September 2009 Weddings
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Honeymoon
Lets hear about it and/or see some pictures 
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Re: Honeymoon
VA Beach and Busch Gardens.
This is the jacuzzi tub in our hotel room:
Yay, beach!
Boardwalk
Marty the Clydesdale at Busch Gardens
A week a Disney World's Boardwalk Resort and then 3 days down in Miami. We had the time of our lives thanks to everything being paid for via our honeymoon registry and September in Miami being the off season.
Poolside
At the Parks
Lots of Eating
And Lots of Drinking
My favorite picture from our honeymoon
I'm done being a picture wh0re now!
We went to Aruba. It was amazing! Super relaxing, beautiful water, excellent weather... We went on a sightseeing tour, a glass bottom boat ride, snorkeling, got massages & pedicures.
California Lighthouse
Natural Bridge
We didn't get to go anywhere fancy or warm, and I wouldn't change a thing!! We drove up to Minnesota and went to the Mall of America and met up with our good friends who lived in Eau Claire at the time.
Our Hotel (Upgraded to the presidential suite at no cost, sweet!)
I LOVED the bathroom
We got tickets to the Yankees/Twins final Playoffs Games (Yankess won and then won the world series Double WOOT!)
And the fun at the Mall
UFFDA!
We went to Maui and it was amazing!
View from our balcony:
yep, that's a parrot on my head...
snorkeling with the fishes
beautiful sunset the night of the luau
I can't PIP (damn bberry....) but we also went to Hawaii. Started off in Oahu, did a tour of Pearl Harbor, the US Arizona and Missouri, and the Punchbowl Cemetery. I was initially a little crabby about such a long/structured vacation day, but I am so grateful and was so humbled by that experience. Highly recommended. After 3 days in Oahu, we hopped over to Maui and were there for the rest of our 5 days. Our time was much less structured there, but we did manage to sneak in a snuba excursion (snorkle+scuba), a luau, and a midnight boat tour. We were fortunate to have a car and drove all over the island and ate at some incredible restaurants. I wish I could go back to Hawaii, like right now.
Riviera Maya - I loved every minute of it, I only wish we could have stayed longer!
We went to savannah, which was amazing. Even before I went I knew I would fall in love and want to move there. I was right. I dont have my pictures at work with me, but we stayed at a B&B on Tybee Island, which is where the movie The Last Song was filmed. They just finished filming the movie the week before we got there. I got to meet Nicholas Sparks, because he was signing books at BooksAMillion down there. He is my favorite author. Anyway, we went on a dolphin tour, and did tours in Downtown Savannah on both a trolley and a horse drawn carriage. We went on a Riverboat, and did the Juliet Gordon Lowe house tour. We did spend most of our time on Tybee, though, because all we wanted to do was spend the days at the beach. On Tybee, you can walk from one end of the island to the other because it's only about 3 miles long and a mile or so wide. It isnt overrun with hotels- there really are only like 4 hotels on the island, none are chain hotels. It feels very authentic, as opposed to touristy and fake.
The history of Savannah is amazing, and because of SCAD, the area is full of unique art. If you go to SCAD you can get a degree in historic preservation, so many of the students down there work on the victorian homes throughout the city.The abundance of students make a city that might be overly touristy have a ton more appeal to younger generations- like us!
ETA: Facebook honeymoon pics!
We went to Jamaica for 10 nights.
the resort was broken into "villages". this is where we stayed.
this was the view from our room.
this is the only rain we got the whole time there.
this was our pet for the week. i named him Rico Suave. i have no idea why it seemed like a good idea at the time.
we went horseback riding through the jungle and into the ocean. except my horse hated water (imagine that) and she just trotted along the edge.
we went snorkeling.
and kayaking
and this is my most favorite picture from the trip.
Disney World was supposed to just be a minimoon and the trip to Philippines was supposed to the be the real one, but by the time Philippines rolled around, we forgot that. It didn't really matter anyways what we called it.
We stayed at the Animal Kingdom Lodge and did their deluxe dining plan so we got to eat at a lot of good places. We had so much fun that we'd love to go back sometime soon.
Here's the view from our balcony:
It was really great to see giraffes walking by!
Wearing our bride and groom ears.
I have lots more pics at home so those two are the only pics worth posting from my FB album.
We stayed at Sandals Grande in St. Lucia, and as much as Sher wanted to knock it, we had an amazing time!
And to make it even awesomer, I got to meet Rach and Josh!
updated 10.03.12
We went to St. Lucia and stayed at "The Body Holiday," a boutique spa hotel. It was AI and included a spa treatment per day per person. That alone was worth every penny. I was so relaxed. We took yoga classes, hung out at the pool and beach, and even did archery. We snorkeled and did a booze cruise to the botanical gardens and volcanoes.
The food was incredible.
Here are some pics from FB:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.155230162296.112678.544642296&l=532ea56921We went on a Carribbean cruise. The ship was great. Unlimited food (I gained 5lbs in a week!), great pools, a waterslide, put-put golf, and watching movies under the stars at night. We also had a balcony room, which we loved! We made 3 stops.
In Key West, we went kayaking through the mongroves. All of the pics we took of that were on a waterproof camera and didn't make it to fb.
We also shopped a little and ate conch fritters.
In the Cayman Islands, we were suppose to go snorkeling, but it was rainy. Instead, we drank lots of rum.
In Jamaica, we went ziplining. This was a BIG deal for me, because I'm deathly afraid of heights, but I'm really really glad I did it. Here we are all strapped up and ready to go. (Nothing screams tourist like wearing a Jamaica shirt in Jamaica.)
Here are the t-shirts we got from our little adventure.
We went to St. Lucia and stayed at the Sandals Regency. We loved it. It had a great beach, lots of restaurants and wasn't too crowded.
It had several pools like this with swim-up bars.
We stayed in a 2 level oceanview suite. Loved it!
We had a private pool overlooking the ocean.
We had butler service for the week. They would turn down the bed twice a day, re-stock our bar, bring us drinks by the pool or beach, make dinner reservations for us....they even ran a bubble bath for us one night.
We mostly stayed on the resort and relaxed, but we did take a catamaran to the other side of the island one day and went snorkeling.
Lastly....don't be too jealous.....we had dinner with MB and Chris:)
<a href="http://s65.photobucket.com/albums/h205/adia83/?action=view
Wha.....is there a jealous emoticon?
We went to mainland Portugal with a side trip to Madeira.
I was able to show H a huge part of where I grew up. I would spend all my summers with my grandparents and cousins on the mainland. It's a very important place to me and he was dying to go! We decided to do a side trip to Madiera b/c H's grandfather was born there and emigrated to the US when he was 4. His grandfather never had the chance to return. It was nice b/c H is the 1st in his family to go back.
The beach where I spent my summers:
My favorite park:
Madeira:
The one final aspect of our trip was to see my grandmother. She was unable to travel to the wedding. During our trip we were able to celebrate her 85th birthday with all my cousins and their families who also made the trip over for it. It was a very special time.
Me and my precious grandmother:
We went to Sweden and Iceland. I don't like being hot or sitting in the sun (I burn so easily) and I wanted to go somewhere different. Clint's been dying to go back to Sweden ever since he went there on the way to a conference in Finland in 2002, so it was a perfect choice.
In Sweden (2 and a half days in Stockholm, and we took a train one day to Sigtuna, the oldest town in Sweden, and another day to Uppsala, the former capital) we saw a lot of history
Stortorget, the old main square of the city, lots of history. We had dessert and coffee in the cafe at the bottom of the yellow building, which was the most laid back and fun dining experience.
One of the several cool ruins in Sigtuna, from a church from the 1100s (this is the type of thing I love)
The Viking burial mounds in Gamla (old) Uppsala, I can't remember how old they are, but 900s or earlier. This day we got terribly lost trying to find the burial mounds but it ended up ok, and I got to sleep on our hour-long bus ride (this mounds are about a mile from where we got on the bus, we should have just walked).
In the Swedish National Museum, there was this big exhibit about Swedish weddings, from old traditional ones to modern ones- how appropriate!
We took an afternoon boat tour of the archipelago, which was really nice and relaxing, and perfect weather for it.
We went to the Ice Bar, which was in our hotel- how convenient. It was neat, but really expensive, $20 to get in which includes one drink and you're only allowed in for 40 minutes or something.
Then we went to Iceland, and since we were on our HM, they upgraded our room to a "junior suite". European hotel rooms are insanely small, I don't think our suitcases would have fit in the regular room.
In Reykjavik we saw some cool stuff, a really interesting museum built around a hall/home built in the late 900s that they discovered when building the foundation for something else (right in the middle of the city), did some bird watching (those pics probably won't interest anyone ha) and basically just wandered. We tried to do some sight seeing but their tourist bus only runs once a week in Sept so our timing was off
One afternoon we went to Gullfoss, a giant waterfall (think Niagara Falls), Geysir
(this isn't the main geyser, just a smaller one that went off several times while we were there)
and went to Thingvellir, the site of the big annual month-long Parliament meeting back in the 1000s. Pretty much all Icelanders went and here is our guide standing in the remains of one of the booths that was built for the parliament (the Althing)
It was a fantastic trip. The one downside was that we didn't research the weather very well before we went, we were a bit chilly in Sweden but absolutely freezing in Iceland, and I'd only brought my lightest jacket and one sweatshirt.
We went to the Olympics. I'm a little busy at work so I can't really PIP, but I've opened my album on facebook for those who want to take a look
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.337839657560.148860.593882560
We went on a 7 day Cruise to Puerto Rico, Aruba, Curacao, Dominica, and St Thomas. It was soo much fun and relaxing all at the same time, plus the food was AMAZING!!!!
Our Cabin, we also had a balcany
At Jonny Rockets on the Ship
Hiking to the natural waterfalls in Dominica
It's statements like this that make me wish Central Pa was much closer to Chicago so that we could be bff
We went to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. It was so much fun! We were very lucky because the family I used to nanny for bought our airline tickets, and of friend of ours was able to get us a deal of only $49/night at a super fancy Westin Hotel since she worked for the Sheraton out here.
Our hotel was right by the strip, so we went to a whole bunch of fun restaurants, bars and shops.
This is the pool area. It was on a higher floor and had a bar/resaurant area. Ignore my super white legs lol. It was funny, the bartender told me one day that maybe I should wear some sunblock because I was getting burned. I laughed because I was. I put on SPF 50 on everytime I went out. Apparently she doesn't understand my delicate WI skin
We went on a tour around the city. It was very neat. The vehicle then turned into a boat and we went along the canals and saw multi-million dollar houses.
This is at Hard Rock Hotel. This is the first time Floyd and I ever gambled. We sucked at it.
We went to Lion County Safari. This place was amazing! You drive through it and there is nothing between you and the animals (well except for the lions).