Being Domestic

I finally feel like we are getting settled into our home. We've hung pictures on the walls and we've been making some upgrades to the condo. Weeks ago, we painted the "office" (formerly the second bedroom).

Before

After

We've also been trying out a lot of our wedding gifts, like our mini-deep fryer. We fried chicken fingers for the first time. And if any of you have a great recipe for batter, please share...ours was kinda bland!

Good old-fashioned fried chicken

Making homemade mashed potatoes!

One Month!!

As of today, we have been married for one month! I can hardly believe it. Time flies. We have been busy studying for our boards, which we take in the next few weeks. And if all goes well with that, we should both be employed by mid-July!!!

We are still waiting on our professional pictures (and I am getting very anxious!). In the meantime, I figured I could share a few non-pro pics as a sneak peek. Most of these were taken by my mom (yes, with everything going on that day, she found time to take pictures of her daughter on her wedding day!!). Enjoy.

Opening a gift from Cary

Blake helping Cary with his cuff links (his gift from me)

The Bridesmaids' bouquets

Sandy signing our guest "book"

Married!

Time to Eat! (the Rehearsal Dinner)

Our rehearsal dinner was held at Provino's Italian Restaurant. We posted earlier about finding this great place, and we were very happy with how well dinner and the service turned out that night! Props to the manager, Jason, who helped us plan the evening and was available by phone or in person to answer questions or help with suggestions.

We had 5 options for dinner: Parmesan chicken, shrimp scampi, sausage and peppers, lasagna, and vegetable lasagna. Each table received a salad, served family style (which Kelly loved) and Provino's famous garlic rolls (which everyone loved).

Below are several pictures from the evening.

The wedding party table

For dessert we served my groom's cake, ice cream cake from the local Dairy Queen. I'm not a big fan of cake, so I've had these for birthdays growing up. One was an oreo blizzard cake while the other was a traditional vanilla ice cream cake with chocolate crunch. Outside of a few colors and lettering order being lost in translation, the ice cream cakes were delicious.

The Groom's Cakes

Cutting the cakes

With my grandmother, Mammal, who just turned 94!

After dinner and cutting the cake, we showed a slide show which I had been working on for weeks. It showed pictures of both Kelly and me growing up as well as family and friends. It also showed pictures of us since we started dating and over the three years that we've been together. Below are 2 favorites of each of us.

Kelly in her Dad's shoes

Kelly loves this photo, especially the grape Fanta in the background.

Practice Time! (the Rehearsal)

We held our rehearsal at 5pm on the night before the wedding. The evening started out with rain and storms, but cleared up by the time of the rehearsal dinner. Family and friends traveled from near (Atlanta) and far (Alabama) to help us practice for our big day.

Me and Cary

Don't we look super excited? Almost giddy. I loved my bouquet of ribbons and bows from the showers. Jill, one of my maids of honor, did a great job. Speaking of maids, here they all are, looking beautiful as ever:

L-R: Jill, Sandy, me, Courtney, and Kelly

I made tissue paper bouquets for the girls and Jill finished them off with purple ribbon from all the many Bed, Bath, and Beyond gifts.

Rev. Ron is whispering instructions to Cary. We greatly enjoyed having him officiate the wedding. He gave a wonderful, thoughtful homily on the big day that had everyone laughing.

Going over all of the details!

You know how they say that your wedding day flies by (and it's true, it does!), but I felt like the rehearsal flew by as well. Our coordinator, Laurie, had everything down to a "T"! Everyone knew where to go and what to do! She was very organized, and we made it to our rehearsal dinner on time.

All lined up

I love how the guys got the blue memo and all wore blue shirts. And a big thanks to Hank, third from the left, who stood in for one of our groomsmen that night. He and his wife, Sarah, friends from PT school, drove all the way from Charleston to help us celebrate our big day!

If you remember from a previous post, Cary and I made gifts for our flower girl and ring bearer from Build-a-Bear Workshop. We gave them the gifts at the rehearsal (since the dinner was past their bedtime). Julia said so clearly, "my teddy bear" and gave it a big hug and smile. They are so smart and full of personality! And just a few months over 2 years old, can you believe it? I love all of the reactions in the background of the picture above!

Weston...still holding onto that pillow!

Julia...I think she kinda liked her bear!

The Honeymoon's Over

I mean, the honeymoon blog posts are over. Don't worry, we are still enjoying wedded bliss as part of our lifelong honeymoon. I just wanted to do a final post about the honeymoon, mainly to share a few more pictures.

Before booking with the Halcyon in St. Lucia, I diligently researched all three Sandals resorts. My main resource was TripAdvisor, one of my all-time favorite and Clark Howard recommended travel websites. I highly recommend this site if you are planning a trip anywhere, it is full of reviews, tips, and ratings that are very helpful. I wanted to share my overall review of Sandals Halcyon in St. Lucia (in case any of you were thinking of going), but my review is still pending or I'd link to it. Once up, I'll provide a link and you can read my entire review as well as others, on the Trip Advisor website.

At the Halcyon
A wonderful place to relax

Right outside our room (that was our window under the floral arch)

Our view of the beach

Open-air restaurant at the Regency

Honeymoon Part 3

Like Cary mentioned in the last post, we spent a lot of our time eating. As his uncle described it, Sandals is like a cruise, just on land. You have all you can eat or drink, anytime you want. While we stayed at the Halcyon, we also had access to Sandals' other two resorts on the islands, the Regency and the Grande.

At the Sandals Regency for Dinner

This is us at the Regency, about to go to dinner at La Toc Restaurant. It is a French restaurant, serving the traditional 5 course meal. Between the two of us we enjoyed scallops, shrimp, asparagus soup, salads, cheeses, wine, rack of lamb, duck, and of course, creme brulee. Cary also tried escargot for the first time.

Eating at the French restaurant, La Toc

Another night was spent at Kimono's, the Japanese restaurant at the Regency. Although we do not have pictures from that dinner, we enjoyed sushi (well, I enjoyed the sushi), steak, chicken and shrimp. We also spent an evening at the Grande where we went to the Italian restaurant, Toscanini's. This was my favorite of all the restaurants, and Cary said his steak was probably the best he's ever had. We also ate lasagna, antipasta consisting of shrimp, crab salad, Caesar salad, olives, cured meats, and mussels, as well as tiramisu for dessert.

At the Italian restaurant, Toscanini's located at the Grande

We also had breakfast in bed on our first and last mornings in St. Lucia.

Honeymoon Part 2

Below are some pictures of our adventures on the honeymoon. The first two occupied a good portion of our time in St. Lucia...eating and lounging by the pool. Our next post will have more details on the restaurants, but there was plenty of wonderful food including the Pier Restaurant which is literally a restaurant on a pier. We spent our first evening there, eating lots of seafood.

The Pier restaurant

At the Pool

Enjoying the beach at the Halcyon

We did spend a morning skiing and tubing and an afternoon snorkeling during our honeymoon. The ocean was very calm on the day I went skiing...it was actually better than at the lake. Kelly and I tubed after that. It was kind of weird when you thought about being out in the ocean so far, but with the water being so calm it made for a fun time.
The only bad part about being out in the sun all day was that we're both on Doxycycline (a malaria prophylaxis) from being in Peru and even the SPF 50 didn't quite do the job.

Skiing in the ocean

Snorkeling

Thankfully, the weather cooperated on our snorkeling day, making the water crystal clear. We were able to see plenty of fish, sea urchins, sponges, and other reef-life. We didn't take an underwater camera, so sorry, no pics.

More pictures and details to follow.

Our Professional Photographs

We are waiting to blog about the wedding when we can share pictures with you. It will be a few more weeks before we receive the photos from our professional photographer. Until then, please email me or Cary (or you can comment below) if you would like to have access to our professional photographer's photos as well as the wedding slide show when it becomes available.

This will also give you the opportunity to purchase any photos the photographer took that night (and I know she got A LOT at the reception, so there will be plenty of photos of Cary, me, friends, and family to choose from!).

Check out our photographer's work at the Southeast division of Once Like a Spark Photography! You can become a fan on Facebook, too!

Home from the Honeymoon!

Cary and I are back home and finally settled in our condo. The gifts are put away, the clothes are unpacked, and the hot water heater is threatening to quit on us, but all and all it is good to be home and living together as husband and wife.
We will blog about the wedding itself soon, but I thought I would make my first blog as a married woman about the honeymoon! It was so much fun and such a wonderful trip, I just can't wait to share.
After leaving our reception, we took a limo to the Marriot by the Atlanta airport to spend the night before flying out the next morning to St. Lucia. Cary was able to cash in some sky miles for round-trip first class tickets for our trip. It turned out to be a blessing because we were exhausted and hungry that morning, but our seats provided plenty of room and a full breakfast. Here is a view from the plane as we made the decent to St. Lucia:


The water was even more blue in person! We landed at St. Lucia's tiny airport and stood in line with the rest of the honeymooners to get through customs. Next was the hour and a half van ride to the Halcyon. St. Lucia is fairly mountainous, and it was settled by the British, so they drive on the left side of the road. Combining both of these facts with the absence of a speed limit made for a rough ride to the resort.


We took a pit stop along the ride and got this great shot of the shoreline. But it was back into the van and more winding roads after that!

Our room was a concierge suite with easy access to the ocean and restaurants. The Halcyon was the most private of Sandals' three resorts, as well as the smallest and quietest. Our room was surrounded by coconut trees, plants, and flowers.

Our room

Our view and access to the ocean

Speaking of coconut trees...did you know that they need to be pruned? Well neither did we until we walked up on the maintenance guys near the pool one day. One guy had climbed up to the very top of the tree and was chopping down coconuts with a machete. They explained that the coconuts would eventually fall and make a mess or hit a guest and that they routinely pruned them. No ladder needed.

Can you see him up there?

How about now?

And then he climbed down...no ropes, no ladder, no harness, no problem

And we got to enjoy the coconuts.

The workers told us that coconut water is "good for the bladder," but I thought it tasted like salty water and only drank a few sips.

We will post more about the honeymoon soon!!