Wedding Wednesday - The Honeymoon

Next week we will be exactly one month away from celebrating our first anniversary! I'm pretty excited for our plans {a weekend in Napa, just the two of us} and I'm counting down the days.

In the mean time, I'm going to continue with recapping the different aspects of our wedding with Wedding Wednesday posts. I did a super quick overview of our wedding & honeymoon at the end of this post. Rookie mistake. Our honeymoon absolutely deserves it's own post. And it might be a long one.

When choosing where we were going to go we talked about the Canary Islands and Fiji, Tahiti and the Bahamas. The Bahamas ended up being completely out of the question since our September/October trip would fall smack in the middle of hurricane season. {No thank you!} So we actually didn't have a whole ton of options to choose from.
We then narrowed it down to Tahiti & Fiji, and then Tahiti since the flight was way shorter {although way more expensive}. There are a ton of islands that make up Tahiti and we chose Bora Bora. It's noted as one of the most romantic places on the entire planet and pretty much the only hotel rooms on the entire island are over the water bungalows. So, that made that decision easy.

We left the Tuesday morning after our wedding which was really nice. We had all day Sunday to spend with family by the pool, and Monday at home to re-organize, pack, and eat left over wedding cake in bed. The trip there was super easy. Just an hour flight from Oakland to LAX and layover and a few cocktails later we were on our way! We took a red eye out of LAX and flew all night, about 8 hours and landed in Papeete, Tahiti at sunrise. We had another quick layover that allowed us to get through customs and to change our clothes in the bathroom. It was super muggy and humid there and the entire airport is open air so there was no AC to be found. I was a hot mess and look a haggard makeup-less mess on all of the arrival photos. We had another quick flight on a propeller plane from Papeete to Bora Bora.

The airport in Bora Bora is on it's very own little airport island which was so cute. Our hotel sent us a boat to take us to the hotel. It was such a wonderful way to see the island for the first time. It was so surreal to see the water, the water! It's so blue. Like the bluest blue you can think of, and every shade of it. It was breathtaking really. We pulled up to the dock at our hotel and were greeted by a whole coconut and the cutest guy playing the ukulele. It was only 8AM by now and our room was no where near ready. We ate breakfast, which quickly became one of my favorite parts of the whole trip, and laid out on a private beach, just the two of us until our room was ready a few hours later.

Nick took the room researching very seriously and read every single review he could get his hands on. He made sure that we got the most private bungalow with the best view. The room was amazing. They had it set up for us with a bottle of champagne {and a couple martini glasses?} and a letter from the hotel manager congratulating us on our marriage. We settled in, showered away the airplane goo, drank the entire bottle of champagne and headed to dinner at the hotel restaurant.
This was when the fear set in. We hadn't researched the currency exchange at all, and had no idea what anything cost. Let me just say, ordering a glass of wine at dinner that said 1600 totally freaked me out. We paid for Wi-Fi the next morning and happily discovered that all you had to do was move the decimal and add about 50 US cents. Phew!

Sunrise

We fell into a pretty wonderful routine of sleeping in, swimming off of our own private deck, eating the most amazing breakfast every morning, drinking lots of great French wine and laying in the sun all day. We had the most amazing massages, ate a lot of amazing food, became obsessed with French Press coffee, got some pretty awesome tans, smoked some cigars, and swam with sharks and sting rays. Our tour guide may or may not have given me his phone number and asked me to call him. Um.... I'm on my honeymoon Sir... so.....

On our way to the spa

The food on the island is notoriously not great. Hotel food mostly with a few hits and misses depending on how adventurous we were feeling. We love food and really wanted to have some good foodie experiences to remember. We went one night to Villa Mahana which is a celeb favorite and a pretty famous restaurant among foodie travelers. There are only 10 tables in the entire restaurant and reservations generally aren't available unless you're looking about 8 months to a year out. Which we did luckily. The food was amazing. Devine. 

Lunch at Bloody Mary's. By far the worst bloody mary I've ever had.

The day before our trip came to and end, we packed up our love nest, caught a boat back to the airport and took a quick flight back to Tahiti for one night. We spent our last hours as honeymooners at a new hotel laying on the sand beach next the most beautiful infinity pool I've ever seen.
Our flight home left at 7:00AM and we had to leave the hotel pretty much in the middle of the night. We got home Thursday and had the rest of the weekend to readjust to the time change and enjoy being married until Monday came around and real life slapped us in the face.

I can't believe it's already almost been a year. It feels like we were just there, and I really hope some day we can go back. Looking back at all of these photos is making me so incredibly jealous of whoever is undoubtedly staying in our room.

Wishin', Hopin', Plannin' & Prayin'

I’m trying really hard to be positive right now. I’m trying not to ask too many questions or let my black bubble of doubt grow much bigger. I’m trying not to be angry with my body or wonder too many times why God doesn’t agree with my plan. I’m trying. But it’s hard.

I’m impatient and I’m a control freak and I’ve never wanted anything so badly. I’ve also never wanted anything like this that is completely out of my control. I want a baby. I want to be a mother so badly that my heart literally aches. It seems like everyone around me is pregnant, or just had a baby. Up until about a month ago I was surrounded by pregnant girls. We had 5 pregnant mamas in my office at one time. One by one they have all left for maternity leave and are all now at home snuggling their newborns. The office joke for the last year has been to not drink the water. Me? I'm CHUGGING the water. I'll take whatever I can get.

I know that some people have to wait for years to get pregnant and have experienced so much more pain that I can even imagine in order to get there. So many couples deal with infertility and the heartbreak that comes along with it. We’re not there. And I hope we don't have to face all that. We haven’t even made it to the 6 month mark that by OB/GYN told me to expect but with every month it is getting more and more difficult and I'm getting more and more impatient. My sweet husband has been so patient and encouraging. Doing everything he can to keep me relaxed and distracted.

If I have to look at one more not pregnant on a pregnancy test I might start pulling out my hair. I've taken a solemn vow to myself not to take another test until I am absolutely positive that I am pregnant. The next pregnancy test that I look at is going to have lines, and say pregnant, and have a happy face and that's that. I'm a firm believer in the power of prayer and the law of attraction. I know it's going to happen and when it finally does it will all make sense. I'll just be real here too.. there are worse things that we  could be doing with our time as newlyweds.. right?

I just find it funny {that's the insanity speaking, like rocking in a corner muttering to myself funny} that we spent the entire first year of our marriage actively preventing a pregnancy. Jokes on us I guess.

My mom has been encouraging me to talk to our baby. To keep telling the sweet little bug that we are ready, we are waiting, and that we can't wait to share our lives with him/her. My mom waited 7 years between my sister and me and she's been telling me that she talked to me the whole time. I know where she's going with this idea, and I appreciate that she's trying to make me feel better but 7 years?! Nope. I just can't do that.

Praying for some exiting news soon!

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Wedding Wednesday ~ The Video

I can't believe we are already creeping up on our first anniversary. This year has absolutely flown by. I keep thinking about where we were at this time last year. Life was in complete chaos and our house looked like a wedding warehouse. We had some really great people working on our wedding. I loved how everything turned out and wouldn't change anything at all.

I know a lot of people go back and forth about wedding videography and some people choose to forego the video in the interest of saving some money. Big mistake in my opinion. A video does something that a photo just can't. Don't get me wrong, I love our wedding photos. But I don't tear up every time I see them.

Our videographer did a short edit along with an extended edit that is about an hour long, and also gave us all of the raw footage from the entire day. The raw footage is hilarious. Hearing all of the nonsense happening in the background at the hotel with the girls getting ready? Priceless. Those are just moments that you can never get back, or even really remember in the first place because your wedding day is a blur.

By the way, our videographer was amazing. He did such a great job and to tell you the truth I never even knew he was there. The only time I even remember seeing him was when he arrived at my hotel room. Our friends are getting married in Half Moon Bay next fall and they loved his work so much they have already hired him to do their wedding! 

Watch our video here

 

Happily 28

Nick's birthday was actually back in June, the same weekend of my sister's wedding so we pushed his birthday celebration back a week. We spent the weekend in Napa wine tasting and roasting in the heat. Northern CA has had one hell of a heat wave the last two weeks.

Saturday we went to a few wineries and then had dinner at a new restaurant in Yountville we hadn't tried yet that had delicious wood fire pizzas.

I made a key lime pie from scratch and Nick opened his presents. I got him an Xbox which I'm pretty sure makes me either the coolest wife ever, or the stupidest. I'm not sure which yet.

We spent all day Sunday baking ourselves next to the pool. It was so hot that eventually all of the dogs joined us {not by choice I might add}.

Here is Teddy watching the other three dogs in the pool from above. We haven't had a chance to get him to a lake yet this summer and we were trying to avoid putting him in the pool. I want him to love to swim and not be scared, and throwing a puppy in the pool isn't usually the best way to foster a love for water. But, it was way too hot and it had to happen.

Mr. Husband isn't the biggest fan of birthdays but I think this was a good one.

I love you sweet husband and I am so looking forward to spending the rest of our birthdays together!