View from Parrot Cay

When thinking about our honeymoon, IC and I figured that by the time our wedding was over, we will have been on Turks&Caicos for 7 days. This led us to conclude that we should only honeymoon for 2 nights since, what, we'd be sick of being in paradise by then? I don't know but looking back our calculations seem...misguided. I remember leading the charge of "let's only stay on for 2 extra nights" and in retrospect I am just baffled at my reasoning. We got there on Thursday, the wedding was on Monday, our day-after shoot was on Tuesday and we left for our honeymoon on Wednesday. In what universe did it make sense to come home on Friday? (Don't cry for us, Argentina, we've already taken a second honeymoon-esque type trip to LA and are planning to be in Israel this summer. Still, who leaves before the weekend begins!?).

Sidenote mostly for Trip Advisor folks visiting my page: We made a great little discovery with booking this honeymoon. None of the major travel sites, including Parrot Cay's own site, would let us book for less than 3 nights. But the site Tablet Hotels let us book for the two nights and had the cheapest rate and upgraded our room because we joined their Tablet Plus service (it was $195 for the year and a Parrot Cay next-level-up room was $200+ more per night, a no-brainer).

Anyway, the honeymoon recap:

The day we left for our honeymoon was the first cloudy, cold, drizzly day of our entire trip. The weather for the entire wedding weekend was just glorious, perfect, so we were ok with having the first not-great day be after all the guests left. The Parrot Cay bus picked us up from the Gansevoort and took us to their private dock. They gave us warm towels and beverages while we waited for the boat. (That thing wrapped in paper by IC's thigh is our cake-topper. He didn't let that thing out of his sight).



They had a model of Parrot Cay at the dock:



Then the boat arrived and the ride began:



It took about 40 minutes. The ride was kind of choppy due to weather but not too bad:





When we get to Parrot Cay, we were greeted by a woman in a golf cart who took us to the main building:





She drove us through the lush, beautiful property:





Traffic jam:



We were greeted with rum punch drinks while we waited for our room key. The main house was cute and rustic:







When we got to our room, well, that was rustic too:





Frankly, we thought the room was really weak. It wasn't even the fact that the room was very bare, or that the mini-bar was on the balcony, or that the air conditioner would turn off by sensor when the balcony door was opened, or that there was no wi-fi in the room and I'm a certified internet junkie. It was the little things. The sheets and the towels were terrible. The bed was really uncomfortable. The shower was old-looking and lacked water pressure. We kept wondering if we were disappointed in the room because we had just come from staying in the most incredible room of all time but the fact is we expected better for the price we were paying. We'd expect better from a random Sheraton and this was the world-famous Parrot Cay.

The property is beautiful, the food is terrific and the service is outstanding. But the rooms are a real downer and I swear we are normally the type of people who don't care much for the room. But when the bed is bad, it starts the day off wrong. Plus, the price to stay at Parrot Cay is so high that it really should be more luxurious. I understand they go for a retreat/rustic sort of vibe but that doesn't mean the sheets need to feel like sandpaper or that the towels should be worse than Holiday Inn.

Anyway, the weather was still not cooperating so we just took a long walk around the property and along the empty beach:









We sat on a rock at one end of the beach, kissed a lot and stared at our new rings:



We were all alone on the beach, it felt like the end of the earth:



We had drinks at the pool bar. The drinks were outrageously priced but very delicious:



We ate dinner that night at the casual pool-side restaurant. It was realllllllly good. The food was just terrific, I don't have a single complaint about it.

I was still feeling bridal and rocking the all-white:



The next day the weather was better. Still a little cloudy and windy but warmer. This is where we had breakfast:



We lounged on the still mostly-empty beach, then moved to the beautiful infinity pool:





They make drinks goooooood:



They also had cute little touches like someone bringing around popsicles while you lay by the pool.

Then we had massage appointments at the Como Shambhala spa. The massage was great, and the space is very beautiful.

So, remember when I said that the weather was better but it was still cloudy and windy? Well, you know how when it's cloudy and windy you may not realize how hot the sun is and be less diligent than normal in your sunscreen application? Yeah. That happened to us. We were little tomatoes after our massages. I'd post photos of us miserable and red lounging on our balconies but IC doesn't want to be reminded to it so instead I'll just show you our last sunset on Parrot Cay:



That night we had dinner at their more formal restaurant, also incredible.

And the next day we went home, married, rested and completely in love with Turks&Caicos and each other.



We'll be back, maybe for our one-year anniversary, and maybe we'll invite the 65 people who watched us wed to join us. Or maybe we'll just run off on our own. :-)

I hope you've enjoyed reading my recaps. I'm happy to answer questions for any prospective T&C brides.

Trash. That. Dress. April 7, 2009

Before I knew anything about what our wedding would be like, I knew I was trashing the dress. Why try to keep perfect a dress you will never wear again when you can get some amazing photos out of it?

All the photos in this post were taken by the fabulous Matthew Szlakowicz unless otherwise indicated:

I envisioned photos on these steps the very first time I saw the Gansevoort Turks&Caicos:



The Gansevoort property just lends itself to beautiful photos:



Then we kicked off our shoes and went on the sand:



Some of our friends were hanging out on the beach watching the shoot.

Ren+Carly took this one (that horse is about to um, release, right by that couple and their dog:



These are from Max+MIchelle:





Back to Matthew's pics:



I wanted to keep my hair and make-up pretty casual but in retrospect I wish I had done more with my hair than just tie it back while it was wet. I think we're going to photoshop out the pieces of hair randomly sticking out of my bun:



If I had to do it over, I'd also have less pics of us kissing. I mean, yeah, yeah, we're married but about half the shots are us lip-locked:



I love the shots where you can see us in the water:





It was an overcast day, the first of the whole trip, so the sunset wasn't that dramatic. Still the colors of the sky were so beautiful:



Other than the pronounced size of my arm, this was my favorite pic of the shoot:





My hair got messier as we got wetter:



But it was so much fun, we didn't care:



I should've had my hair down the whole time! Oh well:



I love this last shot. We look as happy as we were:


That's it for wedding weekend at the Gansevoort posts. Next up, honeymoon at Parrot Cay! Come visit!

Have hope, friends!

Call me crazy, but I'm just not sure all friendships-that-lead-to-relationships follow this exact pattern.

Hat-tip Petitedov.

Drink up!

The day-after photo shoot pics, and the write-up of our honeymoon are coming soon, swear.

In the meantime, I've got IC's awesome recipe for margaritas to share with you all. We're not big drinkers, IC and I, but we've definitely been in celebration mode since getting married (we've each gained some poundage with our nonstop eating and drinking to prove it) and this has been a house favorite over at our place.

We've been loving Gran Centenario’s Rosangel Tequila. IC is a huge hibiscus fan and this is the world’s first hibiscus infused tequila. It is completely delicious and a must for our margaritas.

We don't use salt, which I realize is margarita heresy, but I never liked getting a mouth full of salt while drinking my drink. I much prefer sugar.

IC's super fantastic margarita recipe:

Gran Centenario’s Rosangel Tequila
Triple Sec
1 Lime (or more as needed)
Orange wedges
Stirrings Lemon Drop Rimmer Sugar

Basic ratio for Margarita is:
3 oz. Tequila
2 oz. Triple Sec
1 oz. Lime Juice

1. Soak orange slice, cut in thirds, in tequila in a shaker (one slice per drink)
2. Squeeze lime juice into separate cup
3. Add triple sec and lime juice to shaker and.....shake.
4. Moisten rim of glass with lime and dip in lemon drop sugar
5. Add ice and pour in margarita with orange slices

My favorite part is eating up the tequila-soaked oranges left when the drink is done. Enjoy!

April 6, 2009 Reception

(All wedding photos in this post, unless otherwise indicated, by Matthew Szlakowicz)

While the guests went off to the cocktail hour, IC, our families and I hung back for the pictures. I'm not sure how other brides do it but we didn't see any other way. We were really sad about this not only because we wanted to hang out with our friends and family but also because the food we picked for the cocktail hour sounded so good (Tuna tataki with seaweed salad, Bruschetta with roasted tomato and goat cheese, Spicy beef skewers, Mini steak sandwiches, Brie-n-pear puffs, these are like my favorite foods in the world). The restaurant staff brought us over a few trays of food but I don't remember eating any of it. Apparently the bride has to be in most of the shots. The sun was setting and it was beautiful but I swear we're discussing hors d'oeuvres in these shots:







Well, maybe not in this one:



And then we got to the cocktail hour and all the Israelis in the house immediately began the Hebrew singing and clapping and we had to be like "not yet, not yet, but soon" because we had planned to do the Hebrew dancing right after our first song.



There was about 5 minutes left in the cocktail hour when we got there and we didn't have any of the food which we weren't sad about at the time but are totally sad about today after everyone told us the food was just amazing.

About two days before we left for T&C, we still had not figured out place cards. I've mentioned on this site before that I am not at all creative. I'm mostly practical and, in a pinch, I could tell a good story. But inspired by the bridal blogosphere and, let's face it, Martha Stewart, I came up with the idea to make luggage tags as a combination seating card/favor. I got the tags in Chinatown and bought printable business cards at Staples to stuff into them. Unfortunately, the business cards were too long so the night before we left for the wedding IC and I could be seen on our couch cutting the cards to size and stuffing them in the tags. IC actually came up with the additional creative idea to use a Hebrew-style font on the place cards as a nod to our Judaism and his being born in Israel. The font is calledBen-Zion and we got it on my favorite font website, Da Font. Our wedding planner came up with the idea to hang them on branches and have the table number as a sticker on the back:



This photo from Lauren:



What's funny is that the Hebrew-speaking guests had a really hard time reading the cards because it's Hebrew letters spelling out English words. We hear there was some fun confusion.

Everybody went to sit down and we hung back so we could be "introduced". I didn't really get this concept, because everyone had already seen us at the cocktail hour, but apparently it's what's done. We came in through the corner door and smiled while everyone applauded:





Then we made them all stand back up and watch our first dance. As I blogged about previously, we chose "First day of my life" by Bright Eyes. It fit really well and we enjoyed dancing to it. I had taken the shrug off my dress but had kept the veil on:



And then, oh then, we danced the hora. If you've never been to a Jewish wedding, it goes something like this: people form a circle, hold hands and dance:



The couple is in the middle for a little while:



But then it's sort of a free for all:



The couple link arms and dance around:



Then, people grab the couple by the arm and spin them round and round:







It's actually really fun. Until, and I can't even imagine how someone hundreds of years ago came up with this wacky tradition, they put you on chairs, hoist you in the air and you hang on for your dear life:



Somebody was not holding me straight and I thought I was going to fall off:



But they straightened me out and we survived. Here's a short video of our chair hoist, taken by our friends Vadim+Angela. I like the part where I reach out my hand to my husband and he shakes his head no because he's clutching onto his chair.

Finally it was time to sit down to dinner. At this point, I have to be negative for a minute. I hated the dj. I gave him 6 hours worth of music and asked him not to deviate from that. So when "Everything I do" by Bryan freaking Adams was playing as we sat down to dinner, I was considerably unhappy. "What the hell is this?" I asked IC. I had worked so hard on the playlist to *not* have to hear crap like Bryan Adams. "Do you want me to tell him to turn it off?" IC asked, figuring, I'm sure, that I'd say no. YES, ask him to turn it off. He's lucky it was IC that went over to him instead of me. I'm from Brooklyn, in case y'all don't know. Anyway, the dj sucked. He played the same 3 songs over and over during food time. When we complained to the wedding planner (who had recommended him as some "celebrity" dj on Provo) she said I had not given him enough slow songs. UM, I had given him nearly 2 hours of slow songs. I understood what had happened. I had initially provided him with a list of songs I wanted played. On it, there were only about 10 slow songs. But when I gave him my ipod, several days before the wedding, there was much, much more music on it, as he and I had discussed. He just did not put any effort into looking at what I had given him. You'd think for like $300 an hour he'd do more than just push play on the ipod. You'd think wrong.

ANYWAY, there was vodka on the table and that made everything better. It's a Russian thing, to have a bottle and shot glasses at each table and Bagatelle was good about accommodating us. This photo by Sharon M.:



I hear these were a big hit.

Also customary, we circulated and did shots with the various tables. Pic by Cora:



The food was so good! Here's a pic of our menu by Lauren:



IC and I got one of everything and shared as we do at any other dinner. Everything was great! I particularly loved the mahi-mahi ceviche, IC particularly liked the risotto and the big pieces of shaved parmesan on it. I normally am not into Ceasar salad but loved Bagatelle's version.

Another big hit was our cake topper. IC and I are both poker players and we spent many years playing one-on-one poker together before we began dating. When I suggested to IC we have a cake topper of us playing poker, he was lukewarm to the idea. He gave me a budget of $100 and really didn't care if it happened or not. It was made by Steve at Top-o-the-Cake and it was amazing! IC loved it! It was one of his favorite details of the wedding. He took such good care of that topper and wouldn't let anyone touch it lest they leave finger prints on it--and this was the day after the wedding! IC is doing a chip trick in the topper, I think that's why he loves it so much. Cake-topper pics by Cora:



I love my as-in-real-life red hair, the red bottom on my shoe and the fact that I'm pushing my chips in:





The actual wedding cake was yet another big hit. Made by Diane Guess of Cakes to Di For, many people told us it was the best wedding cake they'd ever had. Pics back to being by Matthew Szlakowicz:



Here's another video by Vadim and Angela of us cutting the cake and me nodding in approval, partly because the cake was delicious and partly because I had told IC that he better not shove the cake in my face as has, for some reason, become customary and he kept me guessing until the last second whether or not he would.

IC's brother Ron and my best friend Laurie gave really beautiful, thoughtful toasts:





I danced with my father to "There for you" by Damian Marley (and asked my brother to invite my mom to the dance floor and join us to include her) and IC danced to "Oof Gazal", a really pretty Hebrew song, with his mom and had his sister join with their father and his brother join with their aunt. I liked that we did that, I never understood the leaving out of the parent based on gender.





We did some more dancing and then before we knew it the reception was over and we were being moved to the beach for the after-party s'mores bonfire. We gave people some time to change into casual clothes and then we all headed to the beach. Some people were too in love with their white linen suit to change:



No one seems to have gotten a photo of the set-up but they had marshmallows and chocolate covered graham crackers for people to make their own s'mores.





Similar to the welcome bbq, people lounged on towels on the sand and on the round couches:





There was more guitar and violin playing





Eventually IC and I peeled away from the group and called it a very, very long day. We had had a great time at our wedding and, ultimately, lazy DJs and pervy rabbis couldn't affect that. We had been surrounded by people who we love, and people who love us. They had watched us promise to be together forever, then ate great food and danced and had a great time. We were so lucky to have our wedding in such a beautiful place but even luckier to have it around such amazing people.

The day after the wedding, I trashed my dress. Photos and story about that coming up. I also plan to write up our honeymoon on Parrot Cay so stay tuned!

April 6, 2009 Ceremony

(All wedding photos in this post, unless otherwise indicated, by Matthew Szlakowicz)

And then, just as soon as the whirlwind insanity began, it was over. My parents and brother were in the room with me and everyone else had gone. We were just sitting around, waiting.

I saw the chuppah from the balcony and it looked so beautiful:



We had done a super fast walk-through the day before but I was really nervous about getting everyone to the rehearsal dinner so barely had paid attention. We had a sheet though, from the wedding planner we had hired for day-of coordination, that said we were to be ready at 5:25. I forgot if this meant we had to be downstairs at 5:25 or what, so we just kind of waited. A big surprise to me was how calm I was feeling. I was not nervous in the least. I had bought over the counter sleeping pills because everyone told me that getting to sleep the night before your wedding day was near impossible. Maybe it was the hectic schedule or the sea breeze but I slept like a baby. To kill time while we waited I snapped shots of my family:



At 5:30, when no one had called us, we decided to just head downstairs. I stayed back so I wouldn't see IC in case he was hovering in the area. And suddenly, my brother was walking down the aisle, and then me and my parents. It all happened so fast.



Our friend PN was playing the violin for us and the song I had picked to walk down to was Erev Ba, a traditional Hebrew song which you can hear by clicking the link. It sounded so beautiful.



At the end of the path I could see IC and he was just beaming. It made me smile even harder. (The rabbi? I'll get to him in a minute).







When we reached the end of the aisle, IC kissed my mother:



And then my father:



And then lifted my veil:



Instinctively, I moved in for a kiss too and IC said "not yet" and then we both laughed.



We were giggling when we reached the chuppah.



While we were both brought up in the Jewish faith, IC and I are not very religious people. We read a lot about Jewish weddings before ours and tried to do things as close to Jewish tradition as possible. For example, we used a plain gold band, my grandmother's, for me under the chuppah, as you're not allowed to have diamonds or embellishments on the ring. We put the rings on the forefinger and not the ring finger (the fact that we put it on my right hand? Mistake).



I'm fairly sure the couple is not supposed to touch under the chuppah but we held hands the whole time. It was pure instinct and it felt so good to squeeze hands and be connected the whole time. I'm confident G-d will forgive us.



Another mistake was our families outside the chuppah (this photo by Cora):



It's a sore subject but basically they stopped outside the chuppah based on a drawing they had seen by our wedding planner and neither IC nor I corrected in the whirlwind of the moment. They should have been inside with us. The only person actually inside with us was IC's grandfather who we called up to the chuppah in a show of kavod.

You can see that the men in our family are wearing white yarmulkes with light blue lettering. These were hand-made by my mom. The guests got blue yarmulkes, with our names, wedding date and location on the inside, from my favorite Judaica store.

These 2 pics by Cora:





This one by Dawn Summers:



Also, the day before we were leaving for T&C I found myself in Chinatown and bought a bunch of fans to have on the seats in case it was very hot out. I think they were a cute touch but probably not actually necessary. The weather was perfect. From Sharon S.:



IC wants this to be a happy post, so I am spinning off the story of the rabbi into a separate post below. Go check it out.

Now back to our regular scheduled happy tale. We call up our friends Mike and Frank to sign our ketubah, we're wrapped in a tallit, the rabbi gives a Kohanim priestly blessing (we didn't know what this was until later, wouldn't have put it past him to be doing some Star Trek sign), IC breaks the glass on his first try, the crowd cheers "Mazel Tov!"



And then we kiss:



Then we walk like 20 feet:







And turn back around for the group photo and family portraits:


We're married! Us! To each other! We were friends for so long, just years and years of close friendship, of dinners out discussing our respective lives, nights on the couch watching random sports, one-on-one poker at IC's dining room table long after the rest of our friends had called it a night.

April 2006:



It was so obvious and yet not at all obvious.

May 2006:



When we finally looked at each other in that way, it was a dam breaking, there was no holding it back. Day 1 of our relationship we knew it was on a marriage track.

July 2006 (I have a million other photos from a million other years, 2006 was when I started my flickr so I have a lot from that era):



When we told our friends we were together, the most common reaction was "are you messing with me?" followed immediately by "I knew it!"

September 2006:





Our relationship began on Thanksgiving 2007, we told our friends over New Years, we were engaged 10 months later, married 6 months after that. But it's those first 11 years that made us us.

October 2006:



November 2006:





December 2006:







April 2007:




May 2007:







And hey, how many dinners do you still owe me that I won over poker, IC? July 2007:









August 2007:

















September 2007:







No idea of the date on this one, maybe like 1999 and this is with our third, Matty:



I've heard the advice, marry your best friend. And I really did. It's been amazing and I think the best is yet to come, spit, spit, touch wood.

We looked on with some degree of jealousy as our guests proceeded to the cocktail hour.

The freaking rabbi

{And here is where I have to take a moment and get all negative in the midst of this beautiful story. As I've written about on this blog, we had a rabbi from Brooklyn lined up to marry us. He knew my family for many years and we were looking forward to him sealing our union. A month before our wedding, his brother had a stroke. He became his brother's primary caretaker which made it very difficult for him to get away. He assured us that if we couldn't find another rabbi, he would step in and do it. So we started looking. We focused our search on New York, Miami and the Bahamas, three places that have direct flights to Turks&Caicos. Because our wedding was so close to Passover, most rabbis said no. When we looked into who performs most of the Jewish weddings in Nassau, Bahamas, we found it was a rabbi in Miami. We spoke to him on the phone several times and he seemed fine. He had done like 2000 weddings, he seemed to know the drill.

When he arrived in T&C on Sunday, we were waiting for him in the lobby. The front desk person at Gansevoort said "we didn't have a wheelchair for him so the airline provided one for him to use for 2 days." That's...odd. He never mentioned he was in a wheelchair and you'd think that would be something he'd be concerned with. He arrives and homeboy is wearing a black baseball hat that says "RABBI" in bold white letters. O-k.

We take him to lunch and I have a fairly immediate visceral reaction to him. First off, he doesn't need the wheelchair, was just feeling lazy. Then, he tells us some wacko, convoluted story about visiting Petra, Egypt and how much the border guards loved his wife's breasts. I mean, honestly. The breast story goes on and on.

He's rude to the waitstaff, complaining that his fries are cold despite the fact that he ate his burger while, um, his fries got cold. Hello. They actually reheat his fries for him.

We talk a little about the ceremony and we tell him we're looking to keep it fairly traditional. He tells us that when it's time to drink from the wine cup under the chuppah, IC should try to take a sip first so that he can remind him to always let me have the first sip from this point on. Uh, no. IC and I look at each other secure in the knowledge he'll be giving me the first sip.

But whatever, what are we gonna do? This is the only rabbi currently on the island. When he later hits on the beach sports girl or asks our wedding planner to take a shower with him, I can barely contain my disgust. I hate this man. Hate.

Anyway, he actually gives a decent ceremony, telling a story about creation and tying it to the time period of our wedding. We recite our vows and everything is going ok. Then, the rabbi tells IC that he will whisper in his ear what he is to say next into the microphone, what he will be saying to me for the rest of his life. The rabbi whispers something and IC says "yes, dear" into the mic.

Hi, I'm Karol, most of my friends are male and I don't do bullshit gender role jokes. I look at the rabbi and say "that's enough." I'm told I made a motion with my hand across my neck to say "cut" but I don't really remember, can't wait to see the vid! He says "that's enough?" I repeat "that's enough." To his credit, he cuts the shit and completes the ceremony. We're married!!! He calls me Karen somewhere near the end but we're too delirious with happiness to care. Many people tell me later that they loved that I cut him off, that so many rabbis think they're also stand-up comedians and that my cutting him off was so me. I appreciate that, but I do wish it didn't have to happen.}