Where we went on our cruise:
Wedding and Honeymoon links:
The Church We Got Married In
The Hotel Where Our Reception Was
The Ship We Took Our Cruise On
Now comes the fun part... PICTURES!!! :) We hope that those of you who didn't get to come to the wedding enjoy these picture, this webpage is really for you. We know there aren't that many pictures, but that just means that you'll have to visit us to see all of them :). We had lots of fun on our big day (and on our honeymoon) and we're so grateful to everyone who was there and to all of you who were thinking of us. Okay, enough of me blabbing.... on to the good stuff!
Pics of Rehearsal:
August 15, 2003
Here's a picture of us at the alter pretending like it's the big day. We don't have a clue as to what's going on, can't you tell?
And here we are counting off as we try to practice slowly lighting the candle... and if you want to know what Doug is saying up there, it sounded something like "One... two... three... no Michelle you're going too fast..." For all the practice I'm not even sure how it went at the wedding! I guess I'll have to wait for it to come out on DVD. :)
And now on to the fun part... the rehearsal dinner! We had a lot of fun and a lot of good food :)! Casa Guadalajara is always good though. This picture is a little blurry, but has a lot of the main players (i.e. a lot of the bridal party). Let's see Doug and I are hiding in the back... Matt, Crystal, Novette, and Deanna are sitting around the table (going counter clockwise) And A.J.'s standing on the right. Oh and I couldn't forget the cutest flower girl!!! And the guy who's trying to sneak into the picture is Doug's dad... we should've taken another pic with him in it.
And then this one is a general picture of the whole rehearsal. Can you find Doug??? It's kind of like Where's Waldo, but I'll give you a hint - he's wearing a white T-Shirt. Nice hint isn't it? :)
Awe, isn't this a sweet picture? Doug and Daniel... the Groom and Best Man (as indicated by their lovely shirts).
Then here's me and 2 of my sisters. Mana (on the right) was my maid of honor, and she did such a wonderful job that I recommend her help to any girl getting married! :)
Finally, here's a picture of the back of Matt's shirt. It was quite impressive how he got everyone to sign it, not to mention how cute it was. I know this picture doesn't do it justice, but it's the best I have.
Pics of Wedding:
August 16, 2003
Total Tissue Count = 3 :)
It was a really pretty wedding and nice reception... I think. I don't really remember, but that's what people tell me. All I can really remember was how heavy my bouquet was, how hot the church was, but most importantly how handsome Doug was. Oh, and I remember the Reverend giving him lots of tissue... :)
Yay!!! I have pictures from the wedding, the professional ones (although I do think that some of the picture takers at the reception could go into photography for themselves... it's a very profitable business...).
Here are a few pictures of me... They aren't the best, but they were the easiest to put on the web... as was mentioned earlier, don't hesitate to ask to see all the pictures if you want (and remember it'll probably take a while to go through all of them considering he took about a billion pics).
And here are some pictures of my flowers, up close and personal... :) I'm sure with all the pictures of me you can get a good idea of what my bouquet looked like...
Of course I have to put in a picture of the man of the hour... wasn't he so handsome?? Well I think he's handsome every day, but he definitely was my knight in shining armor that day.
Here's a pic of me and all my bridesmaids... I had quite a few as you can see...
And here are the corresponding groomsmen... Poor Doug had to find all the guys he could to match up with all my girls...
Now comes the sweetest part, the ring bearer and flower girl. They were so cute together and they did such a good job!! I couldn't have asked for anything better.
This picture, as I'm sure you can guess is me walking down the aisle with my daddy... and hurray! I didn't trip! I was so relieved when I got to the end!
And here we are at the real alter. This is no rehearsal - it's the real deal! And can you believe we actually did it?? :)
And of course, the posed alter return pictures... It was SO hot up there! No fans, not that much of a cross breeze... I was just so thankful when Doug's mom went to get us water. Obviously these pictures must have been taken after we had hydrated ourselves, I mean look how big our smiles are.
And here's all of us at the front of the church - I don't know how we all fit!!
Then we got into the limos and rode up to Presidio Park to take some more pictures - all of these came out really well, even though there were other people using the area for their pictures.
Then of course here's the whole group again... we had a lot of cute pictures like the girls lifting up Doug and a crazy group picture (so make sure you ask me to see those!)
Time to Celebrate!!!
Here's our grand entrance to the room... don't you love how Doug greets his adoring fans? :) You can see my bouquet in this picture... it's really deceptive because from here it doesn't look like it weighs a thousand pounds... but that sure is what it felt like. :)
And here's our quick little spin around the dance floor before we made our way to our seats.
Here we are... we finally made it to our table. The DJ was on Doug's right and the cake was on my left. This was where we ate our dinner (and yes we actually did eat). It was really quite cozy in that room and we had the best view of everything from our little front table.
Then we got our serenade from the Mariachis... we did a little dance and Mana & Angie sang a little tune... I hope it was entertaining to our guests, but we know we had fun!
Awe... and here's me and my daddy doing the Father Daughter dance. We danced to Butterfly Kisses by Bob Carlisle and for some reason the song seemed to go on longer than I remembered it being, but that's okay. I love you daddy!
And here's Doug and his mom doing the Mother Son dance. Doug chose Mama by B.J. Thomas and the song and dance combined to make a really sweet memory.
Here's a pic of my parents "cutting a rug" although if you ask me it looked like they were just going around in circles. :) j/k
And here are Doug's parents enjoying a well deserved resting moment. I mean after flying in from Texas it was non-stop action for them!
And here was our pride and joy - the wedding cake! It was a strawberry cake with real strawberries in the filling. It tasted SO good! And I was more than thrilled with the way it came out, just like I dreamed! I know you can't see it in the picture, but the water in the fountain was purple and the cake had little purple flowers with silver leaves. Then there was our cake topper which looked awesome on top. :)
And the last memory from our wedding that we have pictures of is the money dance. In this picture I had a special partner - my flower girl. Isn't she adorable! But as you can probably guess, Doug and I got a nice chunk of change (which went directly toward our souvenir purchases on our honeymoon).
Pics of Honeymoon:
August 17-24, 2003
Here's a pic of our suite at the Quality Resort... it was HUGE!!! There's so much of it that's not in this picture like the sitting area, the bar/kitchen area, a big ol' closet, and a bathroom with one of those spa tubs. We were so spoiled! :)
Yay! We made it to Long Beach on time!! Here we are getting ready to depart. It was really nice because we checked our bags at the curb then got to skip all the lines inside because of some Skipper's club thing.
And now here we are as we're taking off from Long Beach for the mandatory safety drill. This was such a cute look that we had to take a picture - don't you think the orange compliments Doug so well? :)
This is what our room on the ship looked like - we had a balcony and everything, but compared to our room at the hotel this was rather small... serves us right for going on a cruise :)
Here's a picture of the wait staff in our dining room. Our head waiter is the one on the left, his name is Horace but he told us to call him Horacio for the entire cruise. Then next to him is Putu, who was the assistant waiter for our table. We sat at the same table each night and were entertained each night by the wait staff in one way or another (singing, doing the macarena, a conga line... etc.).
A picture of us and the cake they gave us for our honeymoon... when they gave it to us they sang Happy Honeymoon to us to the tune of Happy Birthday to you (or as it was referred to on the ship - Happy Birthday to shoes). They made us kiss for the whole song which was pretty long. :)
And assigned to the table with us were Ernesto and Kelly. They were SO nice which made dinner time nice each day. We would talk and catch up on each others' fun activities.
This is one of our many pictures of Puerto Vallarta. We saw a lot of the coast and saw where the filmed the night of the iguanas.... It was really pretty and green there but the prices were so high!!! And they really didn't want to bargain. The bus tour was nice but we didn't have enough time to look around and oh my goodness the bus driver was driving around those curves so fast it was amazing that we didn't flip. Other than that it was filled with lots of hot and muggy memories. :)
And here are the nice sailors that Doug took a picture with while we were in port. They were really nice and spoke a little bit of English so that was cool for Doug. He even whipped out his ID card to show them that he was a Marine. :)
We thought this was a pretty cool picture... it might be hard to see, but behind that pirate ship is a Wal-Mart and a Sam's Club. Nice to know there are familiar comforts even in Puerto Vallarta.
Now we're going to change it up a bit and head on to Mazatlan. One of the first things we saw there was this cool cliff diver. Doug said he jumped into 5 feet of water but I would think it would have to be more than that...
For Mana - here's the Mazatlan version of the Hollywood walk of fame... On the left you'll see Pedro Infante and on the right Julio Preciado (or at least first and second, depending on your computer). These stars are supposed to be for people that come from the area. All that's missing is some cool hand prints or something to that effect. :)
Here's a picture of a sign in the middle of old Mazatlan which represents some of the different areas in Sinaloa. The Mazatlan quarter is the bottom right one. It has a deer because Mazatlan means the land of the deer. Good to know, isn't it? :)
We went to a bakery on our tour and here's Doug munching on our souvenirs... oh well, at least I have the picture.
Then we walked over to the Angela Peralta Theater. She had been a famous opera singer a while back and when she died in the city they decided to build a theater in her honor. This is us in front of one of the entrances to the plaza which leads to the theater. It was really nice to see all the craftsmanship.
And the last stop on this tour was the Immaculate Conception church. It was GORGEOUS inside and none of the pictures we have do it justice.
On our way back to the ship it started raining and by the time we got out of our "limo" it was full on pouring. At least we missed the hurricane though.
These two people are the first people we met when we were in line, then we saw them again when we were getting on the ship and yet again in the elevator. Their names are James and Rochelle and they too were on their honeymoon. They had flown down from Washington and actually had a room down the hall from us. They were SO SO nice!!!
Here are some more sailors, this time in Mazatlan. Unfortunately for Doug, these ones didn't know English. When Doug talked they gave him the most puzzled looks. At least they were nice enough to take pictures with him though.
Here's us at dinner again. By this time we had our routine down - breakfast at Tiffany's, lunch either in our room (you gotta love free room service) or at Tiffany's or maybe Pizza, then our 5 o'clock Sushi, then our dinner at 8:00. I miss having people serve us dinner. :(
This is on Friday when we were pulling into Cabo San Lucas. Isn't the sunrise pretty? We got there so early and we didn't even get to spend that much time on shore. Oh well, we had fun.
Doug wishes he could have this car... too bad its home is in Cabo... We saw this when we were on our way to Cabo Wabo with Ernesto and Kelly. I think everyone except me took a picture with this car...
The night we left Cabo we had another formal dinner and here are Doug and I relaxing after dinner...
And finally here's our ship when she pulled back into Long Beach... I couldn't believe how quickly the time went by! And it took us a couple days to get used to being on land again.
And thus ends our fairy tale, or at least the first chapter... now we just have to wait for the new adventures to come when we have kids. :)
P.S. if anyone has any more pictures that they took at the rehearsal or wedding let me know so that I can maybe put some of them up on the web. :) Thanks!
