"I Wish" Wednesday!

I WISH ALL MY PHOTOS WERE READY!!!!!

Ok, no pressure Jonathon, no pressure. Just really really really excited since I've had two semi-sneak peeks. I'm hoping JC and Sharon don't get upset with me, but I have GOT to post these other two photos I've seen. They don't have the snazzy JCP logo on them, but y'all know how much I j'adore (yes, I know that that reads "I I love") JCP and must give props where props are due. I'll get into that more in the recaps.

I honestly, I'm just over recapping the honeymoon. I mean, it was gorgeous and relaxing and fun and wonderful and all things that a honeymoon should be. I have no complaints whatsoever (hard to believe, no?). But seriously, do you guys care how much food we ate or how much cool Mexican art we bought? The only other really cool thing was the infinity pool. We spent a lot of time there. However, we did come face to face with a deadly scorpion hiding in our umbrella. See:

This little sucker can kill you dead.

The Candyman found him when he was moving the umbrella around to protect our lily-white skin from scorching to death. He put the umbrella down and calmly said, "There's a scorpion." I just about jumped out of my skin. The gardener guy was nearby, we pointed him out and a few seconds later, no more deadly scorpion. I'll tell you what though, every little itch or flutter in the corner of our eyes was a deadly scorpion waiting to kill us. Thank God this happened on our last day there. We would have freaked ourselves out otherwise.

I'll just leave you with a few of the best pictures (in my opinion) from the trip and be done with honeymoon stuff.

Sunset from la casa.

An evening swim with The Candyman. He's hot, no?

The happy couple!

So, without further ado, I'm going to share some contraband photos with you. Seriously, JCP, I'll take these down if you want to me too! I just LOVE them though!

Pre-wedding, outside Owen Chapel.

The ceremony. I loves me some Candyman!

Here are a few others taken by friends and family that I really think are great! Thanks for sharing everyone!

My brother, a greeter and program passer-outer. I hate to call him an usher since he didn't really usher anyone.

Moi. I have no idea when this was taken though.

Walkin' the aisle. Dear Dad, why do you have to have those weird glasses that turn into sunglasses? Oh, and why does Mom have them too? He looks so intense here. I have no idea why. He seemed pretty happy. Maybe he was just focusing on the task at hand. He's that kind of guy.

One of our cakes from the Cake Buffet. This one was the chocolate raspberry with cream cheese frosting. Sweet 16th Bakery knocked it out of the ball park. These cakes were slammin' good.

I'm totally psyched to get more wedding recaps up! I've got my budget figured out too and can give you the 411 on the breakdown. Is anyone interested in that?

Honeymoon, Part Dos

Before I recap more of the honeymoon, I'd like to mention a very odd sensation as of late. For the last 10 months, I have been carrying around a ton of crap in my purse. I already have a huge purse. In fact, it's more like briefcase-bag type of thing. I love it. It's Burberry. It was a gift - one that I would never have purchased for myself, but I do love it. The cool thing is that it's from Hong Kong and I don't think they even sell the same version here. It looks a lot like this one, but bigger with a shorter handle.

Source

Anyway, I didn't take it with me to Mexico, so have only had the need for it the past couple of days. And it's light. I mean really light. It no longer contains The Wedding Notes Book (different from The Wedding Notebook), swatches of color chips, bridal fair coupon books, my Bridal Bargains book, pieces and parts of DIY hair toys, even the random bottle of wine (for tasting purposes, of course). I've freaked out a few times after picking it up, thinking I've lost my wallet of keys or something. Nope. It's just lacking all the wedding planning paraphernalia I've been toting around this year. It's weird.

Kinda like when I say, "my husband" versus "my fiance" or "my boyfriend." Weird.

OK, so back to the honeymoon recaps. I mentioned we did nothing, right? Seriously. We did so much of nothing I was almost comatose. The Candyman said he'd never seen me so relaxed. It's true. He couldn't even get me to walk into town with him. It's like a 20 minute walk and I'm all, "Uh, honey. Please call us a taxi." Seriously, I was that lazy.

Here's what we did (I will exclude the standard honeymoon "activity" but rest assured, we got our honeymoon on!):
1. Woke up. Drank coffee and stared at the view of the bay.
2. Rallied after some lounging and walked the five minutes to Paty's for breakfast. Paty's is just a small joint right on the beach that serves simple food at simple prices. Their French Toast almost put me into a diabetic coma, it was so sweet. Wonderfully, decadently sweet!

The Candyman fending off my early morning paparazzi at Paty's.

3. Walked back to the condo and changed into bathing suits.
4. Walked downstairs to the infinity pool and spent hours swimming, chilling, sleeping, reading and sunning.

Here's just a so-so picture of the infinity pool. This is the view looking south. Better pics to come.

5. When we'd had enough sun (we both burn like freaks so were slathered in SPF 50) we'd go back up to the condo, get cleaned up and nap. We'd simply lay in bed and watch the afternoon sun shimmer off the ocean. In no time flat, we'd be snoring away to the sounds of crashing waves.
6. Once we'd finish with our naps, it was snack time. I whipped up some fresh guacamole one day. Or we'd just nibble on Mexican cheese and crackers. I, of course, drank plenty of wine in the afternoons!

Mmmm. Red wine in our al fresco living room. No better way to enjoy it!

Wow. I'm feeling really nappy right now. I'm getting tired just recalling the luxuriousness of doing nothing. Sadly, I'm on my lunch break and need to get back to work. So icky. More recaps coming up!!

Where Do I Start? Seriously. Honeymoon it is! Part Uno

I'm so overwhelmed with where to start. Do I start with the ceremony? Do I start with the reception? All the stuff that happened prior? Since I don't have a lot of professional pics to show and tell, maybe I should start with the honeymoon and work backwards?

I know the MOH gave you a few tid-bits to start with. Is it enough to tide you over? I'll post a few other pics my wonderful friends and family took as well. So, I do think I'll start with the honeymoon. Here's a taste of the wedding via pictures from my friend, Scott. He's an amazing photographer and has been getting better and better with the purchase of his snazzy new camera and lenses.

Hugging my dad after the Father/Daughter dance.

Our sweet ride and fab driver, Reggie.

Here we go.

My first comment is this: do not leave for your honeymoon the day after your wedding if you can at all avoid it. We didn't leave until the Thursday after and it was AWESOME! We got to open gifts and put them away, make trips to the venue and chapel to pick up last minute things. I even got my dress and veil to the preservation place before we left. Getting all that done was just awesome.

So, for the honeymoon The Candyman and I decided to go to Zihuatanejo (zay-wa-ta-nay-ho), Mexico, pretty early on in the planning process. It's a place I've always wanted to go to and The Candyman is always up for tropical locales. Why did I want to go? Ever see the movie "When a Man Loves a Woman" with Andy Garcia and Meg Ryan? Watch that movie and you'll know why. There's a scene with them in an infinity pool and Playa La Ropa in the background. Ever since I saw that scene, I wanted to go there. So we went.

I found our amazing condo on HomeAway.com, which for me, is the only way to find a place to stay. I am not a hotel or resort person and this is now the third time I've used HomeAway and it's never failed to deliver. I highly recommend this site.

From the start Harriet, the owner of our condo (called Sueno del Mar), was a delight to work with. The rates were reasonable and her communication thorough. She even sends out a Zihuatanejo Guide that she's written to help her guests. For us, that guide was invaluable! She lets you know where to eat that's safe (no one wants Turista) and how much taxis should cost and all of that. She gives contacts for everything from fishing to massages. Very cool.

We supposedly went during the low (meaning: rainy) season and got a better rate. Rainy season, my ass. It was hot and the weather was stunning. We did have one afternoon of torrential downpours, but it was short-lived and we had already come in for the day so it mattered not to us. It cooled things down, that's for sure. I did feel kinda bad though, because there was a wedding party at La Casa Que Ve Al Mar (the name of our condo complex) and I feared the bride would get rained out.

The torrential downpour - taken from the balcony, looking down at the road.

The bride and her posse.

Happily the rain ended and we headed down to the beach for dinner. We actually saw the couple getting married on the beach! Sweet! As a side note, I am so glad that we didn't have an outside wedding. I would hate to have to deal with last minute weather changes. No thank you.

So, back to the details! We arrived at Sueno del Mar and we were greeted by this lovely welcome basket!

As well as this amazing view from our al fresco living room...

Let me tell you, this view did not suck one bit. Not at all.

The place was filled with the most amazing local art, this lady being one of them!

I will leave this recap with the place where we spent most of our time.

The view of the master bedroom from the balcony.

Our welcome towel art.

The view from the bed. Seriously, why leave?

I promise more 'moon recaps later as well as wedding recaps. I have got some thank you notes to write! :) So happy to be home!