A beginning.

Well, here we go! For a while I have been considering starting a blog to keep our far away friends and family updated on what goes on here in Texas, and I decided that blogging about our wedding would be a great way to start this new project. I've been inspired by the blogs of other friends and family members and can't ever hope that my blog would be as well-written or clever as others are, but my main goal in this is to feel more connected to those that I don't connect with in other ways nearly enough. If nothing else, I hope this is a good medium in which to record the early days of our marriage and be able to reflect on down the road. (I promise that future blog entries will not be nearly as long-winded as this one!)

When Michael and I started talking about getting married (before we were even engaged), we decided that we wanted to have a destination wedding. As a little girl, I dreamed of a huge fairytale wedding and spent countless hours scouring bridal magazines, websites, etc. As I grew older and more practical, I began to imagine being married barefoot in the sand with waves lapping and my closest family and friends nearby. Fortunately Michael had the same vision and we were always on the same page with our plans. Being a huge researcher, Michael of course looked into endless destination wedding locations and we settled on Jamaica knowing that it was somewhat affordable to get to and seemed to fit our laid back personalities. Michael chose the location, Idle Awhile Resort on the beach in Negril, based on internet reviews and photos. He contacted Idle Awhile by e-mail and they referred us to our amazing wedding coordinator, Ari Kotoski of Weddings in Negril. We picked the date April 18, 2011, the very start of the off season in Negril when hotel rates drop a bit. We had almost a whole year to plan after getting engaged in May of 2010. We corresponded with Ari mostly by e-mail over that time and hammered out all of the wedding details via an Excel spreadsheet.

4/14/11-Finally the time had come to head to Jamaica! We were pretty calm and organized through everything and travelled to Jamaica from Austin together with my sister, Kyle, who was nine weeks pregnant at the time and not feeling great. Two uneventful flights later, we met up with our good friends Justin, Piper, and their five month old baby Emme at the HUGE customs line in Montego Bay (we had all travelled from Austin but on two different flights that got into MBJ right at the same time). On the other side of customs we found my parents and brother who had been waiting at the airport for a few hours after their direct flight from Orlando. They had been passing the time at Margaritaville and were already enjoying Jamaica thoroughly! We met up with our driver and loaded up into the van with our Red Stripes in hand, ready for the one and a half hour ride to Negril. The driver was super friendly and informative and the ride was really quite enjoyable, but we were psyched to finally get to Idle Awhile after our long travel day. The hotel was everything it had promised to be and more.

  We all enjoyed our complimentary rum punch and dinner together right on the beach at "Chill Awhile", the hotel's awesome restaurant. My mom, JB, and Michael got to know the bartender, "King" quite well that night, while the rest of us relaxed and took it easy. The next day, Friday, our good friends AJ and Jenni arrived as well as our friends Merritt, Vanessa, and their almost one year old, Reid (AJ and Merritt are two of Michael's fraternity brothers). On Saturday, fraternity brother Tyson arrived along with his fiance Tara. Finally on Sunday our friends Justin and Kristina arrived and our little group of 16 adults and two babies was complete! Together with our friends and family we enjoyed several fun filled days in the sun, some amazing meals, and an awesome catamaran trip the day before the wedding, complete with snorkeling and PLENTY of Red Stripes and Rum Punches (all you can drink for free....)

 A few folks who will remain nameless may have overindulged a bit that particular day. Piper and Vanessa held down the fort at the hotel with the babies and were in for a surprise at the state of the group after returning from the boat! A little bit later, Jenni and I headed out to get our nails done (a bit of a disaster, but that's another story). We returned several hours later to learn that Merritt and Tyson had bumped heads while wrestling in the ocean, causing Merritt to need a hotel call from a doctor in Montego Bay and several stitches. Both guys had lovely black eyes the next day!

The day of the wedding was lovely. We had some time on the beach in the morning before Ari and her two staff members showed up for the quick walk through of the ceremony. They then started setting things up while my mom, sister, and I headed inside to get our hair and makeup done by an awesome Californian lady named Deborah (who has lived in Jamaica 12 years) and her very sweet Jamaican assistant. (Deborah had done a hair trial for me a few days prior so I felt great about her skills on the day of.) Michael's best man, Justin, ran around like a mad man helping Michael and shooting video and photos since he doubled as our official photographer. Piper was a great help as well, keeping the guys calm and also checking in with us ladies inside as needed! We could hear the steel pan band start playing from the room and relaxed for a few minutes before being summoned by Ari to wait at the bottom of the staircase for the big walk down the aisle. It was fun to walk past the wedding webcasters and be able to say hi to all of our virtual guests. We later found out that over 365 people tuned in to our wedding! Thanks, you guys! The ceremony was beautiful and somehow Michael and I managed to keep the tears at bay, which had been a big concern of mine before hand. Our guests were beautiful as well and we felt so blessed to have them there. After the ceremony we signed the marriage license and were immediately handed delicious beverages, then had a mini photo shoot on the beach and Idle Awhile property. Photos were followed by cocktail hour, then a delicious dinner with awesome toasts by Justin and Kyle. Up next was the reggae band and bonfire and lots of laughing, dancing, and general Jamaican merriment. The band, Front Page, was AWESOME! By the end of the night we had many crashers dancing with us and that was totally cool with us, the more the merrier. We are so thankful to have had such an amazing wedding in such a beautiful place with some of the best friends and family we could ask for.

 Everyone departed on their own schedules during the two days after the wedding, and it was so sad to see everyone go. On Wednesday, my family headed out for a day trip to some waterfalls a few hours away and we spent some time with Justin and Kristina enjoying the beach before heading to the Rockhouse, our honeymoon resort on the cliffs a few miles away. We were not prepared at all to leave Idle Awhile but were excited about a few days to ourselves in an equally beautiful but very different setting. Our first day at the Rockhouse was not the best as the water was very rough so all of the access points off the cliffs were closed. We spent some time at the pool and had a delectable lunch there but we did not appreciate the large, rowdy group of guests that seemed to be friends with one of the resort's owners. This first day with bad weather had us feeling discouraged, bored, and wanting to go back to Idle Awhile, but when we were able to get in the water to snorkel right away the next morning our moods changed dramatically and we fell in love with the Rockhouse just as we had with Idle Awhile. Later that day we returned to our room to find it decorated with tons of gorgeous petals, flowers, champagne and some other goodies, as well as a voucher for some free spa treatments in honor of our honeymoon.

 I booked a spa treatment on top of our freebie "welcoming foot treatment ritual and detox" and thoroughly enjoyed having getting some pampering and having fruit, honey, oatmeal, and other natural ingredients smeared all over my hair and body! Our time at the Rockhouse also included a great cooking demonstration where we learned to make "Old Time Synting", some amazing meals and drinks, hours upon hours of sunbathing from our private little perch above the water and incredible snorkeling just below, reading, and overall utter relaxation.

  I don't think I have ever been happier or more at peace and stress free than I was those few days. It felt great to finally be married and just be together! We also enjoyed a cocktail party to celebrate the spa's fifth anniversary and a private tour of the local Negril Basic School, which was not in session due to Good Friday but was still very cool to get to see. The Rockhouse has a foundation that has invested a lot of time and money into improving the school and library and they love to show their guests around. There were about twenty local children there having choir practice and they sounded so sweet.

Leaving the Rockhouse was just as hard as leaving Idle Awhile and the ride back to Montego Bay was not nearly as exciting as the ride coming in had been. We can't say enough about Jamaica and how much we loved it there, from the food, the people, the scenery, the culture; I could go on and on about all of our amazing experiences there. We are so grateful to our friends and family who joined us and wish we could recreate the whole experience over and over again! We had lots of help from our loved ones with wedding planning and details, particularly my parents, sister/maid of honor, Kyle, and our photographer/Michael's best man, Justin and his wife Piper, and we owe them all lots of thanks. Our ten days in Jamaica could not have been more incredible and we could not have picked a more perfect way to embark on this journey they call married life.