Week of Weddings -- Lisa

Hi friends!  I am heading down to the beautiful plains of Auburn Alabama to attend my Sister-in-law's wedding (and celebrate my anniversary).  While I'm gone, I'd like to introduce you to some of my best bloggy friends as they share their stories and tips about weddings!

First up we have Lisa from The Sarcastic Lab Rat.  She is an amazing friend who actually opened her apartment to my husband when we were in college for a summer (and probably still has nightmares about it).  


Without further ado ... I introduce you to Lisa and her honeymoon story!

Hello, all you beautiful followers of Christy's!  I am honored that she invited me to be a guest blogger during her wedding-themed absence.  I present to you a cautionary tale for those who may be considering a Memorial Day weekend wedding with a Memorial Day honeymoon departure! 

Let's be honest. Weddings are nice and all, but the part everyone really looks forward to is the honeymoon.  I mean, you get to take a vacation! With your new husband!  We were very fortunate, because our honeymoon was a wedding gift to us from my husband's family.  His uncle has a timeshare, so he traded his 2 weeks in the US for one week in St. Maarten and presented it to us!  Happy day!!  So, after our wedding (which was lovely and went without a hitch-who wants to hear about that?), we went to our hotel room to wait for our trip the next morning.  

Our flight was pretty early, so we caught the first shuttle to the airport in Birmingham.  Our flight to Charlotte got delayed.  And delayed some more.  And delayed so long we were afraid we'd miss our connection!  We went to the ticketing counter to see if we could reconfigure the flights to make it to our resort on time.  We were informed "There is no way you can get there today."  Oh, wrong answer. You do NOT tell a new bride that she will miss her Caribbean honeymoon.  I. flipped. out.  I asked about every conceivable option, including driving to Atlanta to catch a new flight.  As we were talking, our flight finally started loading.  Success!  We might make it! 

Charlotte: We landed pretty much at the same time that our connection was supposed to finish loading.  If you've never been to the Charlotte airport, it's HUGE!  We landed in Terminal A, and had to get to D.  Of course.  So, here we are, hauling it through the airport as fast as we can.  We finally get to our gate....just in time to see our plane backing away from the walkway.  We begged and pleaded, but there was no way they'd let us on.  We discovered there was another girl going the same route as us, headed to a family reunion.  As we're reeling in our disappointment, we are herded away by an airline employee and onto another plane.  All of this occurred in a whirlwind (maybe 20 minutes  from landing to getting onto the new plane), so when we sat down I looked at my new husband and said "So.....I wonder where we're going". 

Puerto Rico:  They take Memorial Day seriously here.  The airport was almost empty.  We are told as we exit the plane to head down to our gate and they will get our tickets situated.  Oh, joy.  We migrate down and are greeted by one of the most cantankerous women I've ever met.  She put me to shame!  She looks at our passports, and immediately points out a problem-my husband's ticket is booked under the name he goes by (his middle name), but his passport shows his first name.  With a smirk, she jerks us around for a bit and then informs us that "In our country, you can get deported for that."  My response?  "Well, we weren't even supposed to be here, so whatever you have to do to get us out." She gives in and gives us our tickets.....for 4 hours later.  Our travel buddy's ticket was for only 2 hours from then.  I ask the woman at the counter if there are extra seats on the earlier flight. We are informed that there are, but she refuses to put us on the flight.  For no good reason.  Awesome.  

We bid our travel buddy goodbye and settled in for another couple of hours of boredom.  I'm reading my magazine when I hear my husband exclaim "oh no".  I look up...and here comes our buddy!  Apparently her flight was about to take off when the pilot slammed on the brakes and citing "technical issues" brought them right back to the terminal.  Where everyone on that flight was placed on ours.  Now, I'm afraid of flying and when we are marched out to our little puddle jumper I start to freak a little.  Everything is going smoothly on our flight, until we start to land.  It's dark outside, and as we are descending I realize I can't see anything.  To me, dark=water. So I start to freak out, much to the embarrassment of my husband.  We were fine, of course, and made it to our resort only 4 hours late.  

So, I guess what I'm trying to say with all of this is: I. hate. Puerto Rico.   I mean really, what's up with a US territory threatening to deport US citizens?  Ha!  So, all of you planning your weddings, good luck, congratulations, and avoid flying through there at all costs!


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Thanks for sharing Lisa!!!!  Go visit and follow her, she's amazing!  


Come back tomorrow to here my story (b/c it's my anniversary)!