Weddingbee Blog

I loved our honeymoon. A lot. More than I expected to actually. Normally, my ideal vacation is to go somewhere in Europe that I have meticulously read about in advance and spend my days wandering the streets…blah blah blah. However, for our honeymoon Mr. Knitting and I decided we should go a much more relaxed route and I have to say I’m so happy we did.

Our honeymoon began with a very luxurious chauffeured drive to Montreal. Here’s a look at us luxuriating:

Haha, yeah, we drove to Montreal with my sister and her husband with our suitcases piled up in between us. While it could not be described as romantic, it was a lot of fun. My BIL’s parents live in Montreal so we stayed the night with them so we’d be fresh and rested when we got to Hovey Manor the next day.

The first official day of our honeymoon began with some delicious brunch:

Then since we had a bit of time before we needed to leave we wandered around old Montreal. Being a proper Canadian I’m in love with all things maple and was excited to find a store selling maple taffy. Here’s how it works.

Maple syrup (the real stuff, no Aunt Jemima garbage) is poured on freshly packed snow:

You are then given a popsicle stick to roll it up into a lolly-pop and enjoy:

It’s highly delicious!

After our walk we packed up and drove to Hovey Manor which is located in the Eastern Townships, about an hour and a half from Montreal. In its previous life Hovey Manor was the summer home of a rich South Carolinian. Apparently, after the Civil War a lot of wealthy Southerners could not stomach the idea of summering in an area full of Yankees and instead continued further north to Quebec and began developing the area known today as the Eastern Townships. Needless to say this man’s home was gorgeous.

Here’s a look at our room:

There’s the creepy/cute elf on our bed:

I’m going to do a few separate posts to show you what we did and, more importantly, what we ate on our honeymoon, but I thought I’d post a bit here about our first Christmas together as a married couple.

Like many of you, we were finding it difficult to decide how to change our family holiday traditions to suit us as a married couple. We do have it easier than most because since we met in high school our parents live in the same city, but there are definitely still a few things we need to figure out. In the end we decided not to worry about it this year and to purposely schedule our honeymoon over Christmas. We liked this plan because we figured our families might be a tiny bit sick of us and this way we didn’t have to make any big decisions about where to spend the holidays. Yay for avoidance!

I was a bit worried I might get sad being away from home for the first time over Christmas, but I’m happy to report we had a wonderful day and I think we definitely made the right choice. Here’s a little recap of our day:

The activities for the day:

Around 11AM we met the other guests in the library for some brandy eggnog. We were our usual social selves and spent most of the time reading and not socializing with others!:

When we got back to our room there was a Christmas present waiting for us from the innkeepers:

I was particularly excited about the tea because I am obsessed with chai tea and this was a type I hadn’t tried:

We spent some time outside as well. Here’s the only picture we took of our sleigh ride (the snowflakes in Toronto are not this pretty and we were excited):

We also spent lots of time walking and exploring the area:

Our first married Christmas ended with an incredibly delicious lobster dinner:

It was obviously a pretty simple Christmas, but it was really nice and just what we wanted! Now we have a whole year to figure out what to do next Christmas…

What was your first married Christmas like? Did you have trouble figuring out how to spend it?