The Honeymoon’s over. Well, the actual trip is over. Most of it. We arrived back to JFK about an hour and a half ago and are now at the Fairfield Inn where we’ll crash tonight before driving back home tomorrow. The room is not 5 stars like the hotel we were staying in in London – but it’s clean and it’ll do. We’ve now been up for over 21 hours and are very tired… and smelly. Travel makes you gross.
I’d love to blog all about the trip but I need to make myself go to sleep as it feels like 5am for me right now. Tomorrow is going to be a big day – driving home, stopping to see Beck and Nora if they’re up to it, and then saying goodbye to the family as it’s their last night before they move to Dubai. 
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Filed under honeymoon | Comment (0)I am in a funk this morning. We had another great day yesterday – this time ending our day on a London Walks Pub Walk. These are Pub walks and not crawls, so you don’t necessarily get hammered on them… but I pretty much got hammered last night. We had a lot of fun and got back to the hotel a little after midnight.
About an hour and a half after I passed out, I woke up because Alex was shaking me. “Listen!” There was a very polite but firm male British voice speaking in our room. “… the fire alarm has been activated. Please vacate the building and go to the assembly point in Lincoln’s Inn Fields behind the Hotel. Please do not attempt to use the lifts.” I immediately wanted to throw up. Shaking, I jumped out of bed and pulled on the clothes I was wearing earlier. I was flying all over the room while Alex tried to calm me down. “Grab your bag,” he said which made it all too familiar for me. At least this time I had my camera in the bag… I grabbed our passports out of the safe, slid on my flip flops and followed Alex out into the hall.
We passed other hotel guests in various stages of awakening – coming out of their rooms with their hair askew in wrinkled pajamas, rubbing their eyes and asking if we’d heard an alarm. I’m sure that I was not a reassuring site to them as I likely had a look of extreme panic on my face. Alex located the “in-case-of-emergency” stairs and we fell in line with others walking down the winding staircase.
When we got to the bottom of the stairs we met with some hotel staff members who apologetically informed us that it appeared to be a false alarm and invited us to return to our rooms. The line of us on the stairs turned around and trekked back up to our rooms. I wouldn’t get undressed when we got back to the room and couldn’t lay down right away. I was drunk and scared and not reassured by the fact that it “appeared” to be a false alarm. I kept trying to peer out of our window into the courtyard – “What are you looking for?” Alex asked. “If you saw a fire truck and lights would that make it better?! Come back to bed!” I eventually did return to bed but left the passports and my bag fully packed next to the bed along with my flip flops and fell asleep in my clothes.
Thankfully, I’m not hungover today. I’m still a little freaked out – I’m having a hard time returning to calm. Today’s our last full day here and I’m excited to go out into the city, but Alex is taking forever to get ready which is making me antsy. I’m sad that our honeymoon is coming to an end – Alex said that he’s been having a great time but is ready to return home to our kitties. I’m not fully sharing in that wish yet… I’m not ready to return to wash and dishes and work and bills. I’m not ready to go home and say goodbye to my family. I’m really not ready for that. I’m going to try and pull a Scarlet O’Hara, though, and “…not think about that today.” I’ll push it all out of my head for now and focus on having fun today in London!
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I can’t believe that the wedding has already come and gone! It was amazing – the happiest day of my life!! I was beaming from ear to ear all day long. AND I didn’t even cry during the ceremony! I was just SOOOO happy!!!!!
I’ve got pictures from me, Dodi, JJ, and Brenda posted so far in My Wedding Album. I’ll be adding to these as I get more pictures from friends (keep sending them my way!!!). Eric sent me a link to his album from my wedding and I’ll be adding those pictures to my collection after we return from the Honeymoon.
Speaking of the Honeymoon – it’s been fantastic so far! Our trip down to JFK got a little hairy with A LOT of traffic, but once we got on the plane it was smooth sailing. Or flying, as it were. Anyway, our room is fabulous and we got out a bit today to do some “pre-sightseeing”. We rode the London Eye and walked around and snapped a bunch of pictures. I’m now trying to figure out what we want to do tomorrow (well, I’m SUPPOSED) to be doing that now anyway… 
We’re having a great time, but I know that this trip will be over too before we know it and then it’ll be back to reality. Life will be pretty busy the week we get back – we’ll want to go visit Beck and Kevin and meet their NEW DAUGHTER!!! Eleanor Patricia Fournier (Nora) was born the night of our wedding!! Alex’s mom gave us some pictures Saturday night – look how beautiful Nora is!!!
The day after we get back, the family moves to Dubai. I was pretty shocked when Dad told me the day that they were moving – I thought we’d have a few days after Alex and I return from the Honeymoon. I was really, really upset about it on Saturday night – I think that I’ve never really conceptualized what exactly was happening. I figured that I didn’t have to worry about all that until after the wedding – and now that it’s after the wedding (which, in itself, I can’t believe) reality has hit me hard. I’m going to miss them SO much. I know that it’s only 2 years but still, it’s two years! The boys will change so much during that time. I’m feeling better about it now – Dad told me to focus on the fact that we’ll see them every few months and it’s not forever and that helps. And I know that it’s a huge opportunity for them and they’re very excited. I just can’t wait for the next two years to be over and have them back! Although, in two years I will be turning 30 and that is absolutely insane. INSANE.
Anyway, enough about that. I’m on my Honeymoon! Since it’s now past midnight London time I’m going to try and throw together a quick outline of a plan for tomorrow and go to bed!
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Filed under family, wedding | Comments (2)yayayayayayayayayayayay!!
Last night, my dad booked our airline tickets – round trip business class on British Air from JFK to Heathrow!!!
Today, Alex’s dad booked our stay at the Renaissance Chancery Court in London – 7 nights at a deluxe hotel!!!
HONEYMOON IS BOOKED!!!
(Now I can check THAT off the list!)
Oh, and my DRESS came in today!!!!!! YAYAYAYAYAY!!! I made an appointment to go to Yvonne’s after work and try it on tomorrow. Yay! SO excited!!
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Filed under honeymoon | Comment (0)I hate when it’s been forever since I’ve updated my blog. My whole purpose for having a blog is so that I have the ability to look back at what I was doing last week, last month, last year – whatever – and see what I was doing/thinking/feeling etc at that time. So, I get really disappointed when I suck at updating. And now, it’s been so long and we’ve done soooooooo much that updating becomes an enourmous task!
But enough whining about that.
Let’s see… Well, in the past month, we’ve had a cake tasting and ordered our cake, had an engagement party at my parents’ house, got a new car for Alex, discovered that Alex’s dad is giving us Marriott points for the honeymoon, and ordered our wedding bands. It’s all sooooooooo very exciting!
The cake tasting was a lot of fun! I was so adament that we were not going to pick out or order a cake while we were there, but I had one taste of the mocha cream filling and I was sold! Alex and I really enjoyed the cake tasting – sampling all of the different cake flavors and fillings while sipping on cappucinos was a nice break to a Wednesday. We found a design that we both loved and Alex decided that since he’s not too into cakes anyway, I could pick out the flavor. Since we both loved the mocha cream, we went for that. The price was surprisingly affordable and so we just went for it! 
We had a fab time at our engagment party at my parents’ house. Wham and Amy worked hard and pulled off a great party! There was lots of food and drink and everyone had a great time. Alex and I tried to make sure that we kept circulating to socialize with everyone and I couldn’t believe how quickly the night went by – I can’t imagine what the wedding is going to be like! Of course, I was exhausted for the party because of some unexpected car business the night before and hopefully the night before the wedding will find me sleeping more so that I won’t have to battle exhaustion through the night.
Speaking of the car business… Alex went out with his friend, Dave, the night before our party. They took Alex’s car – the 91 Escort that was his sister’s then his father’s and became Alex’s when we were in need in December – to Albany. On their way home at 2:30am the car died. Dave was driving and wasn’t used to the quirkiness of the clutch and it ended up burning out on them. So I got the call at 2:30 to go find them on the side of the Thruway. Of course, I’d only been asleep for about an hour at the time so I was TIRED. I ended up finding them and driving them back to our apartment, only to have Alex realize that he left his wallet in the car. So we drove all the way back out and then tried to have the car towed but gave up after not getting thru to AAA after being on hold for over 45 minutes. I didn’t get to sleep until close to 5am. Got up early that morning to go to Weight Watchers and then kept running all day to find the Escort which had been towed and impounded and get it taken care of. Needless to say, Alex and I were pretty stressed out about it.
We ended up going car shopping the next day and actually found a car for Alex right away. He knew that he’d wanted a Toyota Camry after driving the rental that I had after my accident over December. We found a 2005 Camry for a great price and were able to get excellent financing for it. Alex was super-psyched because the car looked great – it’s black with chrome accents – and was actually a standard. Alex was very happy about that. We were even able to pick it up the next evening. I am sooooooo happy for Alex because this is his first “new” used car bought through a dealer. He is so in love with his car and I am so happy for him!!
My dad had told me a couple weeks back that he’d be able to give us air tickets using frequent flier miles for our honeymoon flight, which we were hella excited about. It brought us one step closer to going on a honeymoon, which is something that we weren’t positive was going to happen. We still had to figure out how we’d pay for a hotel. Alex told me this past weekend that his dad was going to be able to give us Marriott points – enough for a week’s stay in a “category 7″ (five star) hotel. So we are definitely going to be able to go on a honeymoon!!!!! We are soooo excited!! We decided that we’d like to go to London. We’ve got to figure out all the particulars now, but it looks like the honeymoon will be a week in London with day trips to Paris and Edinburgh. We’re SO happy! It’s fun to plan our honeymoon – less stressful than wedding planning. Not that I think that wedding planning is stressful – I’ve actually been having a blast with it! But there are a lot of details to the wedding planning and only so much I can do at a time. The honeymoon planning is a lot of research and daydreaming right now and that’s a welcome change of pace.
Yesterday, we went out and bought our wedding bands! Alex has known for like 3 months which band he wants. We’d gone to Frank Adams jewelers in Stuyvesant Plaza a while back and Alex tried on a ring there that he really connected with. It’s yellow gold on the inside, white gold on the edges, and hammered rose gold in the center. The ring is large (which looks right on his hand) and very heavy. Every ring that he’d tried on after that didn’t feel right to him. They didn’t have the same heavy feeling. He wanted his “one ring to rule them all”. That ring was pretty expensive, though. After I did our taxes, I figured that we could use our tax returns to buy our rings and we’d totally be able to afford the one that he wants. I kept thinking about a piece of advice that Beck gave me – don’t skimp on the wedding rings because those are a forever thing. How could we not get the one that Alex really wanted? I didn’t think that I would find a ring at Frank Adams that I wanted because the last few times we were there, nothing looked right to me. The salesgirl that was there yesterday was awesome. She pulled a bunch of rings for me to try on and I finally found one that Alex and I both really liked. My engagement ring is so intricate that most bands looked odd next to it. A plain white gold band looked too plain, but a band with prong set diamonds looked like it was too much. I found a very thin pave set diamond band that had a single row of small diamonds halfway around. It’s very delicate and vintage looking and looked great with my band or alone on my finger. We’re very excited for our rings – we both want them right now. The order is going in tomorrow and I guess I’ll find out then how long it will be until they get here. Can’t wait!!
And now it is time for me to go to bed. It’s almost ten (gasp!) and I’ve got to get up at the crack of dawn to get to the gym. I’ve been pretty good since January when I started back at Weight Watchers and have lost 17 lbs so far. I’ve learned, though, that I really can’t skip out on the gym and I’m trying really hard to get there in the mornings so that I don’t find excuses not to go after work. I’ve got an appointment on Tuesday with one of the Fitness Trainers (included in the membership) and I’m hoping that he can help me design a good upper body and abs routine. I really hope that I hit my goal for the wedding – I really want to love my pictures!
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Filed under Car, Health, wedding | Comment (0)I was listening to “The Ballad of John and Yoko” earlier today and thought that honeymooning in all of the places that they went to would be awesome: Paris, Gibralter, Amsterdam, and back to London. It could be the Ballad or Alex and Ali… (Of course, it’s never going to happen because that would require like a billion dollars and a billion days off of work, but it’s fun to think about…)
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