Our reception was AWESOME! It was at Champions Golf Club in northwest Houston, and they are known for these amazing 2-story Christmas trees with thousands of sparkling ornaments on them. Lucky for me we got married on December 30 and they leave the trees up for their big New Year's Eve party. Score! Free decorations!
The other awesome thing about Champions is that Shirley, the event planner, has been doing weddings there for like 30 years, has everything down to a science and all you tell her are your colors. They provide amazing food, centerpieces, flowers, everything basically. Have your cake and guests show up and you're good to go! I love event planning myself, so my wedding should have been the dream of event planning, but I was taking 18 hours my last semester at UT, stressed about being able to find a job, and my fiance was in Houston too busy to even speak to me regularly opening a family business. By the end of the semester, I was sick of making decisions and deferred all to my mom. I do wish I had fought harder for certain things, but Jeremy and I were both happy and married and that's all that really matters!
Some of the awesome decorations (you can see the big trees in the background) - I love this picture!
Cutting our cake. I loved my cake - it was Italian cream cake, all creamy/white, with different shaped layers and a big bow on top! I don't have a good picture of the groom's cake, but it was chocolate in the shape of Texas with a huge orange longhorn on top, and little UT chocolate-covered strawberries. Yum! Our cake lady was Bobbie from Bobbie's Cake Creations. Loved her to death!
Gettin' down with my mom and sister! Ha! But this shows how gorgeous the Christmas trees are. We had a live band (Shirley only allows one DJ!), Big Otis. Jeremy was skeptical about how fun a live band would be but we had a BLAST! He was so fun and great, we danced all night.
I love this picture. Jeremy dancing with my b-maids, Pam and Sarah in the back. Love it!!
We left down a long walkway and our guests threw rose petals (supplied by good ol Shirley!). The limo drove us over to this little cottage on site the bridesmaids and I stayed at for me to change and to say goodbye. I started crying saying goodbye to Adrienne and Becky, who live in New York and Dallas respectively. We didn't have firm plans to all get together again and it made me sad! I was also sad because my parents were busy with gifts and collecting stuff we brought and paying people, so I didn't even get to say goodbye! Jeremy's parents came over though and we got to give them and Josh one last hug. Then away to the Hotel Sofitel we went. When we got there, we chowed down on our basket of food and then realized...we were married...we were never going to live at home again... It was surreal for both of us. Not that we weren't happy to be together, obviously we were, but because I think we'd both been so busy we really hadn't put much thought into enjoying time with our families in the last few months.
We left Houston on a 6am flight the morning after our wedding. We were exhausted!! But we decided being in paradise was more important than sleep at the time. We went to St. Thomas, in the US Virgin Islands. It worked out well because it's an easy Continental flight from Houston through Atlanta directly into Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas. We stayed at the Marriott Frenchmen's Reef & Morningstar Resort. We did a lot of sleeping, and we also went to our resort beach, a public beach called Magen's Bay, shopped one afternoon, parasailed, and took a yacht trip over to St. John.
This is the view from our room, looking into the Charlotte Amalie harbor. Cruise ships docked every evening and Jeremy and I were so giddy watching them! (I guess because we've never been on one!) We even got to see the Queen Mary II dock, but it is so big it had to drop anchor pretty far away in deep enough water.
This is a view from Drake's Seat looking down to my favorite beach, Magen's Bay. It was a public beach, so it got crowded with all the cruise ships, but the water was amazing. It was like bath water, no big waves or drop offs. We even saw sea turtles swimming around!
Hanging out at our resort pool - enjoying banana daiquiris, my favorite!!
On our yacht trip over to St. John. Behind us is my absolute favorite beach ever - Scott Beach at the Caneel Bay Resort. It's a super pricey, exclusive resort, so you can't trespass onto the beach. BUT on St. John, all the beaches are national parks, so if you swim onto the beach, they can't say anything to you! The reason I know all about the beach...they dropped anchor in this bay for us to go snorkeling. Keep in mind the only beach I am familiar with is Galveston. I put my goggles on and basically had a panic attack about just floating in (what felt like to me) the middle of the ocean. It was so dark under me, and I didn't care how clear it was, I did not want to see what could be lurking down there! Poor Jeremy! Luckily a nice woman said she didn't feel like snorkeling anyway, so we swam to the beach and Jeremy got to snorkel without having to babysit me. He saw (I think) an eel, sea turtles, a seahorse, and maybe a stingray? But I quite enjoyed getting tan on the lovely beach!
Dinner our last night at what turned out to be the only decent restaurant at the resort, Havana Blue. We had mojitos and sushi and it was a wonderful way to end the honeymoon!
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My in-laws take us to brunch at Champions Golf sometimes on Sundays after church. I've seen the Christmas trees, and they are beautiful. I love that you got married around Christmas and used them....and that silhouette picture of the two of you with the trees in the background is awesome!
ReplyDeleteWe had a wedding coordinator for our renewal ceremony and reception. I was the Marketing Director at the time and still co-managing a property with my husband. There's no way we would have been able to do it with her.
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