Twisted Stitches: Don't Call It A Comeback... Really posted on 8/24/11

I have been both missing and dreading blogging if that makes any sense to whoever is still intrigued with my blog. Many things have happened, many decisions made since I dropped off the Blogger world. The idea of documenting parts of my life and talking about knitting really excites me, however the time dedicated to keeping the blog up is a bit overwhelming too. So I think I will just make a weekly entry with highlights and updates. Now which day to pick?? That will have to be thought out carefully.

In the meantime I have yet to tell you all about the wedding/honeymoon/vacation! The good, the bad and the absolute funny.

The bottom left picture is of Honolulu and Waikiki beach. The bottom right picture is of the Leeward (West Coast) of Oahu where we stayed. There are four lagoons, we stayed on the northern most lagoon.

Richard and I arrived to SFO for our flight to Honolulu on Friday October 8th packed carefully and ready to go, wedding clothes (dress included) in a garment bag. The flight is fully booked and it is very crowded but I make my way up to the desk at the gate and ask the attendant if it is possible that I could have my wedding dress taken on to the plane before we board and hung in a closet because I wanted to give it the best chance possible traveling to still look ok when we arrive. The Hawaiian Airline attendant informed me that this plane does not have any closets for hanging clothes....I thought I was going to pass out right there. Ladies surrounding me, could see the panic on my face. I suck it up and move on, we board the plane and the over head compartments are filling very quickly and leaving not much room for anything much less my wedding dress and his wedding clothes. I didn't want to look, I sat down in my seat, head in my hands and could see out of the corner of my eye Richard shoving the garment bag into the compartment. The very sweet lady across the isle "supervising" was trying to ease my mind and telling me that he was doing fine and that the dress will be fine with a sweet smile on her face.......the dress was not fine....the rhinestone piece on the waistband was broken when I opened the bag at the hotel. It ended up fine in the long run, the hotel cleaners/alterations mended it enough to make it through the day, the REALLY long day!

We stayed at the JW Marriott in Ko Olina and it was really beautiful. The resort is situated on the most northern man made lagoon on the Leeward Coast of Oahu and is about 45 minutes from Honolulu. The day of the wedding started at 4:15am...yes, you read that right, 4:15am. I had a hair and make-up lady come to the hotel at 5am and we had to be ready and set at 7:30am for our 8am wedding. If you are reading this and know me well enough, you know that we were not ready at 7:30am and the wedding started a bit late, just a bit. The flowers and lei's were delivered, Richard greeted each of our special guest with a fresh orchid lei and they proceeded to the wedding site, the natural cove.

Once I was given word that everyone was in place I headed down to the cove with my new sister-in-laws. It was time, we were a bit, but the sun was shining brightly with a very soft cool breeze and it was 8:15am. As I step down onto the sandy cove and I see everyone gathered, Richard has his back turned to me and chatting with the minister. He had only one request for our wedding day, he didn't want to see me all dressed and made up until the ceremony started, mission accomplished. The minister smiled, gestured towards me and Richard turned and smiled like I had never seen him smile before. The ceremony was a mixture of Christian and Hawaiian traditions which included prayers spoken in English and Hawaiian. And at 8:45am on Sunday October 10, 2010 we were officially married 6 years and 364 days after our first date!

Now, on to the funny! After the wedding ceremony we had our family gather in our room for mimosas and fruit while we took our wedding photos. After the photos were taken we all went the Champagne Brunch right there at the hotel. We are all having a great time, we are hungry and I have had my fair share of champagne. Have I told you that I love champagne? Well since we were not having a large wedding and the brunch would have all sorts of desserts I passed on purchasing a wedding cake. I scoped out the desserts and there was a white cake with some sort of fruit filling and took a slice and went back to the table declaring this our "wedding cake." So we politely took our forks, cut off some cake and fed each other a bite...proper and civil like. Then his "brother from another mother" Troy with my camera in his hand started winking at my husband and saying, "No, No, No you have the feed it to each other" wink wink grin grin. I was oblivious to the cues that Troy was giving; some people would call it tipsy, whatever! The next thing I know is I see cake coming at my face and my husband is trying to pull me towards him all the while he is leaning back in fear of my retaliation that he leans too far back and well you see what happened below...

He broke the chair and fell on his ass!!! Yes, that is me, his wife laughing so hard that I didn't even get up to help him. I can still hear Aunt Gwen laughing and telling Richard, "God don't like ugly!"

After brunch, we all went our seperate ways and we gathered later that night for the luau. We had such a beautiful morning full of laughter and happy tears. We were in a beautiful setting for such an imporant moment in our lives with family and friends and we would have not done it any different!