July 3, 2006

We're back! YAY! I'm a married woman. Whoa..just kidding. It doesn't feel one bit different than being engaged or even seriously dating. I always thought that it wouldn't change a thing..guess I was right. Sweet. So I've been thinking about this blog entry and how I'd try and explain the past few weeks. Ahh..all I ever get to is WOW. Our familes and friends arrived the weekend before our Thursday wedding. We showed them all over Bangkok, took them on a tour..went to Thai, French and Chinese restaurants. We saw the slowly dying art of the monk's bowl village, the crazy huge weekend market, the coolest temples to see, the hippie hang at Kao San...the river..and all of it was amazing. I think the most baffling thing was that there was not just one great moment. It was all so freakin' fun. The next baffling thing was that we never got stuck in the rain. No joke. We're in the middle of the rainy season and it never poured until we were somewhere inside. What's up with that? Even on the honeymoon..no rain until 10 minutes after we checked out of the last hotel and we were on our way to go home. Soo weird.

The resort was incredible...www.rayavadee.com. Highly highly highly recommend it. We chilled there for 4 days..day three was the wedding. I can totally describe the wedding day. It started with Ann and Mary calling us early in the morning and singing a song..hilare. We had breakfast, went swimming all morning, then started getting ready. The pics were super fun since the resort is freakin' picture perfect and the monkeys even came out to hang for a while! I can't even describe the weather though. It was literally raining day one and two on and off all day. Even when we took pics we had to take a 20 minute rain break. Before the wedding it cleared up and the sunset was amazing. You'll see pics soon. I remember coming around the grotto to see where the ceremony would be....I had the biggest smile on my face. It was so beautiful. Ahh..so fun. I remember Dave and I hiding before the ceremony talking nervously, trying to distract eachother..haha. The ceremony was beautiful. Earl did an AWESOME job marrying us...we're totally married. We signed the papers as I sang "signed, sealed, delieverd" and walked to the cake cutting and champagne toast through a shower of orchids! We definitely smeared cake all over our faces and then headed over to dinner and dancing. Our first dance was to the live version of Stevie Wonder's "overjoyed" recorded from Saturday Night Live..soo fun. We didn't take lessons but had totally been practicing in our apartment! HA! The best part were the speeches. Joe's speech rocked..my sisters did a choreographed tap dancing number, and my dad sang a lullaby (with re-written words). We laughed, we cried and we got married. Kind of hard to screw that up. The party ended all too soon but we had a few more days with our families so it was still happy.

The honeymoon was great and relaxing. We went island hopping around Thailand. We started with the Racha islands south of Phuket, then moved to the Phi Phi islands near Krabi and ended with Koh Samui. Snorkeling was sooo sooo fun. I've never been able to snorkel in clear water..ahh..amazing. We saw a lot of the Tsunami damage too. That was really powerful. Especially on Phi Phi. You can see where the water went and the damage is still there. I saw aerial photos from before and after. I mean, they are still in the inital rebuilding stages. But it's thriving and still a popular destination. We stayed on a much quieter beach where the damage was even seen on the opposite side of the island. Anyway, we got spa treatments, ate amazing food, got lots of complimentary champagne and relaxed. Not my typical vacation but much needed after all that planning. Hopefully that sort of describes. It is really hard to explain the past few weeks..but I guess it's probably better left undescribed. I'll put up wedding pics as soon as we get them but for now you can see the pics we took.