I'm a married woman now!

I'm back to work today. After spending most of the morning catching up on email and touching base with clients, I'm taking some time out to blog. There's a lot to cover, not to mention pictures to share, so be prepared -- this will be a ridiculously long post.

The Wedding

The wedding went beautifully. Prior to the ceremony, I spent 3 or 4 hours with the photographers. I have to admit I loved being the focus of attention (particularly because my feet didn't yet hurt at that point). It also helped keep me busy and prevented me from getting nervous (although I don't know if I would have -- I was never nervous about getting married, just getting everything ready in time, and all of that was done before we left home).

The photographers sent me about a dozen downsized pictures; they're going to send me full-size versions of everything on CDs and DVDs, but I haven't gotten those yet. My favorite picture of myself so far is this one:



As I've probably already mentioned (and as you'll know if you read my wedding blog), the wedding was 1920s-themed. My dress was from 1929, and when I found it I loved it so much that I decided to plan the entire wedding with the same theme. Therefore my bridesmaids had modern flapper-ish dresses, Michael and the other men wore tuxes with coat tails, and I encouraged our guests to wear 1920s outfits as well (which most of them did!). My outfit was almost entirely vintage -- my veil, although new, was attached to a period wax-flower wreath, and my shoes were also from the late 20s or 30s. I even, by a last-minute stroke of luck (and my mom's good eye), had an authentic 1920s cloche hat to wear for the reception!



The ceremony went beautifully -- no mess-ups, thank goodness. (I think tripping or stuttering during the ceremony is every bride's fear.) Although we didn't end up dancing at the reception, it was still perfect -- it was a small wedding, very intimate, and it never felt like dancing was needed to "keep the party going."



The Honeymoon

The next day, Michael and I left for our honeymoon. We went to the Poconos Mountains in Pennsylvania, to a resort that I used to go to with my mom's side of the family when I was a kid. It's been 12 years since I was there, 15 years since I was there regularly, which gave our honeymoon a dual significance for me: intertwining some of my happiest childhood memories with the promise of the future.

Driving up to the resort for the first time in 12 years made me cry. This is what it looked like:



And a picture of the back of the building:



It's so relaxing there, and there's so much to do, too. We hiked, rented mountain bikes, swam, and stuffed ourselves silly with three gourmet meals a day. (Don't worry, we did all of the usual honeymoon stuff, too. ;o) Here are a couple of pictures from one of our hikes, a place I had been to as a kid and was eager to visit again:





It's a very upscale resort, very British in its customs as well as its architecture. We had to go out and buy Michael a suit especially for this trip, but WOW did he look nice. We both loved dressing up for the evening meals.



After leaving Pennsylvania, we went back to Michael's brother's house and visited with him for a couple of days before returning home. We spent a lot of quality time with his kids, visited my horse Panama, and came back with a second dog -- but I'll leave those stories for my next blog post. Also, in another future blog post I'll be participating in a meme Harmony tagged me for: the Thinking Blogger Award.