Weddingbee Blog

Well, folks, this is it. My final honeymoon recap post. It’s been fun sharing our experiences in Europe with all of you. Be sure and stay tuned for a post on travel tips and, of course, the wedding recaps!

When I left you last, I said that our ferry from Naxos was heading back to Santorini–what was that all about? Well, we had booked our ferry from Santorini to Athens before leaving for our honeymoon. Then we decided, while in Santorini, to take a side trip to Naxos, which meant we had to get back to Santorini in time to catch our ferry to Athens. We ended up backtracking a bit by going from Naxos to Santorini to Athens because Naxos is actually in between Santorini and the mainland. In fact, our ferry from Santorini to Athens stopped in Naxos on the way. In theory, we could have just stayed in Naxos and tried to board the ferry when it arrived there, but we weren’t sure how the system worked and didn’t want to take the risk of not being able to board our ferry. So, back to Santorini it was, but only long enough for a quick bite to eat. Then it was on to Athens!

We only had two full days in this city, so we tried to fit in as much sightseeing as possibly, even though we were incredibly worn out at this point in the trip. Our first morning in Athens, we woke up and headed a couple of blocks from our hotel to Hadrian’s Arch.

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Sure, we were sad to leave Santorini. It truly felt like paradise. (Well, paradise where you can’t flush paper down the toilet, but paradise nonetheless.) But we were so excited to hop on our first ferry to Naxos!

We arrived just in time to see the sun setting over the Temple to Apollo. Kind of apropos, since he was the sun god after all.

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Our first stop in Greece was Santorini. Santorini is a small, circular archipelago of volcanic islands located in the southern Aegean Sea, about 120 miles southeast from Greece’s mainland. The main island is called Thira, and the most beautiful part of the island, where the main thrust of restaurants and hotels is located, is called Oia. We thought it was really cool that Santorini is basically what remains of a larger island after a massive volcanic explosion that took place 3,600 years ago. Now the city of Thira looks out into a water-filled caldera, which makes for some mind-boggling photographs.

Here we are on our first full day in Oia. Believe it or not, this photo was taken from the cafe where we had breakfast. The views don’t really get much better than this, people.

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When I left you guys, we had just seen the Eiffel Tower sparkle in all its Disney-esque glory. We woke up the next morning, had breakfast in our hotel, and took the Metro to the rail station, where we would get on our train to Milan. We were sad to leave Paris but so excited about what was next!

At the Milan Cathedral

We enjoyed a relaxing ride through the French and Italian countryside. The highlight of the train ride was getting to see the Alps–they really do have little snow caps on! We arrived in Milan around 9PM, ready to find our hotel and get something to eat. We’d eaten lunch on the train, but we were definitely saving room for a nice, big, Italian dinner. Unfortunately, we had booked our hotel in advance and it was pretty far from the city center. So much for saving money! We took the subway as far as it would go in our direction and then had a 45-minute walk to our hotel. That’s a 45-minute (hungry) walk with giant backpacks on our backs.
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Somehow on the third day in Paris, we managed to take zero photos. So this post is all video. I apologize if you’re reading this from work, and you can’t watch them!

It was our final day in Paris, and we decided to spend the day in Versailles—if you’re not familiar with it, Versailles is a city located just a little outside of Paris. It’s the home of the famously ornate Château de Versailles, well known as the home of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI during their marriage. We read in our guidebook that you should get there early, as the Palace tends to get very crowded with tourists during the day. The book also suggested spending the entire day in Versailles. We took the Metro and the RER (kind of like a suburban rail), and it took us about an hour total.

When we arrived, it was cloudy and cold and windy, and we were sleepy! And we had to walk a pretty good walk from the train stop to the Palace. Honestly, I just wanted to go back to sleep.

Our first impression upon walking up to the front of the Palace was “Uh, where’s all the grass and trees and stuff?”

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For our second day in Paris, I decided to take the Dude to a few of my favorite Parisian locales from when I was there six years ago. Since he didn’t care about museums, I planned a day packed with as many iconic Paris sites as possible. We started off the day with a Metro ride to Champs-Elysees, the gorgeous tree-lined shopping district, at the end of which the Arc de Triumph stands proudly in the center of the biggest roundabout I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately I don’t have any photos, since we still hadn’t found a charger for our camera.

We did some shopping along the avenue—I bought tights and a pair of high top sneaker/boot thingies because I was FREEZING. We popped into an electronics store and found a universal charger that we were able to use later that night to charge the camera battery—score! We had some interesting pizza in a cafe, pepperoni with a fried egg on top! Finally, we stopped at Laduree for some macarons.

Please pardon my dorkiness in this video.
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Why hello there, hive. It’s good to be back!

Look, it’s candy mice! Right in between candy swans and candy piglets! I saw these at a chocolate shop in Paris and couldn’t resist taking a picture.

Now that I’ve distracted you with cuteness, my recaps can officially begin! I’m going to start with our European honeymoon. Originally we wanted to go to Greece, but we decided it would be fun to throw in a few nights in Paris and then take a train through France and Italy, stopping in Milan for one night. After Milan, we flew to Greece, where we spent a week traveling to two islands and then finished up the trip in Athens.
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We’re back! After two weeks in Europe, the Dude and I made it back to Austin! We haven’t even been home long enough to ditch the jet lag, but I’m almost ready to start blogging about our trip. First, though, is the obligatory bachelorette party post. I was holding out blogging about it until I got some more photos, but I think I’ve scrounged up enough at this point.

A few of the ladies who made it to the par-tay. Kelli, me, Anne, Abi, and Katie.

Ten days before the wedding, MOH Deniz flew down from Queens. We hadn’t seen each other in two years, so we had some serious catching up to do! She got right down to planning the bachelorette party, with a little feedback from me and some assistance from our friend, Amanda.
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Yep, technically we’re still on our honeymoon, but I couldn’t resist sharing this teaser shot that our photogs posted a few days ago!

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I don’t do well with expressing sentimental ideas. Nothing I type seems adequate to describe how happy I am that our wedding day is finally here. So I’ll start with this: Today I’m marrying my favorite person in the world, and I feel so lucky.

In the past week, everything that could have gone wrong has. I found out at the last minute that the bust was way too big on my dress. The cookies I tried to bake turned out awful. There was a 70% chance of rain on the day of our backyard barbecue rehearsal dinner. The day before the rehearsal dinner, we couldn’t get in contact with the RD caterers. In the end, my dress fits, we ordered some cookies from a bakery, and we got a giant tent for the RD and enough BBQ to feed an army. It seemed as though there wasn’t a problem that we couldn’t solve.

I know today won’t be perfect. I also know it won’t be the “best day of my life”.
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One week before the wedding my MOH, my mom, and I decided to tackle the honey favors. It was a total assembly line, and the process went very smoothly.

My mom filled the test tubes with honey and corked them.

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Thanks to my maid of honor, who swooped in two days ago and came to the rescue, the program fans are now pretty much done! This was an incredibly time consuming process, so I suggest starting it way head of time if you plan on making these.

The finished product

These are the supplies you will need:
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There are so many projects that I’m in the middle of right now that I can’t wait to share with you guys. For now, I’ll let you in on all of my “somethings” that I’ve gathered for the big day.

Not the actual ring, but it looks similar to this.

Something old: One day a few months ago I was at my mom’s house. She was giving me an old tin to possibly use in my wedding, so I started cleaning out all of the stuff in it. I found a delicate little ring with a row of diamonds across the top. My mom had never seen it before, but she assumed it had belonged to her grandmother—my great-grandma. We’re still not sure how old the ring is or what it symbolized, but my mom now wears it every day. I asked if I could borrow it for the wedding, and she happily obliged.
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OK, I have to ‘fess up. From the moment that I got engaged, I thought I wanted no part of the wedding shower tradition. It just seemed so… traditional. A close friend of ours (who is doing a reading in our ceremony) made an offer to throw me one right after she found out we were engaged, and I refused. “We’re not registering,” I said, “so I don’t need a shower.”

So, what happened? I changed my mind, of course. Over the months, as I watched several friends wed (including virtual friends) I started to get jealous of all the love they were experiencing at their showers. I wanted one now, too! So, I dropped a few (not-so-subtle) hints to some of my friends, and they gracefully obliged with the awesomest, most Miss Mouseiest shower of all time.

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I was introduced to the wide world of blogging back in 2003. All my college friends at the time had LiveJournal accounts, and I wanted in on the action. Finally, I got my invite and I began blogging! Mainly, my LiveJournal blog was a series of inside jokes between my roommates and me—accounts of our drunken shenanigans, from Michael Jackson dance parties to sneaking into bars with fake IDs. I eventually lost interest in my account once we all graduated and moved on to the next phase of our lives.

Once in law school, I started to obsess over blogs like Go Fug Yourself and Cute Overload. I had not yet been bitten by the wedding bug. Then, one fateful day in Constitutional Law class, my good friend Mrs. Kitten (at the time not yet a bee) introduced me to Weddingbee. I was instantly hooked! I can even remember the first post I read—it was all about hand-canceling stamps. Of course, I had no idea what that was, but pretty soon I was down with all the wedding lingo, from chivari chairs to Goccos to FMILs.

Witnessing my addiction firsthand, the future Mrs. Kitten suggested a few days later that I apply to be a bee. I was like, “No way, I’ll never have time to start a blog. And even if I did, why would they pick me?” But the seed of the idea was planted, and it continued to grow and grow.

A few months later, Mrs. Kitten became a bee, and I was so excited for her that I almost felt like *I* had become one!

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