Honeymoon

After months of planning, finally the wedding day arrives and the beginning of your life as a married couple.  Exciting, right?  Well, I'll admit that leaving the reception was actually a little strange.  Lorena and I had been dating for three years and in the last several months we had been together nearly every day but never as husband and wife.  We dropped by the church briefly as I had left the car there.  We chatted briefly with some friends who were rearranging the church and who encouraged us to enjoy our honeymoon.  We had set the wedding time for the afternoon so that we could avoid getting to the hotel too late but we still ended up leaving a bit later than planned.  Our first night hotel was close to the church but I hadn't even told my fiancee which hotel we would be staying in. 

We arrived at the nearby Doral Golf Resort & Spa hotel and considering the class of hotel I sort of expected to see someone outside to help with our luggage.  Noone.  How odd I thought.  So I left my bride at the entrance (still dressed in her wedding gown), parked the car and brought the remaining bags.  We entered and there was no reception.  Interesting.  Obviously we were in the wrong place.  So we looked for help.  Fortunately after a few moments, a hotel employee arrived on a golf cart and he took us to the real entrance.  We had mistakenly passed by it and ended up at another building which hosted banquets.  We entered the reception area still dressed in our wedding attire.  The sensation was a little odd as the other hotel guests  congratulated us.  The reception informed us that because it was our honeymoon they were upgrading our room to the best rooms in the hotel - at the spa WOW! 

Ten to fifteen minutes later we arrived at our room.  I had ordered a bouquet of flowers and rose petals for the room and when we entered I was sort of stunned.  What happened?  There was a mixup about the flowers which I thought I had settled the day prior to the wedding.  I spoke with the gentleman who escorted us in about the flowers, then recalled that our room had been upgraded and thought perhaps that was the issue.  He called someone and it turned out that was the case - the flowers were in the other room!  So I had to make a decision on the spot.  Do we stay here without the flowers (which I paid more than $100 for) in the nicer spa room or do we go to the other room where the flowers are?  But he offered another solution.  If we could leave the room momentarily, the hotel could send someone to get them and rearrange the room.  I said, "Let's do that."  So I had to convince my bride that even though it was kind of late and we had just arrived, let's go for a brief walk.  So we were seated in the reception of the spa area of the resort while she was on the phone with her family and two individuals entered.  One was carrying a bouquet of flowers and another had a plastic bag!!! Oh no!  I immediately recognized who they were so I covered my wife's eyes while she was probably thinking, "What on earth is going on?"  I was able to see them as they walked toward our room and then again when they finally left.  I then told my wife in Spanish, "Let's go." 

We live in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale area and got married during hurricane season.  Our original plan was to spend our first night in Miami, then spend several days in the Florida Keys and finally a few days in Naples, Florida.  But one thing you need to learn when planning a wedding is to be flexible and adapt as unplanned events occur.  Because we were so wrapped up in the wedding details we didn't pay much attention to the weather the final few days.  Someone told us at the reception that there was a hurricane heading toward the Keys.  So the next morning before heading out we checked the news.  The storm was a good distance away from the Islamorada Key where we were headed but we decided to stay in Miami an extra day just to play it safe.  The hotel let us stay in the same room at the same rate. Great deal!  The next day the hurricane approached the Keys and there was a mandatory evacuation.  Had we headed to the Keys on Sunday we would have had to have evacuated and that would have really changed our honeymoon.  We were fine at a great resort even though it was in Miami.  We kept abreast of the news but by the time we were able to actually leave we had spent four nights in Miami.  At least I had chosen a really nice hotel for that first night!  But it was kind of weird given that we were familiar with the area.  Thus, we pretty much had to stay inside the resort to preserve the integrity of the honeymoon. 

Despite the weather we were able to make it to our Florida Keys hotel to spend a couple of days in the Keys and then make it to Naples for another two-day stay.  The Keys are a nice place to relax but Naples is definitely a place you need to visit.