It's Official!

The entire St Lucia experience was wonderful. As much as we'd have loved to be surrounded by family and friends, it was also very nice to privately bask in our own love and commitment to each other.

The ceremony was simply a wonderful experience. I had reasonable expectations of the entire Sandals process, and while the ceremony was very effecient, I never once felt like we were part of an assembly line of weddings and being rushed through the event. The entire event lasted approximatly an hour, including our mini-reception following the ceremony. We were very fortunate to make some friends on our trip, friends asked if they could come to the ceremony to support us. It was very cool to have others share in our event, and if there is any regret for our choice of wedding venue, it is simply that our love and celebration wasn't witnessed by those close to our hearts.

Although my father wasn't there to walk me down the aisle, he was there in my heart. I walked down the aisle to Kenny G's "Wedding Song" which I selected because of my Dad's love of Mr. G, and although it was a rough subtitute, it was comforting. We were also able to call our parents following the ceremony so they could share in our excitement.

Our officiant was a peaceful soul. I'm blessed that Ms. Jackson shared her thoughts of marriage to open the ceremony, they were very beautiful and while they are all a blur now, they nearly brought me to tears as I looked at my groom. Mircea has never looked so handsome as he looked in my eyes and professed his love to me, and I've never felt so beautiful as when I did the same for him. It was just magical. I get goosebumps as I type this as it was just...unreal. Any fear that we harbored melted away as we held hands and professed our commitment to each other.

Following the pronouncement of husband and wife, we had some fun for the camera before attempting our cake cutting. I have never in my life struggled to cut a cake-we butchered the heck out of it but finally managed to scrape up some pieces to feed each other. We then shared our first dance to U2's "All I Want is You". The song was perfect and it was like a little dream sequence as I quietly sang the words in Mircea's ear as we danced.

Our "best man" Kenny gave an adorable speech about us, which was hilarious since we'd known him and his wife for two days, but it was so sweet and memorable. We were definitely a rag tag group of silly people. Kenny and Kristi (my Maid of Honor-by the way, Sandals gave them these roles since they were the signature witnesses to our marriage) got married 6 days before us, and our other guests, Kathy and Tony have been married many years and have children our age. We were so lucky to meet them on an excursion and I hope we keep in touch as they were truly special people.

All in all, we had a great time-beautiful ceremony, lovely pictures of the event, and a lifetime of happiness and memories to share.