til 2 and probably because I was up all night.....either way, it felt nice. Minus that part where it was pouring rain... Tracy and I then went to my hair appointment and Scottsdale (thank goodness for a carpool buddy-she is a great one!). I think we got home around 1030? And everyone was all busy putting up chairs and such.in and amongst the rain......my photography girls came around 11 and we goofed around a bit, the make up lady was supposed to come around noon......she got lost, i mildly panicked but then she showed up at like 1220 and all was okay again. I seriously need to make enough money for her to come over like everyday. Anyway....we got me all dressed and ready by 130-i don't think I have ever in my life had so many people hands shoving dress parts around my butt-it was a lovely bonding moment for the 7 of us in the room :) Everyone left me by myself in the room when they went out to either a) check to see if everyone was ready or b) get things rolling. I seriously thought i was going to fall over and die! I was SO nervous, I couldn't hear anyone bustling around, I couldn't check out the window to see what was going on....I was seriously freaking out. Then someone finnaly came to get me and I seriously wanted to fall over. WORST part of the whole thing. Well that and the fact that the rain stopped like right at 145......talk about making one nervous for delays too. Then I saw my Daddy and he walked me down the aisle and I was totally fine, smiles and everything. AND THEN I saw Joshua standing next to Robert, with big ole tears in his sweet eyes....he kills me. I was doing so good! Right up until the time that he and my Dad were both crying and then he took my hand........I held it together for a good while, tho i certainly did want to start balling everywhere. Robert read a little about us to share with our guests.....my favorite line was "Josh says the most beautiful thing about Aly is her smile, it accentuates her body.....uh beauty...." and we all died laughing. And then a short time later he made us read our vows and then i started blubbering all over the dang place. But my makeup held up well and the crazy photographer said my crying was cute. I'm pretty sure that my wedding day is the one and only day that I accomplished looking cute while crying, sadly I don't think I could ever duplicate it again. Anyway, after all that blubbering mess we were married and oh so happy! We at some cake and signed the license and then took no lie.......like 2400 pictures. crazy-ness. sadly it started raining right as we finally got to take some photos of the bride and groom......so i only have a very limited number of those.....but its okay, they are lovely. it took like an hour to get back into regular clothes......so many buttons and clasps and whatever else-good thing i had tracy and my mom do it or we never would have gotten home!
The day of the reception was gorgeous, it rained until 2pm, but Michelle did an amazing job of decorating despite the weather and it turned out so beautiful! It had been 84 for Thanksgiving, but the night of the reception it was in the high 40's, I felt so bad that the guests were so cold! And I'll be honest in my selfish bride way, I was sad for me too cause we had no heater under that gazebo! It was SO cold! My photo booth girls never showed up-so sadly we didn't have enough publicity for the corner with the lifesize photos of josh and i, but we got a few funny ones!
We had Saturday to do nothing or to visit family, we made the rounds and visited each side since so many came into town just for us. It was a lovely relaxing day, minus that part where we forgot to pack and were up til 2am trying to pack for a 10 day vacation....oops......and then I forgot my formal dress for the Captains dinner, so I drove to my mom's house at 7am to get it, pack it and be ready to go at 730 since Josh's mom was picking us up to drop us at the airport. I was such a nervous wreck on the way there-so worried i had forgotten something and that we wouldn't be able to get on the cruise! We had plenty of time to just chill in the airport, which was nice, and our flight to LA was so short! When we got down to the baggage terminal we saw a few others from our flight picking up there bags so we waited a few minutes......then the carousel turned off......the Cruise ship attendant was waiting there with the ENTIRE group ready to board the bus......and we were holding everyone up. The ladies in the baggage claim said that they had no clue which plane it was on, but they would try to track it down and bring it to the ship before it departed at 4. It was 1030.......needless to say we were very nervous. We boarded the bus that drove us to the cruise ship, got through all of the cruise ship security, sat on the deck and anxiously waited for a phone call......it never came. At 315 I called Southwest and the lady in baggage claim says, "Oh well I think it's gone out of here all ready, I see no record of it here anymore which means they should have already brought it to your cruise ship!" ohhhhhhhhh boy. We crossed our fingers, cause there was no way of knowing until all baggage was delivered to rooms around 7pm. At 714 our bags were at our door......Day 1 of Honeymoon-not the best ever, but we knew the next day would be so much fun!
Day 2 of the cruise we explored the ship, stuffed our faces and lazed around. Sometime while we were at dinner, they delivered a note under our door saying our Shore Excursion for the following day had been canceled. We were so bummed! Josh booked it 6 months ago cause it was the only thing we REALLY wanted to do! We got over it when we realized that the oxygen lines for the helmet dive were malfunctioning, we really didn't want to explore the ocean floor with no air......so the excursion desk hooked us up with a Safari Jeep deal so our money didn't go to waste! We thought that would be SO awesome! Josh loves his jeep and he loves off roading, so why not do it in mexico where the weather is so nice!................We loaded into a bus that drove us to the other side of Cabo San Lucas, they let us out in the middle of the desert off the highway (literally) at this tiny little gated house (I'm sure it was ancient). There was a giant old dog in the driveway and a Mercedes off road vehicle that reminded me largely of a tank. There were straps hanging from the ceiling and 3 step stools to get in...we looked at each other and the group we were with. We had no idea that the people on the bus were all going to the same place. We soon realized we were the only ones under the age of 55-and thats no lie. At this point we were still excited about the safari......we had a great tour guide! he was so funny and LOVED to pick on us, especially once he found out we were newly married! We rode in this giant tank for like 5 minutes.........seriously only 5 down this little dirt road....enjoy the pic cause its the only one I have access to at the moment......
Then we had to unload everyone.........that was a chore since 3 of them had canes. I love old people, don't get me wrong but this was just not an excursion that fit them. Or us for that matter. So we all "hop" out and our guide leads us down a dirt path for a "hike" in the desert. He starts showing us the plants and pointing out the cactus, and the cameras start going nuts. All of these people were from Minnesota or something cause they had never seen cactus before. Our guide proceeds to tell us that the only cactus that they do not have in Mexico is the Saguaro......and then we got a lesson on the Saguaro.......we both were beginning to wonder why we paid money for all of this education we had learned in public school 15 years earlier...... at least our tour guide had good jokes.
So we get to the bottom of a giant hill on this hike and we arrive in sand. And he says, "Let me show you the amazing ficus tree!" Josh and I both rolled our eyes because everyone we know in Arizona owns a ficus. I will hand it to this guy tho, this one had some pretty cool roots!
We hopped back into the tank and drove down about 5 minutes to the beach where they have a turtle rescue operation. We stayed a few minutes to watch the waves and then drove another 3 minutes to a little ramada on a hill where a lovely lady had prepared us an "authentic Mexican lunch".......we ate cheese melted on a tortilla with some refried beans. hahah
Then they had the "tequila tasting".........um yeah..
On day 4 we made it to Puerto Vallarta and since we had no shore excursions we were free to explore. We hopped a taxi to downtown for some shopping. The shopping rather stunk. So we decided instead to find us some REAL Mexican food for lunch. And we DID, it was amazing. Our waiter took us to the roof top that overlooks the ocean and we got the most incredibly huge plate of the most delicious food we have ever eaten. It was incredible. Minus that part where Puerto Vallarta was 96 and humid that day. We were back in our room an hour later enjoying the a/c.....haha :)
We LOVED our balcony room, we were not really fans of hanging out on the top deck where everyone was so obnoxious, so instead we spent a lot of time watching the ocean pass by while we sat on our deck chairs with our ice cream/coffee/hot chocolate/etc. We ate twice our body weight in food that entire week and it was so worth it. We took advantage of free room service and the midnight snack bar often. And it was wonderful. Not a great way to start off the marriage if you want your husband to think you are an incredible cook, we were so spoiled with such good food that whole time that it was almost disappointing to have to come home and make dinner!
We made it back to LA a week later, leaving the ship with a new watch and a Carnival Splendor ornament to remember our trip by. We had all of our luggage this time and happily made our way over to LAX to grab our rental car for the remainder of our stay. We immediately headed to our hotel room to drop off our crap and head over to Six Flags to use up our passes..........then we passed by Disneyland and our hotel was a block later.....thank you hotels.com for sucking at telling us which hotel was closest to Six Flags. When we realized that Six Flags was more than 50 minutes away we just decided to hop down the street to Disney since they were open for another 13 hours! I had never been during the Christmas season to see all of their incredible decorations so I was so stoked! It was crowded, but it wasn't terrible and we had so much fun! You'd think i'd have some pictures, but I ended up with like 5 from the whole day.........BUT i did find a "Finding Nemo" ornament, which we also took home as a memento of our trip. Good thing too cause I didn't have a whole lot of ornaments!
The next day we went to Universal Studios cause we had an annual pass and why not use free things? So we headed off about 9am, it was cold and veryyyyyyy rainy. Did I mention that it was VERY rainy? Anyways....there was NO ONE there. Can you ever guess why? We immediately purchased an umbrella and some cheap gloves cause our hands were freezing! They had adorable minions I wanted to purchase but I promised myself I would wait til we left so I didn't have to carry it around. It was so nice to not have to wait in any lines! We took lots of pictures of Josh to send to Uncle Rob with Josh pouting about the fact that his uncle couldn't be there with him! They are funny so I will post them later. At lunch we were admiring my ring and talking about how weird it was that we were married. An hour later on our way to a ride I realized that while looking at my wedding band, I was actually staring straight through to my finger. I PANICKED and started searching all of my pockets and Josh's pockets, we searched the mittens........nothing......it was gone. I was so devastated. I had worn the ring for 8 days doing nothing but sitting in a beach chair and one of my diamonds was gone! You would think I would have half a brain and some logic, but my immediate thought was "my mine cut diamonds! they stopped cutting them like that 100 years ago! they won't have any anymore!" DUMB. but that was my thought. I wanted to sit down and cry, but the ground was wet. I was wet and cold and now I wanted to cry. At that point I was just ready to go home. We decided to leave the park early to go sit in the warm airport til our flight so I could mope about not having my diamonds and be out of the rain. It was not quite 2pm. Our flight was at 7. Just because this will be necessary information in a moment. and for the record, LAX is 22 minutes (CHECK GOOGLE I DO NOT LIE) from Universal Studios. Sweet, 4 hours to sit in the cozy airport. WRONG. So we leave Universal Studios cold, grouchy, wet, diamondless, exhausted and minion-less. We get in the car and head to the freeway. Which we enter and it does not move. I will spare you the conversation from the car. Just know this, we arrived at the rental car facility (a mile and a half from LAX) at 5:56. We boarded the next shuttle and made it to the airport at 6:17. We checked in as fast as we could, having to transfer some pants from one bag to another to avoid an extra fee. We pretty much threw our luggage at the poor luggage people and ran to security at 6:28. We had a 7pm flight. Southwest boards at 6:40. We were seriously pushing it. I get randomly pulled for the x-ray screening. Seriously. And I can hear some guy in a room somewhere speaking into the TSA lady's head set. "She's carrying something on her waist. you need to check her waist" And she just sort of looks at me and looks at my pants. Because I was already a grouch and in no mood for this crap so that I might miss my flight I just lifted my shirt to my midriff and said, "I have nothing, is it my buttons? Please feel free to check it out. Sooner is better" She looked at my waist and touched my tag on the pocked and said "all clear, just a tag" and let me be on my way. It was now 6:36 and we were booking it with shoes untied and everything. When we were halfway to the gate we hear "Flight 1829 to Phoenix is now delayed due to weather." Breathless, we both just sat down on the nearest chair and then decided we were hungry for a burrito. So we waited another hour and a half for our dang flight home. Thank goodness my Mom and Dad were already waiting at the gate when we got home cause we were MORE than ready to be home. We crash landed in bed and didnt wake up for 11 hours.
We had a blast on our honeymoon! It wasn't at all what we expected, but we wouldn't trade a single minute of the alone time we had together, we hadn't had a whole lot of that before so it was glorious to have nothing but "us" time for 9 straight days!
No comments:
Post a Comment